"Augury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own demolished dreams realized in the triumphs of their children. When little Nathan creeps to the piano and quite without the help of his elders picks out the song he has heard his mother sing,—all the neighbors in Odessa know it the next day. "A wonder child perhaps!" Oh happy augury of fame and fortune! Little Nathan shall have the best of instruction. His mother will teach him at first, of course. She will shape his little fingers to the keyboard. She will sing sweet folk melodies in his ear,—songs ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... too far away to note them. As we gazed, a long thin quiver of sunshine slipped out between two cloud banks and gilded the summit of the Magdalene tower, with the Royal standard which still waved from it. The incident was hailed as a happy augury, and a great shout spread from rank to rank at the sight of it, with a waving of hats and a clattering of weapons. Then the bugles blew a fanfare, the drums struck up a point of war, Reuben thrust his shirt into his haversack, and on we marched through ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... embrace of parents and a sister, which for me was a sweet augury at my departure, greeted me ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... think you may put yourself down as passed!" said my father when I subsequently detailed the incidents of my examination, drawing a good augury from my description of what had occurred on board the gunnery ship. "He was always a knowing hand was Old Tangent; and such a remark from him to his brother examiners, would be as efficacious as a whisper in ear ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... reaches, perhaps, the high-water mark of Modernist claims. Not all the writers whom we have quoted would view with complacency the prospect of the Catholic Church dying to live again, or being content to live only in its progeny. The proverb about the new wine-skins is one of sinister augury in such a connection. If the Catholic Church is really in such an advanced stage of decay that it must die before it can live, why do those who grasp the situation wish to keep it alive? Are they not precisely pouring their new wine into old bottles? Mr. Tyrrell himself draws the parallel with ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... decision not only demands our submission, but has a claim upon our trust. It not only acts as a prohibition of any measures, but as an ipso facto confutation of any reasonings, inconsistent with it. It carries with it an earnest and an augury of its own expediency. For instance, I can fancy, Gentlemen, there may be some, among those who hear me, disposed to say that they are ready to acquit the principles of Education, which I am to advocate, of all fault ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of which will never be known—for you can not summon the dead as witnesses; then a brief hesitation, and a dozen sentences exchanged between the first and second in command; and then—every trooper in the Brigade understood what he had to do. Many drew true and evil augury from the cloud lowering on the stern features of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... centre of his dome, Wren directed a labourer to place a stone as a mark. The man took a broken fragment of an old gravestone on which was inscribed the word Resurgam; and by many this was naturally taken as a favourable augury. In 1686 the old west end, hitherto left undisturbed in its ruins, was cleared away, and two years later the choir was ready for its roof; but shortly after, a fire at the west of the north choir aisle, in a room allotted to the organ-builder, caused a slight delay. Not until ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... mankind have often found their way into popular speech, and their terms have remained there long after the rejection of the beliefs they embodied: as—lunatic, augury, divination, spell, exorcism: though, to be sure, such words may often be turned to good account, besides the interest of preserving their original sense. Language is a record as well as an ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... no matter;"—thus the noble Dane, About his heart more ill than one could tell; Sad augury, that like a funeral bell Against his soul ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the same story over and over. We should, for example, see Alexander the Great balked at the banks of the Hyphasis, and forced to turn back because of inauspicious auguries based as before upon the dissection of a fowl. Alexander himself, to be sure, would have scorned the augury; had he been the prey of such petty superstitions he would never have conquered Asia. We know how he compelled the oracle at Delphi to yield to his wishes; how he cut the Gordian knot; how he made his dominating personality felt at the temple of Ammon in Egypt. We know, in a word, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... bids fair to be a quite respectable candidate for the native ministry. Will you please offer him two or three more years at the College to enable him to qualify, should that be his own wish. I am quite prepared to be at charges for him. It's a happy augury that his baptismal name happens to be Solomon, even as it was rather a tragic one that mine happened to be David. I don't see my way to building up God's House on the old farm now, either literally or metaphorically, in the ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... I swung over the side of the boat into the water, when I found myself knee-deep. Olivia looked from me to Tardif with a flushed face—an augury that made my pulses leap. Why should her face never change when he carried her in his arms? Why should ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... fulfillment in so short a time, and with such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponents of the San Francisco mining-ring staring me and this whole community defiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do you blame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall ever write for the Press, especially when a sense alike of personal self-respect, of duty to this money-oppressed and fear-ridden community, and of American fealty to the spirit of true Liberty all command me, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... errand went That huge ferocious armament, An awful cloud, in dust and gloom, With threatening thunders from its womb Poured in sad augury a flood Of rushing water mixt with blood. The monarch's steeds, though strong and fleet, Stumbled and fell: and yet their feet Passed o'er the bed of flowers that lay Fresh gathered on the royal way. No gleam of sunlight struggled through The sombre pall of midnight hue, Edged with a line of bloody ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Jesus']. It gave great happiness and inspiration to all to see such an auspicious beginning, for of a truth it seemed a work of God to have preserved so completely this image among infidels for such a long time; and an auspicious augury in the part where the settlement was to be made." On May 8, the fort was commenced, Legazpi breaking the first ground, and "dedicating it to the most blessed name of Jesus." [60] The sites for the Spanish quarters and the church were chosen, and the town was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... exercised the power of excommunication; and without their concurrence war could not be declared nor peace made: and they even had the power of inflicting the punishment of death. They professed to possess a knowledge of magic, and practised augury for the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... General Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff, was the practical director of military operations. General von Moltke was a nephew of the great strategist of 1870, and his name possibly appealed as of happy augury for repeating the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... chimney. So far as the Great Work was concerned, my father only cared for its publication, not its profits. I will not say that he might not hunger for praise, but I am quite sure that he did not care a button for pudding. Nevertheless, it was an infaust and sinister augury for Austin Caxton, the very appearance, the very suspension and danglement of any puddings whatsoever, right over his ingle-nook, when those puddings were made by the sleek hands of Uncle Jack! None ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hoping, either in the words or face of Sergius, to detect some tone or expression indicative of regretful thought or recollection of herself. When at last her name had been mentioned, for a moment she had eagerly held her breath, lest she might lose one syllable from which an augury of her fate could be drawn. Then, repressing, with a violent effort, the cry of despair which rose to her lips, upon hearing herself thus coolly and disdainfully surrendered as the stake of a game of dice, and with less apparent regret than would have been felt for the loss ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... disposition, careless of personal safety, gave a charm the more to the magnificent young King, handsome, noble, brave, and full of universal friendliness and sympathy, who comes forth smiling in the face of fate, ready to turn back every gloomy augury and bring in another golden age. Pitscottie's description is full ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... express of his genius,—seconded as it was by that inward dissatisfaction with his own powers, which they whose standard of excellence is highest are always the surest to feel,—mortified and disturbed him; and, being the first sounds of ill augury that had come across his triumphal career, startled him, as we have seen, into serious ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the river with a more than human sagacity. He held it in awe and in reverence as a deity, as the Greeks of old held their streams. It would have drowned the child, he thought, if she had been an evil creature or of evil augury. But he did not say so, for he did not care to provoke Don Silverio's fine fleeting ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... They received little support from the country in their guerrilla warfare on the Land Conference findings. The Standing Committee of the Catholic Hierarchy left no room for doubt as to their views. They declared the holding of the Land Conference "to be an event of the best augury for the future welfare of both classes" (landlords and tenants), and they expressed the hope that its unanimity would result in legislation which would settle the Land Question once for all "and give the Irish people of every class a fair opportunity ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... he cries, 'for us no more delay! I follow; and wherever ye may lead, Gods of my country, I will go! Guard ye My family, my little grandson guard. This augury is yours; and yours the power That watches Troy. And now, my son, I yield, Nor will refuse to go along with thee.' And now through all the city we can hear The roaring flames, which nearer roll their heat. 'Come then, dear father! On my shoulders I Will bear thee, nor will think the task severe. ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... there was only one explanation possible. This continual shifting of the Colonel, ever under the charge of those rascally dragoons, commanded now by a man whose familiarity with Tixall was an evil augury, meant one thing only. Soon, perhaps within an hour or two, there would be fighting, and under cover of that a stab in the back or a bullet in the head would clear the Colonel out of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... be sustained by your great nation; and on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations, will be, as it shall be my ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the same way. His course has excited considerable alarm. Timid men consider it as a proof of the weakness of our government, and that it is to be rent in pieces by demagogues and to end in anarchy. I survey the scene with a different eye, and draw a different augury from it. In a House of Representatives of a great mass of good sense, Mr. Randolph's popular eloquence gave him such advantages as to place him unrivalled as the leader of the House; and, although not conciliatory to those ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... resembles that which a King hath over his subjects. The same St. Basil, in his Homily de St. Mamme Martyre has, concerning David, who was taken from following the ewes great with young ones to feed Israel. The Romans, the worthiest and greatest nation in the world, sprang from shepherds. The augury of the twelve vultures plac't a scepter in Romulus's hand, which held a crook ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... of which the translator might not be capable"—capable de tout, as said Voltaire of Habbakuk and another agnostic Frenchman of the Prophet Zerubbabel. This was indeed high praise considering the Saturday's sympathy with and affection for the dead level, for the average man; but as an augury of ill it was a brutum fulmen. No. iv. (August 30, '87) was, strange to say, in tone almost civil and ended ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... audience. She appeared in the same part for a succession of nights, and her success became more strongly assured as she more and more mastered the difficulties of her work. To perform such a great lyric character at the age of fifteen, with even a fair share of ability, was a glowing augury. ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... person who received me in Russia was a Frenchman, who had formerly been a clerk in my father's bureaux; he talked to me of him with tears in his eyes, and that name thus pronounced appeared to me of happy augury. In fact, in that Russian empire, so falsely termed barbarous, I have experienced none but noble and delightful impressions: may my gratitude draw down additional blessings on this people and their sovereign! I entered ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... not budge from here, till Paris is taken," she said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur of Montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt this important and welcome addition to their number ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... contains, but what I think in the main just; and I can even sympathize in his disgust at the verbiage of Mackintosh, though his asperity towards it went not only beyond what was judicious, but beyond what was even fair. One thing, which I thought, at the time, of good augury, was the very favourable reception he gave to Tocqueville's Democracy in America. It is true, he said and thought much more about what Tocqueville said in favour of democracy, than about what he said of its disadvantages. Still, his high appreciation of a book which was ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... cases are in principle identical with those of the second class, where the inquirer himself cooperated, or was not entirely passive; cases such as those which the Jews called Bath-col, or daughter of a voice, (the echo [1] augury,) viz., where a man, perplexed in judgment and sighing for some determining counsel, suddenly heard from a stranger in some unlooked-for quarter words not meant for himself, but clamorously applying to the difficulty besetting him. In these instances, the mystical word, that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... had looked forward eagerly to the first encounter with their kind, but this vision floating by on the treacherous ice, of men who rather dared the current and the crash of contending floes than land where they were, seemed of evil augury. The little incident left a curiously ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... that they scintillated a great deal. He did not think it was a sign of rain, as the peasants believe. He had observed, on the contrary, that nine times in ten the scintillation of stars was an augury ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Fatherland! I make it a rule never to converse on painful subjects. You tell me you have tried to atone; then believe that the atonement is made, and that Gloria is the sign of its acceptance, and—happy augury!—here she comes." ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... little force aside into an open space, and so made a way for the struggling crowd to sweep past us. We noted, as the stream of terror-stricken men flowed by, that their officers were not with them; from which Tizoc drew the hopeful augury that the officers, being all trained soldiers, had drawn together into a rear-guard that sought to cover this wild retreat. And presently we found that Tizoc was right in his inference, for soon the crowd began very perceptibly to grow thinner, and the sound of loud cries and ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... Adams was, beyond all dispute, the foremost New Englander. Ten States voted in the election, casting sixty-nine electoral ballots. Washington received the whole sixty-nine; and our government began with the happy augury of an unanimous choice for its head. For Vice-President, John Adams received thirty-four votes; John Jay nine; R.H. Harrison six; John Rutledge six; John Hancock four; ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... was the best remedy in the world for shyness; and Hilary led the way to the drawing-room with recovered equanimity. She had only had time for a quick hand-shake with the other visitor, but the glance which had been exchanged between them was delightful in its memory of past meetings—its augury of good ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... misquotes the oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen prophet. He spake no word whatever about dominion; all he dared conjecture for his city was safety. Even that is put in a highly hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the material city, or to the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Later an augury was to be taken, and all gathered closely on a wide pebbly beach. First a long piece of root, which is called the "mother of tuba," was beaten vigorously by a number of men. Then one of the principal actors stepped forward and began to make fire in the old-fashioned way, i.e., by pulling with ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... physical worlds. Thus a pair of scales would denote Divine Justice in the spiritual sense, judgment in the intellectual sense, and obligation in the material sense. If the scales were evenly balanced the augury would be good. But if weighed down on one side it is Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, "Thou art weighed and found wanting"; it shows a corrupt judgment, a wrong conclusion, an unbalanced mind, failure in one's obligations, injustice, etc. And if a sword should lie across ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... an official college of augurs, the members of which were originally three patricians. About 300 B.C. the number of patrician augurs was increased by one, and five plebeian augurs were added. Later the number was again increased to fifteen. The object of augury was not so much to foretell the future as to indicate what line of action should be followed, in any given circumstances, by the nation. The augurs were consulted on all matters of importance, and the position of augur was thus ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... pretty and love-sick niece, holding a long conference with one of these old sibyls behind a large tree in the avenue, and often looking round to see that she was not observed. I make no doubt that she was endeavouring to get some favourable augury about the result of her love-quarrel with young Ready-Money, as oracles have always been more consulted on love affairs than upon any thing else. I fear, however, that in this instance the response was not so favourable as usual; for I perceived ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... violent gales in the Channel. In the excited state of public feeling, events in themselves ordinary assumed a preternatural significance. The friends of Queen Catherine, to whom the meeting between the kings was of so disastrous augury, and the nation generally, which an accident to Henry at such a time would have plunged into a chaos of confusion, alike watched the storm with anxious agitation; on the king's return to London, Te Deums were offered in the churches, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... to me a peculiar pleasure to speak to-day under such distinguished auspices as yours, Prince Fouad,[4] before this National University, and it is of good augury for the great cause of higher education in Egypt that it should have enlisted the special interest of so distinguished and eminent a man. The Arabic-speaking world produced the great University of Cordova, which flourished a thousand years ago, and ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... than to words, regarded the interview as a contrivance to reconcile Francis and the emperor through the intervention of the pope, as a preliminary for a packed council, and for a holy war against the Lutherans,[168]—a combination of ominous augury to Christendom, from the consequences or which, if Germany was to be the first sufferer, England would ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... wish, Sir," rejoined Charles in a stern tone and with a freezing look, that seemed of ill augury to the extortioner—"It is my intention to terminate the scene. Stand forth, Clement Lanyere and let me hear what you have to declare in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... vegetables are but of trivial importance from the decorative and culinary point of view; the only rule that should guide you in your selection is the symbolical meaning, the virtues and vices ascribed to plants. Now, I am sorry to observe that your favourites are for the most part of evil augury." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... end of March, for the arrival of the double snipe in the Campagna of Rome, a great flight appeared on the 3rd of April, and the day after heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients was a good deal founded upon the observation of the instincts of birds. There are many superstitions of the vulgar owing to the same source. For anglers, in spring, it is always unlucky to see single magpies,—but two may always ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... drawing his sword he began to demolish and cut away the brambles at the mouth of the cave, at the noise of which a vast multitude of crows and choughs flew out of it so thick and so fast that they knocked Don Quixote down; and if he had been as much of a believer in augury as he was a Catholic Christian he would have taken it as a bad omen and declined to bury himself in such a place. He got up, however, and as there came no more crows, or night-birds like the bats that flew out at the same time with the crows, the cousin and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to acquire. At any rate the example set by the governing body of the new republic attending Mass in a Roman Catholic edifice, offering up their devout orisons in the language, service and worship of Rome, would be a memorable one, an augury of the new spirit of religious freedom which later would be breathed into the Constitution of these same States by these ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... for luck in passing, as every Italian woman will to this day if she finds herself close to a hunchback in the street, and this act is rarely resented. Pina thought it a piece of unexampled good-fortune and of the best possible augury that the door should have been opened by a 'bringer-of-fortune,' and the deformed servant smiled gently at her touch, quite understanding. As he led the way in, after shutting the outer door, Pina saw that nature had meant him ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... twentieth of February, dawned brightly—so brightly indeed that I began to draw from the smiling appearance of the heavens a good augury for the luck of Henri Derblay. It was about eight when I set out. The conscription was to begin at nine, but already the one straggling, narrow street which bisects the old bathing-town was filled with country-people hastening in groups or singly toward ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... imitations of the practices of men, make use of the spittle. When playing at games of chance, such as odds or evens, something or nothing, etc., before the player ventures his guess he consults an augury, of a sort, by spitting on the back of his hand, and striking the spittle with his mid-finger, watching the direction in which the superfluous spittle flies, from him or to him, to right or left, and therefrom, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... with the screech owl referring to death, it is interesting to note that among the Nahuas the owl is considered of unlucky augury and is usually found in the "House of Death" and "of Drought", as contrasted with the turkey, considered as a bird of good fortune, and found in ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... the Romans had begun to build houses for their gods, after being for 170 years, we are told, without any such arrangement. The Roman "templum" was not originally a building, but a space marked off, according to the rules of augury, for the observation of signs. A part of the sky was also marked off for such "observation" and "contemplation." On such a holy site, on the Capitoline hill, there was founded by the earlier Tarquin the temple of Jupiter which always continued to be the principal site of Roman religion. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... earn the flaying! The punishment shall be no more savage than the deed that invites it! But enough of that. If I go to Tanis and find her the spoil of the fan-bearer, thine augury will hold, I return not to Memphis. . . . If she was lost in ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... a handsome monument of marble, which is faced on all sides with memorial tablets. This boulder was carried to its present position by the goddess herself, the monument and bridges were built to detain it where it lay, and the temple afterwards erected to commemorate an event of such happy augury for ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... garden, his only resource against tears; and Sophy came in very still, very pale, and incapable of uttering a word or shedding a tear. Albinia was much concerned, for she could not bear to have sent him away without a more real adieu, and word of blessing and good augury; it made her feel herself truly unforgiving, and perhaps turned her heart back to him more fully and fondly than any exchange of sentiment would have done. But she had not much time to dwell on this omission, for poor Mrs. Meadows missed him sorely, and after two days' constant fretting ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with so gloomy and awful a frown, now seemed lighted up with a serene, benignant smile, and the green waving undulations of the plain were gladdened with the rich sunshine. Wet, ill, and wearied as I was, my spirit grew lighter at the view, and I drew from it an augury of good for ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... words imprint a terror on my mind. What if this death, which is for him designed, Had been your doom, (far be that augury!) And you, not Aureng-Zebe, condemned to die? Weigh well the various turns of human fate, And seek, by mercy, to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... easier than I dreamed. These people Meet me half-way. Jason, didst thou take note How these Samaritans of Sichem said They were not Jews? that they were Medes and Persians, They were Sidonians, anything but Jews? 'T is of good augury. The rest will follow Till the whole land ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... help smiling at the Frenchman's philosophy, which, assuming as a good augury, he gayly said, "So, then, you'll not make ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Elated by this augury of further victory, the republicans prepared for the decisive blow. Wuermser, though checked on August 3rd, had been so far reinforced from Mantua as still to indulge hopes of driving the French from Castiglione and cutting his way through to rescue Quosdanovich. He was, indeed, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... not uncordial, though I was for representing the reserved young man. I obtained some praise for my style and bearing among his acquaintances. To one lady passing an encomium on me, he said, 'Oh, some foreign princess has been training him,' which seemed to me of good augury. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his sovereign, so your own may participate of the better fate which attends his son. The relation which you have by alliance to the noble family of your lady, serves to confirm to you both this happy augury. For what can deserve a greater place in the English chronicle, than the loyalty and courage, the actions and death, of the general of an army, fighting for his prince and country? The honour and gallantry of the Earl of Lindsey is so illustrious a subject, that it is fit to adorn ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... uncomfortable feeling, amounting almost to an augury of ill, to hear Uncle Bernard talking of Margot Blount with such unusual interest. The first definite wish which he had expressed was in connection with her name; his last remarks virtually sanctioned with his approval any aspirations which Victor might ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the pioneer, the primitive. And to emphasize and give the suggestion point, here was an example of the finest feminine beauty left to this degenerating world, beauty such as the Greeks knew, large-limbed, deep-bosomed, clear-eyed, product of a vigorous past, full of splendid augury ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... for dinner, Liddy rapped at the door. She was hardly herself yet, but privately I think she was worrying about the broken mirror and its augury, more than anything else. When she came in she was holding something in her hand, and she laid it ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and moved, Achilles, or a god. Now Mesthles, Glaucus, Medon, he inspires, Now Phorcys, Chromius, and Hippothous fires; The great Thersilochus like fury found, Asteropaeus kindled at the sound, And Ennomus, in augury renown'd. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... conducted into the purple tent of Queen Dolores of Philistia. It was quite dark there, and Jurgen went in alone, and wondering what would happen next: but this scented darkness he found of excellent augury, if only because it prevented his ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... nations now appearing there will find it far easier to appear there a second time, while no nation can imagine its just pride will be lessened by following the example now presented. This triumph of the principle of international arbitration is a subject of warm congratulation and offers a happy augury for the peace ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the sick-room. For I should tell you that the one thing that kept me up was the entire calm grave composure that John preserved throughout, and which gave him the entire command. He never showed any consternation or dismay, nor uttered an augury, but he went quietly and vigilantly on, in a manner that all along gave me a strange sense of confidence and trust, that all that could be done was being done, and the issue was in higher hands. He would not let anyone really help him but Sister ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the light of day and in the sight of his fellow-citizens; he was still more eminent in private and at home. What a wealth of conversation! What weighty maxims! What a wide acquaintance with ancient history! What an accurate knowledge of the science of augury! For a Roman, too, he had a great tincture of letters. He had a tenacious memory for military history of every sort, whether of Roman or foreign wars. And I used at that time to enjoy his conversation with a passionate eagerness, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to vote, but he was old enough to fight, and the account he had given of himself, with the inherited rifle smoking, gave augury of fighting effectiveness. So sanguinary had been this fight, and so dangerously had it focused upon the warring clans the attention of the outside world, that after its indecisive termination, they made the compact of the present truce. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... she observed his approach, she arose, and came to meet him. Edward attempted to say something within the verge of ordinary compliment and conversation, but found himself unequal to the task. Flora seemed at first equally embarrassed, but recovered herself more speedily, and (an unfavourable augury for Waverley's suit) was the first to enter upon the subject of their last interview, 'It is too important, in every point of view, Mr. Waverley, to permit me to leave you in doubt on ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... She broke one, drinking its water, which was mildewy, and eating the last particle of the meat. A little later she found a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day was out, she found the outrigger. Every find was an augury. The pearl was a talisman. Late in the afternoon she saw a wooden box floating low in the water. When she dragged it out on the beach its contents rattled, and inside she found ten tins of salmon. She opened one by hammering it on the canoe. When a leak was started, she drained the tin. After ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... right hand of the hardy Brigadier; for that was Lord Howe's military rank. Pringle and Roche served under him, too, and there was a warm bond growing up betwixt officers and men, and a feeling of enthusiasm which seemed to them like an augury ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... at work who dared insult the sacred place—some god greater than Diana warred against her, degrading her home. This was the augury the priestess drew, and wondered greatly at the sign. It was a revelation to her—a spark of virgin light, dim as the faintest dawn. But it shook her faith, and she spread out her hands as one wandering in ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Aubrey once saying," added Hans, "that when a bride talked ever of herself, and nothing of her bridegroom, it was a very ill augury of the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... singularly applicable to their case than that which they paid heed to. "The great stars that globed themselves in Heaven," were shining clear and bright in the vast arch above. Resplendent amidst the throng rose the Pleiades, the mythological seven hailed by the Greeks as an augury of safe navigation. And the Dyaks—one of the few remaining savage races of the world—share the superstition of the people who fashioned all the arts and most of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... a vile preface: it contained more forebodings. But I was so eager for an explanation that I had scarcely time for augury. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... noticed that Parrish was already speaking of Atlantis as if it was in the past. They drew a hopeful augury from that. And then there was nothing to do but resign themselves to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... ceaselessly present dangers superior to our powers. For many years have I believed that some great good, or some greater evil, would accompany the first visit of this boy to the land. For the first time, his foot now stands on solid earth. I await the fulfilment of the augury!" ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... of mortal diseases, so widely spread and deeply seated that at present there is no hope of regeneration. The best hope is that its decay may provide the soil in which seed may be sown of a far-distant growth of happier augury. Such dismal forebodings are no novelty. Every age produces its prophecies of coming woes. Nothing would be easier than to make out a catena of testimonies from great men at every stage of the world's history, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dictate; as we are sure that he who has not learned to obey when young will never, when of age, know how to govern either himself or others: so a singular conduct in all the children of dust towards the Father of Spirits justifies a still more gloomy augury; inasmuch as the difference between the knowledge of man and the ignorance of a child, absolutely vanishes, in comparison with that interval which must ever subsist between the knowledge of the Eternal and the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... only the fore-runner of mischief to follow; and from a cloudy morning she foretold a bad day. But Zoza, meanwhile, began to enchant all around her with the sweetness of her words, relating her sorrows from first to last, and beginning with her natural melancholy, the unhappy augury of all she had to suffer. Then she went on to tell of the old woman's curse, her painful wanderings, her arrival at the fountain, her bitter weeping, and the treacherous sleep which had been the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Phoenicians. What is known for certain is that long centuries before the Greek science was heard of, there were scientists in Babylonia. During the Sumerian period "the forms and relations of geometry", says Professor Goodspeed, "were employed for purposes of augury. The heavens were mapped out, and the courses of the heavenly bodies traced to determine the bearing of their movements upon ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... but Ralph Mainwaring was far more chagrined and annoyed than he would have acknowledged. Mr. Thornton's words rang in his ears till they seemed an augury of defeat, and, though outwardly as dogged and defiant as ever, he was unable to banish them, or to throw off the strange sense of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... years and the likelihood that the poet was forced into marrying her by her friends were not circumstances of happy augury. Although it is dangerous to read into Shakespeare's dramatic utterances allusions to his personal experience, the emphasis with which he insists that a woman should take in marriage 'an elder than herself,' {25a} and ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... this plan in the light of conscience, we see in it an augury for the removal of the deadly evils which lie at the heart of our civilisation, it seems to me we are bound to do our utmost to help it forward. 'But,' you say, 'if we conscientiously disapprove of it?' Then we are in duty bound to ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... well to die as live, Fulvia awaiteth nothing but her death. Yet had my father known the course of change, Or seen our loss by lucky augury, This tyrant nor his followers had liv'd To 'joy the ruin of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... the suddenness of Benito's announcement and its menacing augury, Inez sought her father and Adrian. The latter acted instantly. "Do not tell your wife," he said to Windham. "There may be nothing amiss. And if there should be, she will find no profit in knowing. Tell her you ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... awaiting the pleasure of the gods by some striking sign. The night passed away, and as the day was dawning Remus saw six vultures; but at sunrise, when these tidings were brought to Romulus, twelve vultures flew by him. Each claimed the augury in his own favor; but the shepherds decided for Romulus, and Remus was ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... augury of permanent quiet. Brackenridge, who was a keen observer of men, says of the temper of the western population at this period: "I had seen the spirit which prevailed at the Stamp Act, and at the commencement of the revolution from the government of Great Britain, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... year 1820, much discussion having passed to and fro, serious doubts had arisen in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, good ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... hundred vessels of silver, and six hundred marks of silver in dishes and trenchers and other things. When all this was done they took their departure and went out of Valencia, and the Cid rode out a long league with them. He looked at the birds, and the augury was bad, and he thought that these marriages would not be without some evil. And his heart smote him, and he began to think on what Doa Ximena had said, and to fear lest evil should befall him from these sons-in-law, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... the violent wind-storms, which destroy the houses and crops, and as one, who, in his own history, was driven from his kingdom and lost his all, was not considered a deity of invariably good augury. His day and sign, ce acatl, One Reed, was of bad omen. A person born on it would not succeed in life.[1] His plans and possessions would be lost, blown away, as it were, by the wind, and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... grasping the hand which had been offered to him, "are a happy augury. When we meet again, I shall be able to prove the coming of the things of which ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the birth of Alexander Severus, a chicken, belonging to the father of the newly-born, laid a red egg—augury of the imperial purple to ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... a good one, i. 295. the steps taken to bring one about always an augury of what it is likely to be, v. 251. a ground of peace never laid until it is as good as concluded, v. 260. an arrangement of peace in its nature a permanent settlement, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... found this is not uncommon. The phrenologist made all sorts of predictions of what I should be and do, which proved about as near the truth as those recorded in Miss Edith Thomas's charming little poem, "Augury," which some of us were reading ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hut, and wait until I send for you!" answered Umbulazi, making a grimace from which Denis drew no favourable augury. He ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... chief gods worshiped by the Romans were Jupiter, god of the sky; his wife, Juno, the goddess of maternity; Minerva, the goddess of wisdom; Apollo, the god of augury and the arts; Diana, the goddess of the chase and archery; Mars, the god of war; Bellona, the goddess of war; Vesta, patron of the Roman state and of the national hearthstone; Ceres, the goddess of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... action might be the turning-point in the first stage of the great Somme battle. We strained our eyes into the darkness studying, as a mariner studies the sky, the signs with which we had grown familiar as indicative of results. There was a good augury in the comparatively slight German shell fire in response, though we were reminded that it might at any minute develop with ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... as for injustice stubbornly upheld they had given you hatred. The analogy with Ireland is complete so far as the cards have been played. The same human elements are there, the same pride, the same anger, the same willingness to forget anger. Why should the augury fail? ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... of his companions were suddenly saddened. In the midst of their preparations, Cromwell arrested several noted Royalists in London: it was obvious that he had discovered 'the design.' But that dark cloud had its silver lining; it was even converted into an augury of success. The conspirators at Cologne were 'cheered by letters' from their colleagues in England, assuring them 'that none of their particular friends at the intended sea-ports ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... sore that may yet drain her life-blood; still leaves in recognized dominion, over fair regions of great future import, a system whose hopelessness of political and social improvement the lapse of time renders continually more certain,—an evil augury for the future, if a turning tide shall find it unchanged, an outpost of barbarism ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... herself slowly on one elbow, as if waking from a drugged sleep. She stretches out her hand for the sacred sticks. She drops them with a quick turn of the wrist, gathers them up and drops them again, seeking for an augury. She throws up the arm with the medicine stick and ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... combine a candour so absolute with so much of dignity—who could treat their personal history so impartially as a means of conveying lessons of general truth—or who, while chronicling such small things, could remain so great. The Prelude is a book of good augury for human nature. We feel in reading it as if the stock of mankind were sound. The soul seems going on from strength to strength by the mere development of her inborn power. And the scene with which the poem at once ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... private action which has every calculable chance of causing widespread injury and misery, can be called moral because he comes home to dine with his wife and children and cherishes the happiness of his own hearth, the augury is not good for the use of high ethical and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... in this archipelago. At the end of this barbarous ceremony, which was a blot in the memoirs of so peaceable a people, a king-fisher alighted in the foliage. "It is Atoua!" cried Otoo, delighted at the happy augury. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... on the hills in their rear, so that their situation, during this day and night, appeared nearly desperate. In the night Xenophon had a dream—the first which he has told us since his dream on the terrific night after the seizure of the generals—but on this occasion, of augury[62] more unequivocally good. He dreamt that he was bound in chains, but that his chains on a sudden dropt off spontaneously; on the faith of which, he told Cheirisophus at daybreak that he had good hopes ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Titaresian Mopsus, whom above all men the son of Leto taught the augury of birds; and Eurydamas the son of Ctimenus; he dwelt at Dolopian Ctimene ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... desperation of my position, my mind turned to the animal men I had encountered. I tried to find some hope in what I remembered of them. In turn I recalled each one I had seen, and tried to draw some augury ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... clasped, loving each other, if possible, better than ever. He now and then repeated some loving greeting which she was to bear home; and she tried to restrain her tears, at the separation she was forced to rejoice in, a parting which gave no augury of meeting again, the renewal of an exile from which there was no present hope of return. Harry looked at Dr. Bathurst to intimate it was time to be gone. The clergyman came close to the brother and sister, and instead of speaking his ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We began this review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt as the typical figure. It is a happy augury that it closes with Henry Ford in the foreground. Vanderbilt, valuable as were many of his achievements, represented that spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part of the fifty years following the war. He was always seeking his own advantage, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... other. And so it chanced that, in striking the shackles from the insane, Pinel and his confreres struck a blow also, unwittingly, at time-honored philosophical traditions. The liberation of the insane from their dungeons was an augury of the liberation of psychology from the musty recesses of metaphysics. Hitherto psychology, in so far as it existed at all, was but the subjective study of individual minds; in future it must become objective as well, taking into account also the relations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... was in the meanwhile guided to the water-side by the Pensioner, who showed him considerable respect; a circumstance which, to persons in his situation, may be considered as an augury of no small consequence. He ushered him into one of the wherries which lay ready to attend the Queen's barge, which was already proceeding; up the river, with the advantage of that flood-tide of which, in the course of their descent, Blount ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... fleet which consisted of the 'Barke Sunneshine, of London, fifty tunnes, and the Moonshine, of Dartmouth, thirty-five tunnes, the ship Mermayd, of a hundred and twenty tunnes, and a pinesse of tenne tunnes named the North Starre.'[5] But in spite of this name of good augury the little pinnace never came home again, and one can only admire with awe the daring that ventured to sail a boat of ten tons across the boisterous Atlantic into the unknown Arctic Seas. Traces of Davis's wanderings along the coasts of North America ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... now in recrimination; a few sharp questions enabled her to judge how far the weakness of affection had played the traitor with the old woman, whom she left to settle matters with her own conscience. She saw Garthmund, and told him that, in consequence of the unsatisfactory augury of the last sacrifice, she had decided to postpone the marriage. Nor did she appear to notice the indifference with which the chief, who could not pretend that he ardently loved a bride who was practically a stranger to ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... Marquis of Lansdowne argued on this, that they assented to the principles of the bill; and that, therefore, no further delay should take place in its progress. Lord Brougham said that he drew no happy augury of the fate of the bill from the very significant speech of the Duke of Wellington. He would not say any sinister motive lurked in his proposition for delay; but if he was averse to the present measure, as he appeared to be, why did he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The augury was not good. As I read the signs, Delia Floyd, when she passed from maidenhood to wifehood, departed from the path that led to happiness in this world. And I said to myself as I pondered her future—"May the disappointments and sorrows that are almost sure to come, turn her feet aside ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur |
