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More "Enviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of time. You must, therefore, relinquish it, as we think that you would then enter with more interest into your present life. You will understand, my child, that I am now speaking entirely in your interest. You are now fifteen. You are safely launched in an enviable career. A future opens before you, and you can make of yourself ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... perception that was one of her leading gifts. From this artificial atmosphere of constraint, it was inevitable that she should welcome hours of escape into her mother's unpretending domestic circle; and already at ten years old she had pronounced the lot of a scullery-maid enviable, compared to that of an ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the travelers." Its host was William Cook, from whom the character of Ben Pump, in The Pioneers, was drawn, a man of singular humors, great heartiness of character, and perfect integrity. He had been the steward of an English East-Indianman, and enjoyed an enviable reputation in the village for his skill in mixing punch and flip. On holidays, a stranger would have been apt to mistake him for one of the magnates of the land, as he invariably appeared in a drab coat of the style of 1776 with buttons ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Venice, and other Italian cities, there were, in the seventeenth century, many women who made enviable reputations as artists, some of whom were also known for their literary and musical attainments. Anna Maria Ardoina, of Messina, made her studies in Rome. She was gifted as a poet and artist, and so excelled in music that she had the distinguished ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses. She wore on her shoulders - or rather on her back and not her shoulders, which it scarcely passed - a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, be supposed that I gained the enviable situation of Poor Jack until I had been some time on the beach. There are competitors for every place, even the most humble; and there was no want of competitors for this office among the many idle boys who frequented the beach. When I first plied there, I was often pushed ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Billy couldn't leave the booze alone, and so the best that he got was an occasional five spot for appearing in preliminary bouts with third- and fourth-rate heavies and has-beens; but during the three years that he had hung about Hilmore's he had acquired an enviable knowledge of the manly ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there is much conjecture. That has not been determined, as the bear has never been placed on a scale. Good judges estimate it at not far from twelve hundred pounds. The bear's appearance justifies that conclusion. Monarch enjoys the enviable distinction of being the largest captive bear in the world.—N. Y. Tribune, March ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... was now very much the reverse of an enviable one; as, being compelled for safety's sake to run dead before it, we were exactly in the line of fire between the two ships, which continued to bang away at each other from time to time, quite regardless of the possible ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... My life, alas! is what thou seest! O enviable fate! to be Strong, beautiful, and armed like thee With lyre and sword, with song and steel; A hand to smite, a heart to feel! Thy heart, thy hand, thy lyre, thy sword, Thou givest all unto thy Lord, While I, so mean and abject grown, Am ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... track. Do you know the camel's way? He is an unfriendly, graceless beast, but he marches to within an hour of his death. He drops and dies with the load upon his back. It seemed to me, even in those days, the right and enviable way to finish. You can imagine how I must envy them that advantage of theirs ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... not Indians also a common nationhood which, despite all racial and religious differences, could be traced back across centuries of internal strife and foreign domination to a period, remote indeed but none the less enviable, when they had been their own masters? Had not the British themselves removed one of the greatest barriers to India's national unity—the multiplicity of her vernaculars—by giving English to the Western-educated classes as a common language, without which, indeed, Indian Nationalism ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... order to keep up her courage: "Heaven is at the end, but how long the end is in coming!" There was ever the idea that suffering is the test, that it is necessary to suffer upon earth if one would triumph elsewhere, that suffering is indispensable, enviable, and blessed. But is this not blasphemous, O Lord? Hast Thou not created youth and joy? Is it Thy wish that Thy creatures should enjoy neither the sun, nor the smiling Nature which Thou hast created, nor the human affections with which Thou hast ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... dejeuner this morning. He is a Dutchman (Hollandais sounds better) by birth, but he lives in Paris. As he is the greatest authority on art there, the Emperor has made him Count and Director of the Galerie du Louvre. He is very handsome, tall, and commanding, and has, besides other enviable qualities, the reputation of being the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... delights," those "sublime ecstasies," those "divine transports"—all the beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were as yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain such sweet ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for love or the world well lost' is a saying I heartily agree to. La belle Helene is my favorite heroine, and I regard Paris as the most enviable ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... Peterborough Cathedral is to me the most delightful; so quiet it is, so solemnly and nobly cheerful, so verdant, so sweetly shadowed, and so presided over by the stately minster, and surrounded by ancient and comely habitations of Christian men. The most enchanting place, the most enviable as a residence in all this world, seemed to me that of the Bishop's secretary, standing in the rear of the cathedral, and bordering on the churchyard; so that you pass through hallowed precincts in order to come at it, and find it a Paradise, the holier ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bishop might license and the governor recommend, the parish would not present. It was a leisurely, good-natured, careless, but spirited people, indifferent to commerce, content to harvest their fields and rule their slaves, and let the world go by. A more enviable existence than theirs it would be hard to imagine. All their financial transactions were done in tobacco, even to the clergyman's stipend and the judge's fee. No enemy menaced them; politics were rather an amusement than a serious duty; yet in these fertile regions were made ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... came to an end so promptly after the departure of Evatt that restoration of good feeling was only obtained in the parting kiss. For the first time in her life, Janice's head would keep on thinking after it was resting on its pillow, and many a time that enviable repository was called upon to dry her tears and cool her burning cheeks. Never, it seemed to her, had man or woman borne so great a ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... think, regret that being so near we were not among the fortunate ones who saw that little flat shape skim landward out of the blue; surely they have an enviable memory; and then we fell talking and disputing about what that swift arrival may signify. It starts ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... These eyes were more than usually brilliant from his long ride in the keen air, and the yellow locks upon the smooth white brow were several noticeable inches above the heads of those around him. As he walked down the crowded rooms, in enviable proximity to the blushing dress, his handsome face and half careless, half military air drew the attention of more than one bright ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... whom? A stray princess, or a peasant. He vaguely wondered, as he lit a cigar and strolled up and down on the shore, meditating, with a puzzled, almost annoyed expression on his handsome features. He was not accustomed to slights of any kind, however trifling; his position being commanding and enviable enough to attract flattery and friendship from most people. He was the only son of a baronet as renowned for eccentricity as for wealth. He had been the spoilt darling of his mother; and now, both his parents ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... only of late that I found out my real name. I'll tell you all about it some time, and then you'll understand better. As to anybody feeling remorse about my life, that's all nonsense. I consider my life rather an enviable one thus far." ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... peace and neutrality for the whole twentieth century, Sweden has achieved an enviable standard of living under a mixed system of high-tech capitalism and extensive welfare benefits. It has a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was the new Prometheus who planned it; the more aspiring Titan, who would bring down in his New Organum a new and more radiant gift; it was the Benefactor and Foreseer, who would advance the rude kind to new and more enviable approximations to the celestial summits. He knew there would come a time, in the inevitable advancements of that new era of scientific 'prudence' and forethought which it was given to him to initiate, when all this sober ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... it without ample cause that he was restless and disturbed; within the last three days he had by his own instability of purpose, and vacillating tastes and temper brought himself down from as enviable a position as well can be imagined, to one as insecure, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... disguise of Greek warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had attained, through the genius of Calprenede and Scuderi, an enviable immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have found in that endless desert of phraseology at once ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... considered (to use his expression) as "actilly the class-leaders in knowledge among all the Americans," and boasted that they have not only "gone ahead of all others," but had lately arrived at that most enviable NE PLUS ULTRA point, "goin' ahead of themselves." In short, he entertained no doubt that Slickville was the finest place in the greatest nation in the world, and the Slick family the wisest family ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... yet obtain the same results . . . with eggs at the price they are! If some producing genius had not conceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song with a dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had not created the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of the lighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For, to dance at the end of her little ditty, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... "Characteristics of Yankee Humour." She always had the rare gift of telling a story capitally, with ease, brevity, and dramatic effect, certain of the point or climax. I cannot think of any other woman of this country who has caused so much hearty laughter by this enviable gift. She can compress a word-picture or character-sketch into a few lines, as when she said of the early Yankee: "No matter how large a man he was, he had a look of shrinking and collapse about him. It looked as ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... tale, dear Hugh, without any association of its incidents with the old respectable chronicles of the Historians is what I should wish you could always do. That is the happy manner with Romance; that is the enviable aptness of the child. But when (by the favour of God) you grow older and more reflective, seeking perhaps for more in these pages than they meant to give, you may wonder that the streets, the lanes, the tenements herein set ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the Church was at once seized by no less a personage than Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, the same who a few months before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable by his attacks on Darwin and the evolutionary theory. His first onslaught was made in a charge to his clergy. This he followed up with an article in the Quarterly Review, very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to Darwin. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... on a railroad train is not an enviable one. There is often a wide difference between the company's regulations, and the passenger's opinion of what articles, and what amount of them, properly come under the denomination of baggage; and this frequently subjects the unlucky official ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... votes. You see my faith in Democrats is based on sound philosophy. In the next Congress, the Democratic party will gain thirty-four new members, hence the Republicans have had their last chance to do justice to woman. It will be no enviable record for the Fortieth Congress that in the darkest days of the republic it placed our free institutions in the care and keeping of every type of manhood, ignoring womanhood, all the elevating and purifying influences of the most virtuous ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... this Old England! "Of all the enviable things England has," he writes, "I envy it most its people.... Why should this little island enjoy in almost every neighborhood more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds, than we can collect in ranging one hundred leagues of our vast forests?" What ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... disappeared a Calpurina, a Lepida; women young, rich, handsome, impure, and as such dangerous to Agrippina's peace of mind. The legality of her crimes was so absolute that the mere ownership of an enviable object was a cause for death. A senator had a villa which pleased her; he was invited to die. Another had a pair of those odorous murrhine vases, which Pompey had found in Armenia, and which on their first appearance set Rome wild; he, too, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the sermon which was preached by a new curate. After the service he went into the vestry, and had a long conversation with the preacher, the result of which was that he told him that a curacy was not a very enviable position, and that he would do much better to go to London, and write for The Times at a salary of L1,000 a year. It is needless to add that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... knowledge. Though he did not enjoy the advantages of a collegiate education, his love of study and a habit of careful thought and close criticism rendered him a man of sound judgment and comprehensive views. He possessed an irreproachable moral character and an enviable reputation, being generally esteemed for integrity, thrift, and benevolence. By dint of energy and application he early acquired a competence, though his habits of study were still maintained. He filled various civil and military offices with credit, and the avenues ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... The Hopper—begins to mistrust himself. For the greater part of his life, when not in durance vile, The Hopper had been in hiding, and the state or condition of being a fugitive, hunted by keen-eyed agents of justice, is not, from all accounts, an enviable one. His latest experience of involuntary servitude had been under the auspices of the State of Oregon, for a trifling indiscretion in the way of safe-blowing. Having served his sentence, he skillfully effaced himself by a year's siesta on a pine-apple plantation in Hawaii. The island climate ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the clicking shears—a flush which was enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... represented this idea of education at its best, too much credit can not be given. Cravath at Fisk, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, and Packard and Giles at Spelman, are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving. These people had no enviable task. They were ostracized and persecuted, and some of their co-workers even killed. It is true that their idea of education founded on the New England college was not very elastic; but their theory was that the young men and women whom they taught, before they were Negroes, were ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... another man in her eye,—the phrase was Lady Earlscourt's and it served very well to express her meaning,—she had made some careful inquiries on the subject of the girl's male visitors, and she had, of course, found out that no other man occupied that enviable position; no social oculist would be required to remove the element which, in Lady Earlscourt's estimation, caused Phyllis' vision to ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... neither under-nor over-rated them. She had smiled back at her reflection in her mirror, showing two rows of little milk-white teeth, and being well enough satisfied with being a charming young person with a secure complexion and enviable self-poise. She understood herself, and attained perfection in the art of understanding others. Her rather sharp experience had not allowed her to look in the glass in guileless ignorance of what she saw there, and perhaps this made her ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... early bird, with which its path was strewn), with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery; so that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have inherited many objects of importance. There was no enviable bric-a-brac, with its provoking legend of cheapness, in the room in which I had seen her. Such a fact as that suggested bareness, but nonetheless it worked happily into the sentimental interest I had always taken in the early movements of my countrymen as visitors to Europe. When Americans ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the two, reflected, as she had often done before, that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's faded ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thus wretched, mine was not enviable; one solitary meal a day was all I allowed myself and those who remained with me; and I must do them the justice to say, that they submitted to these privations without a murmur, being aware that it was only ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable. I know of but one condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries. In the outset, if he has really made a discovery, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... proceeded to an hotel known to him, a mile away, for supplementary provisions, and came back with a cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It was all very Bohemian and dishevelled and delightful, very supposedly droll and enviable to outsiders; and Miriam told anecdotes and gave imitations of the people she would have met if she had gone out, so that no one had a sense of loss—the two occasions were fantastically united. Mrs. Rooth drank champagne for consolation, though the consolation was ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... fashion peculiar to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, synthetical power, that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance, and retains them in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... town every day to his office. He is perfectly contented, absolutely happy. He has made more money than he will ever need or spend, and he will leave his children a considerable fortune. He is kind, respectable, upright; he is considered a thoroughly enviable man, and indeed, if prosperity and contentment are the sign and seal of God's approbation, such a man is the highest work of God, and has every reason to be an optimist. He would think my questionings morbid and my desires ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the seclusion of it, which is to some people very enticing. In the enjoyment of real property, others must partly share. The groom has some enjoyment of the stud, and the gardener of the garden; but the money is, or seems, shut up; it is wholly enviable. No one else can have part in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Leonora: and as she has every possible cause to be so, it is but reasonable and charitable to suppose that she is: but I should never guess it by her manner. She speaks of her friendship sometimes in the most romantic style, but often makes observations upon the enviable coolness and imperturbability of Leonora's disposition, which convinces me that she does not understand it in the least. Those who do not really feel, always pitch their expressions too high or too low, as deaf people bellow, or speak in a whisper. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... do this in the case of Negro Americans has strangely over-reached itself. By so much as the defective eyesight of the white world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them as human beings,—an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than God made them, but they are ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... until he thought he was destined for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of a Golden Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Tulsa, Okla., reports an enviable situation. He says: "My nut trees are growing on a farm where more than 30 years of cultivation have failed to kill the native pecan sprouts. They come up year after year from the top roots. Since acquiring the place in 1936, I have allowed the pecan sprouts and the few native ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... Others, again, were in enviable situations, but did not, as far as I could learn from the officers, do quite so much as they might have done. This defect on our part being met by equal disadvantages, arising from nearly similar causes, on that of the enemy, a clear ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they get their shilling a day of fighting-pay, they are content. I had almost said, they ought to be content. For science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... bracelet, or one poor pitiful brooch, on Miss Edgeworth or Miss Aitkin, Mrs Somerville or Joanna Baillie, or any other of the female illustrations of the age, saving these aerial machines which have achieved such enviable supremacy? Mrs Marcet, who has taught the young idea of our three kingdoms how to shoot; Miss Martineau, who has engrafted new ones on our oldest crab-stocks, might travel from Dan to Beersheba without having a fatted calf or a fatted capon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... keep it from surging over her, from choking her, she ran out into the street to get into her own room and be alone, pulling the door to behind her for fear he should follow and want to explain and comfort, leaving him with his AEschylus in which, happening to glance sighing, he, enviable man, at once became again absorbed, and running blindly, headlong, as he runs who is surrounded and accompanied by a swarm of deadly insects which he vainly tries to out-distance, she ran straight into somebody coming from the opposite ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the reply, "and so, I think, you will admit, if you will give the matter a moment's consideration. It is not your fault or mine that you and I do not occupy the enviable position in life to which you have just referred; it is the fault, if fault there be, of our ancestors. They did not happen to be money-getters, and therefore, if we wish to enjoy the advantages attendant upon the possession of a fortune, large or small, we must get the fortune for ourselves. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... Queen's Speech on proroguing Parliament on September 5th, 1848, which concluded, 'The energy and decision shown by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland deserve my warmest approbation.' Reeve was told by Lady Clarendon that her husband 'regarded these emphatic words as the most enviable distinction of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable. Just before the Revolution the lot of the common laborer was not an enviable one. His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison—usually an indescribably filthy hole awaited him the moment he ran into debt. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... only to Borrow's comfort and security, but also to his happiness. There were no children. The "daughter" whose accomplishments Borrow celebrated in the exordium to "Wild Wales" was his stepdaughter, Henrietta Clarke. He seemed now in an enviable position, with a small but agreeable freehold on the banks of Oulton Broad, able to indulge in "idleness and the pride of literature" to his heart's content. If he had had a "club" or a Boswell about him, he might still have been tolerably happy. But he was not a clubbable ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... had sufficient cause to be excited. What usurious gossip-interest might be collected from such a capitol! Dr. Tromfszky already had an enviable reputation in the county, but what would it become when it became known that he was physician in ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... 'Adirondack Murray,' and here, as in his other books, he fairly revels in stirring incident, lively and faithful conception of character, and the powerful but delightful description of natural scenery which have already given his work an enviable and lasting place in ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... no less forging — sledge-fittings, knives, pickaxes, bars and bolts, patent hooks by the hundred for dogs, chains, and so on to infinity. The clang and sparks of the anvil were going all day long till we were well into the Indian Ocean. And in the westerly belt the blacksmith's lot was not an enviable one; it is not always easy to hit the nail on the head when one's feet rest on so unstable a foundation as the Fram's deck, nor is it altogether pleasant when the forge is filled with water ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... aerial manor, pray, then, who were? Beneath us, lay—home. Should we ever see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or to mount into the zenith ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... issue of the Patriot, the local Whig paper, devoted two columns to the speech of this young Democratic upstart; and for weeks thereafter the editor flayed him on all possible occasions. The result was such an enviable notoriety for the young attorney among Whigs and such fame among Democrats, that he received collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons whom he had never seen or known. In after years, looking back on these beginnings, he used to wonder whether he ought not to have ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... and myself amongst the number, left Tours in this enviable state of spirits; the sun shone brightly, but a refreshing breeze, and intervals of the road well shaded, softened an heat, which might otherwise have been oppressive. Mr. Younge and myself rode on each side of the carriage, and travelling ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... admiration, the ardor of his ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of mankind profound; but he should have followed up the objects of his high aspirations by a straighter road. His glory would have been truly enviable had he devoted his efforts to the happiness of his subjects, instead of harassing their minds by dissensions, and mowing down their lives by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... pity you can't go," remarked Aunt Jennie placidly. Aunt Jennie was always a placid little soul, with a most enviable knack of taking everything easy. Nothing ever worried her greatly, and when she had decided that a thing was inevitable it did ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to Hudova, and reached aviation headquarters, where I was given a fine welcome in the barracks. The aviators all live in wooden shacks, in a dreary neighborhood. This is not an enviable place to be, especially since they have had nothing to ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... am painfully certain, we can never be strangers henceforth. Some charm in your voice, in the expression of your eyes when as 'Amy Robsart' the loving woman you looked so fondly into your 'Leicester's' face, awoke dim memories that will never sleep again. Happy—enviable indeed—that Leicester who really rules the empire of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to the evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... a brief time after his arrival in Virginia City that Clemens began the series of hoaxes which would carry his reputation, not always in an enviable fashion, across the Sierras and down the Pacific coast. With one exception these are lost to-day, for so far as known there is not a single file of the Enterprise in existence. Only a few stray copies and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... determine the geographical position of the mouth, and found the latitude 38 deg. 2' 4", and the longitude 122 deg. 4'. After finishing this task, I ascended the highest hillock on the shore, which consisted of strata of slate and quartz, to admire the beauty of the prospect. On the south lay the enviable and important Bay of St. Francisco with its many islands and creeks; to the north flowed the broad beautiful river formed by the junction of the two, sometimes winding between high, steep rocks, sometimes gliding among ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... is a very enviable person; and the match in a worldly point of view, is a most fortunate one for Miss Lavington; and that stupid rascal of a gendarme has broken ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of a district chief commissioner was by no means enviable in Cyprus. The pay was absurdly small, and he was obliged to institute reforms both for sanitary and municipal interests which necessitated an outlay, and increased the local taxation. The population had been led to expect a general diminution of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... throbbing with life! 'Tis a destiny enviable indeed! For is not this, as a delightful poet has said, "to take away with one all one's illusions, to be buried like an Eastern king, with all one's jewels and treasures, with all that makes the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... said Janet enthusiastically, with no suggestion whatever in her tone that Hilda's situation was odd, or of dubious propriety, or aught but enviable. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... and repatriates, thrust into communities to which they came as paupers and crowded into buildings which were never planned for domestic purposes, has been far from enviable. In September, 1917, the American Red Cross handed over the solving of this problem to one of its experts who had organised the aid given to San Francisco after the earthquake, and who had also had charge ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... was a very miserable one to Phelim and the father. The loss of the ten guineas, and the feverish sickness produced from their debauch, rendered their situation not enviable. Some other small matters, too, in which Phelim was especially concerned, independent of the awkward situation in which he felt himself respecting the three calls on the following day, which was Sunday, added greater weight to his anxiety. He knew not how to manage, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... respects, enviable, Surrey," replied Wyat. "Disturbed by no jealous doubts and fears, you can beguile the tedious hours in the cultivation of your poetical tastes, or in study. Still, I must needs reproach myself with being ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... age, before knowledge and reflection had trained men to the critical examination and correction of their instinctive conclusions, all the data which they possessed would naturally lead them to imagine the unknown God in the glorified form and circumstances of the most enviable being their experience had yet revealed to them; and to paint the unknown future state of perfected souls under the purest aspects of the most desirable boons they had known in the present state. It being a necessity ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... accomplice affected clerical attire, and in 1791 'was living in a Westphalian monastery, to which he some years ago retired, in an enviable state of peace and penitence, respected for his talents, and loved for his amiable manners, by which he is distinguished in an eminent degree.' The other ruffian, Lowe by name, was known to his own Bloomsbury Square for a philanthropic and cultured gentleman, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... risen to be worthy of these enviable titles is a story which will doubtless possess some amount of interest ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... mattress and pillow for Mr. H——, really one does not realise how clever one is until our genius is put to the test in an establishment like this. E—— and I drove up to the tent after supper with our handiwork, and had great pleasure in seeing it filled with hay. Our drive was not of the most enviable: we had a waggon with no spring seat, only a board, which was always moving, to sit upon; one horse would tear along, the other not pull an ounce, in spite of applying the whip a good deal, and we were nearly smothered with mosquitoes, I never saw such clouds of them, and on our return home there ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... despite a strong practical strain in her nature, she was an idealist at the core. She could not understand that temper of mind which sets out to buy a gold watch, and declines upon a silver one because the other is not instantly attainable. She would have the best or none: and, with the enviable assurance of youth, she never doubted but that the best would be forthcoming in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... weekly journals, in conjunction with Mr. Cumberland, Sir James Bland Burgess, Mr. Horatio Smith, and others. The principal caterer for these publications was Colonel Greville, on whom Lord Byron has conferred a not very enviable immortality— ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... pleasing to the eye as a basket of fruit. Her beauty was animated. There was an expression in her eyes and on her lips that spoke of laughter always on tiptoe. An enviable inheritance, this, the desire to laugh, to be searching always for a vent to laughter; it is something money cannot buy, something not to be cultivated; a true gift of the gods. This desire to laugh is found invariably in the tender and valorous; and Kitty ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... apology for his lateness to Olga, none of which was the least intelligible to Lucia. She guessed what he was saying, and next moment Olga, who apparently understood him perfectly, and told him with an enviable fluency that he was not late at all, was introducing him to her, and explaining that "la Signora" (Lucia understood this) and her husband talked Italian. She did not need to reply to some torrent of amiable words from him, addressed to her, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... enviable one. Elevated as it was in dignity and influence, it was full of perplexity, toil, and peril. The spirit of revolution was now rampant, and no earthly power could stay it. It was inevitable that those who would not recklessly ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... to atone by a gracious, very sincere modesty, for the enviable position in which chance had suddenly placed her. It was said of her that she accepted a compliment as timidly as a boarding-school miss receives a prize. They forgave her for retaining her rosy cheeks because of her white and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... to Mr. Leypoldt for a delightful book, a truthful record of feeling from the hand of a man noted for purity of life, scholarship, and an enviable reputation in the world of music. The letters are such as we should expect from the character of Mendelssohn's compositions—pure, elegant, fanciful, flowing, serious, and dignified, but without the passionate intensity, the soul-searching pathos and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a few paces from Mr. Wolston's bed, whom the two young girls were tending with anxious solicitude, and whose sickness was almost enviable, so many were the cares lavished ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... the writer attended the district school at Cohoes. The high department did not enjoy a very enviable reputation for being possessed of that respect due from the pupils to teacher. During the year there had been at least four teachers in that department, the last one only remaining one week. The Board of Education had found it difficult ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... we might not frighten her or provoke the tribe. The whole party seemed to have been amusing themselves in the water during the noon-day heat, which was excessive; and the cool shades around the lagoon looked most luxuriant. Our position, on the contrary, was anything but enviable. With jaded horses scarcely able to lift a leg, amongst so many natives, whose language was incomprehensible, even to Yuranigh. I asked him whether we might not come to a parley with them, and see if they could understand him. His answer was brief; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Ryan's testimony, and supposed there was no doubt of Dick's conviction. He would like very well to have been present at the trial; but he had unpleasant associations connected with the court-room at the Tombs, having figured there on several occasions in an important but not very enviable capacity. ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... very partially enviable just then, but the bright north wind seemed to blow his troubles back from him as he faced it, walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet Reanda. It was very unlike the man to return to his lodging without having accomplished anything, but he ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... say, that the apiarian who has followed me attentively, and has added nothing of value to his stock of information, possesses an enviable experience that all should strive ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... playing, and fell in love with him; then in the boudoir of an opera singer; then at a fancy-dress ball in Spain, with crowds of alluring masqueraders about him. The further he seemed to soar away, unapproachable and enviable, the more miserable she felt herself to be, and all at once it seemed utterly inconceivable that she had so lightly surrendered her own hopes of an artistic career and given up her lover, in order to lead a sunless existence, and to be lost in the crowd. A shudder seemed ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... although he had not the initiative or the sturdy pluck to perform the feats that they had. He was, however, a boy of considerable brain and skill and among the boy-aviators of the country held an enviable position. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... "Perfect peace!"—what a blessed attainment! My soul! is it thine? Sure I am it is not, if thou art seeking it in a perishable world, or in the perishable creature, or in thy perishable self. Although thou hast all that the world would call enviable and happy, unless thou hast peace in God, and with God, all else is unworthy of the name;—a spurious thing, which the first breath of adversity will shatter, and the hour of death utterly annihilate! Perfect peace! What is it? It is the peace ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... proprietor, take rank with the very best in the kingdom, both in body, in potting, in design, and in decoration; and there can be no doubt, from what is now actively in progress, that the stand taken by Coalport is one of enviable eminence among the ceramic manufactories ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... all, gentlemen," pursued the young man, with the same composedness of voice and manner, and turning particularly to the officers of the —— Regiment, who were grouped around their Chief; "Who is it, I ask, on whom has devolved the enviable duty of reporting me as capable of violating my faith as a subject, and ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... camp outfit they can be comfortable until the wagons are unloaded. Faye and I are staying with the commanding officer and his wife. Colonel Gardner is lieutenant colonel of the —th Infantry, and has a most enviable reputation as a post commander. As an officer, we have not seen him yet, but we do know that he can be a most charming host. He has already informed Faye that he intends to appoint him adjutant and quartermaster of ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... party at a large country house of Liberal complexion; on the Thames. I have reason to believe it fairly typical. The owner of this estate holds an important position in the Foreign Office, and the hostess has, by her wit and intelligent grasp of affairs, made an enviable place for herself. On her right, at luncheon on Sunday, was a labour leader, the head of one of the most powerful unions in Britain, and next him sat a member of one of the oldest of England's titled families. The two were on terms of Christian names. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... intellect known to the religious history of this country, who confirmed Calvinism as the creed of New England Puritans. The young Burr, on the death of his father and grandfather, inherited what was then considered as a fortune, and was graduated at Princeton in 1772, with no enviable reputation, being noted for his idleness and habits bordering on dissipation. He was a handsome and sprightly young man of sixteen, a favorite with women of all ages. He made choice of the profession of law, and commenced the study under Tappan Reeve of Elizabethtown. After the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... would run back jealously to the sister (whom Miluda despised) to pour out floods of description. She herself had heard much of Lella Saida, and supposed that unfortunate woman had as eagerly collected information about her; but it was especially piquant that further details of enviable magnificence should be carried back by the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ambitious spirits, an obeisance is expected; this is not performed at a distance, after the Persian fashion—you go right up, and make a profound bow, testifying with the angle of your body to the self-abasement of your soul; you then kiss his hand or breast—and happy and enviable is he who may do so much! And there stands the great man, protracting the illusion as long as may be. (I heartily acquiesce, by the way, in the churlish sentence which excludes us from a nearer acquaintance with ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... chapter to the last, though for what particular fault Drake could not discover, unless it were for that of being a husband at all; so that the interloper in robbing him of his wife was related to have secured not merely the succes d'estime which accompanies such enviable feats, but the unqualified gratitude of all married ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... personally and mentally gifted. He had rather an indiarubber-like elasticity and jauntiness than stateliness, or dignity, or grace. His irregular-featured face was comical, but he bore the bell in exhaustless spirits, which won him, late in life, the reputation of perennial juvenility, and the enviable if not altogether respectful sobriquet of "the evergreen Palm." Lord John Russell, with his large head and little body, of which Punch made stock, with his friendship for Moore and his literary turn, as well as his ambition to serve his country like a true Russell, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... vainer of any verses than of my part in the following Ballad. Dr. Watts, amongst evangelical nurses, has an enviable renown; and Campbell's Ballads enjoy a snug, genteel popularity. Sally Brown has been favored perhaps with as wide a patronage as the Moral Songs, though its circle may not have been of so select a class ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... happened to meet. Their names were Susan and Mary Heathfield. They were older than the Tristrams and the Cardews, and had, in fact, just left school. Their last year of school-life had been spent in Paris; they were highly educated, and had an enviable proficiency in the ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... Christianity was introduced in the fifth century, St. Patrick being the chief apostle of the new faith. In the sixth century Ireland sent forth missionaries from her monasteries to convert Great Britain and the nations of Northern Europe. From the eighth to the twelfth century Irish scholars held an enviable reputation. In fact, Ireland was the center of learning at one time. The arts, too, were cultivated by her people; and the round towers, still pointed out to travelers, are believed to be the remains ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... this forenoon. Shall I tell you where?"—He glanced again at the papers, and then said: "You bought this dagger in a gun store on the Kohlmarkt, and paid four ducats for it. You have now got this dagger with you; truly, it occupies an enviable hiding-place, and I might be jealous of it. Why do you not draw it forth and carry out your purpose? Do you really believe what so many fools have said about me, viz, that I was in the habit of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the hotel, or even in her own luxurious boudoir in her Sicilian home. The attempt was fairly successful, and the result was a passing taste of that self-satisfied beatitude which is the peculiar and enviable lot of very lazy people after dinner. She cared for nothing and she cared for nobody. San Miniato and Beatrice might sit over there by the water's edge, in the moonlight, and talk in low tones as long as they pleased. There were no tiresome people from ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... prayers and breakfast I suffer my customary persecution at the hands of the cook. That is to say, I am obliged, being the housekeeper, to order what we have to eat. Oh, how I hate inventing dinners! and how I admire the enviable slowness of mind and laziness of body which have saved Eunice from undertaking the worries of housekeeping in her turn! She can go and work in her garden, while I am racking my invention to discover variety in dishes without overstepping the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... passed a vote to honor him for all future time with festive matches, in music and chariot-races, and such gymnastics as were practiced at the Grecian games. A magnificent monument was erected to his memory. "The mournful letters written by Plato after the death of Dion contrasts strikingly with the enviable end of Timoleon, and with the grateful inscription of the Syracusans ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... them to Saint Mary's Church, which stands in the quaint village of Warwick. Its old tower holds ten bells, and these play every four hours. There is a different tune for each day, which is always changed at midnight. The Warwick towns-people, living near their church, must have an enviable musical education, for they have continually dinned in their ears all sorts of tunes, from the "Easter Hymn" to "The ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... the fact that he was being so closely shadowed, Richford had been driven out Wandsworth way. He did not look in the least like a modern millionaire of good health and enviable prospects as he drove along. His moody face was pale, his lips trembled, his eyes were red and bloodshot with the brandy that he had been drinking. The hand that controlled the market so frequently ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... no mere suburb of Petworth but in a stately little village with its own character and history going back to Roman times and a church with a Saxon body and a Norman chancel. And that in the ideal churchyard of this enviable church with ancient yews and 18th century tomb-stones, and old, old benches in the sunshine for the grandfathers and loafers of the village to sit on and smoke of a Sabbath morning, a place shall be found for the bones of Bertie Adams; reverently ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Petrarch's letter that the kingdom of Naples was now under a miserable subjection to the Hungarian faction, aid that the young Queen's situation was anything but enviable. Few characters in modern history have been drawn in such contrasted colours as that of Giovanna, Queen of Naples. She has been charged with every vice, and extolled for every virtue. Petrarch represents her as a ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... who was indisputably his leader in the courts, and for whose forensic abilities it is known, that he entertains, and has often expressed, the highest admiration. The position of the two men was singular, and to the ex-attorney not very enviable. Scarlett was in high practice before Brougham was even called to the bar. He kept a head of him in their profession throughout; and twice he had filled the first places at the bar, when the respective attainments of these eminent persons were such, that if Brougham had been placed before ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... be much the same as the record of another. After family prayers and breakfast I suffer my customary persecution at the hands of the cook. That is to say, I am obliged, being the housekeeper, to order what we have to eat. Oh, how I hate inventing dinners! and how I admire the enviable slowness of mind and laziness of body which have saved Eunice from undertaking the worries of housekeeping in her turn! She can go and work in her garden, while I am racking my invention to discover variety in ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the state of manufacturing Scotland duly occurred. Besides manufacturing distress, they had to encounter a series of bad harvests. Never was a body of statesmen placed in a more embarrassing and less enviable position. There was a prevalent, though unfounded, conviction that they were maintained in power by a combination of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the halls Of Cadmus and Amphion. No man's life As of one tenor would I praise or blame, For Fortune with a constant ebb and rise Casts down and raises high and low alike, And none can read a mortal's horoscope. Take Creon; he, methought, if any man, Was enviable. He had saved this land Of Cadmus from our enemies and attained A monarch's powers and ruled the state supreme, While a right noble issue crowned his bliss. Now all is gone and wasted, for a life Without life's joys I count a living ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... them with astonishment; and, agreeably to the Oriental creed of two independent and contending principles of good and of evil, regarded these select and supernaturally endowed beings anon as a source of the most enviable blessings, and anon as objects of unmingled apprehension and terror, before whom their understandings became prostrate, and every thing that was most appalling and dreadful was most easily believed. In this state superstition unavoidably grew ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... in silence gazing from side to side, and into each mind, even that of the rebellious Jack himself, there crept the same thought. This was indeed a goodly heritage, whose owner would be an enviable person! The possibility of possessing it as a home was worth a far greater sacrifice than anything which had been demanded ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... universally used expression of the religious feeling of mankind. More worshipers unite in singing his hymns, Unitarian though he be, than those of any other man, living or dead. It is a great distinction, and in meriting it he holds enviable rank as one of the world's ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... on the two women between whom his path had lain: how highly he had aimed, and how low he had fallen! How enviable would have been his fate had he consistently kept to either! for each had been peerless in her way. How despicable was his position having greedily grasped at both! And now the one was dying, and the other degraded like himself. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... one reason is because death laid hold of him in the middle of his career. While all the world was still gazing expectantly upon him, he vanished from the earth and left no hope deceived. His was the enviable fate of a Raphael, Schiller and Korner. As the German ('tis Schumann's utterance) thinks of Beethoven when he speaks the word symphony, so the name of Mozart in his mind is associated with the conception of things youthful, bright and sunny. Schumann was fully conscious ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous sad. Oh, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an enviable one; or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... observe, after forty years' experience in theatrical tactics, that it would not be difficult, through a judicious distribution of determined forcers in various parts of a theatre, with Herculean hands and stentorian voices, to achieve that enviable distinction." Possibly the reader, bearing in mind certain great successes and double and treble encores of our own time, may confirm, from his own experience, Mr. Parke's opinions ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the fact were really notorious there could be no difficulty in proving it. Such notoriety as Mr. Byron enjoyed was due, as appeared from the evidence of Lord Worthington and others, to his approaching marriage to a lady of distinction. Was it credible that a highly connected gentleman in this enviable position would engage in a prize-fight, risking disgrace and personal disfigurement, for a sum of money that could be no object to him, or for a glory that would appear to all his friends as little ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... opulent and important province of Utrecht from the Union. Kanter had been heard openly to avow that after all the Netherlands had flourished under the benign sway of the House of Burgundy, and that the time would soon come for returning to that enviable condition. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Less enviable than the poorest slave, Lord Castlewood sank upon his hard stiff chair, and straightened his long narrow hands upon his knees, and set his thin lips in straight blue lines. Each hand was as rigid as the ivory handle of an umbrella or walking-stick, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... live there?" said Rachel. "What an enviable position, to have the control of means of doing good that always falls to the women of a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... neither talent, virtue, nor patriotism could, at one time, secure those who possessed such enviable qualities. Lavoisier, Malsherbes, Condorcet, &c. were here successively immured, previously to being sent to the guillotine. Here too the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette lived in a comfortless manner, from the 2nd of July, 1793, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... painter, delighted with his subject, enamoured of the beauties he had created, had, as it were, thrice thrown himself at the feet of each goddess. The three pictures were an offering and homage to each. None could determine which was best. The subject was the Judgment of Paris—it was an enviable opportunity for a happy purchaser "to throw the golden apple." We do not pretend to give, with any exactness, the eloquent wording of this address; nor can we describe the perfect grace with which it was delivered. Every one in the room ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... in one of the polite sections of New York City, up among the East Sixties, and at the insistence of my sister and aunt, who lived with me, our home was near enough the great boulevard to be designated by that enviable phrase, "Just off Fifth Avenue." We were on the north side of the street, and, nearer to the Avenue, on the south side, was the home of ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... she did not covet such a father as Mr. Dinsmore; he was much too strict and severe, she thought, with all his petting and caressing, and she would far rather have her own papa. Still Grandma Elsie's lot, when a little girl, seemed to her an enviable one, so beautiful and so rich, and with a nice old mammy always ready to wait on and do everything for her; and she (Lulu) was sure she wouldn't have minded much when such a father as Mr. Dinsmore was vexed with her; he wouldn't have found it so easy to manage her; ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... seems to discover the existence of a hitherto unknown and unimportant sex; when an inner voice urges him to take his place in the ranks and keep step with the mighty army of his generation, Raymond was doomed to walk alone, a wistful outcast, regarding his enviable companions from afar. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... the charge of the household affairs of such an institution, with the uncertain assistance to be found in such a place, may be better imagined than told. Under her satisfactory management the Vicksburg Home acquired an enviable reputation, and was the favorite stopping-place on the river. The great difficulty in conducting a Soldiers' Home in time of war, as every one knows who has been connected with one, is to keep it neat and clean, to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... ancient French colonists, began now to assume importance, and its capability of supporting a numerous population along the Great River and the lakes became evident. Those excellent men, who, preferring to sacrifice life and fortune rather than forego the enviable distinction of being British subjects, saw that this vast field afforded a sure and certain mode of safety and of honourable retreat, and accordingly, in 1783, ten thousand (10,000) were enumerated in that portion of Canada, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... a younger generation—the descendants of your early friends and companions in arms, a different but not less interesting privilege belongs. We are allowed the enviable distinction of meeting in his riper years, one, whom our fathers loved in their youth. We welcome you to our country, to our homes, to our hearts. We have read the history of your achievements, your honors, and your sufferings! They are ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... consisted in his talent, and, above all, in his cunning; to Bizco, courage and strength constituted the sole enviable qualities; the greatest merit of all was to be a real brute, as he ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Oh, enviable Briareus! with thy hands And heads, if thou hadst all things multiplied In such proportion!—But my Muse withstands The giant thought of being a Titan's bride, Or travelling in Patagonian lands; So let us back to Lilliput, and guide Our hero through the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the years since he has been in the Belt, run up an enviable record, both as an insurance investigator and as a police detective, although his connection with the Planetoid Police is, necessarily, an unofficial one. Probably not since Sherlock Holmes has there been such mutual respect ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... as it has saddened thousands before him, that the fight which he fought, and the death which, perhaps, was in front of him, were so mean. Ophelia dies; Juliet dies, and we fancy that their fate, although terrible, is more enviable than that of a pauper who drops undramatically on London stones. He came to his lodging at the close of the third day, wet, tired, hungry, and with a headache. There was nobody to suggest anything to him or offer him anything. He went to bed, and a thousand images, uncontrolled, rushed backwards ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... familiar with wretchedness to heed it, and to take everything as it came. Yet a certain frank light-heartedness was not lacking in their faces; and on a closer view, their monotonous life, the lot of so many a poor creature, well-nigh seemed an enviable one. Trouble had set its unmistakable mark on them, but petty cares had left no ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... rode slowly towards the royal gallery. Having now raised his visor, his features were fully revealed to view, and perhaps were never seen to such advantage as at this proud and happy moment. His emotions were indeed enviable—but one thing was wanting to complete his satisfaction—the presence of her, before whom, of all others, he was most eager to distinguish himself. What mattered it that scarves and kerchiefs were waved to him by some of the fairest dames in the ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of feeling. Let us be quite frank. There are few things you feel more strongly than that you do not want your daughter in the house. When she was a child you told me that you detested the prospect of having her on your hands. She is being disposed of in the most easily explained and enviable manner." ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... last in the race when, by every law of justice, I should have been first. In Paris as in London my "greedy column," as my friends called it with the straightforwardness peculiar to friends, had to be written every week for the Pall Mall and mine was the enviable position of finding my copy in eating good dinners no less than in going to the Salons. If any one had an irreproachable excuse for extravagant living, it ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... any cause of offence, Jack, why don't you pitch into him?" suggested a half-drunken fellow who bore the enviable reputation of being a most ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... had been rudely shaken, if not entirely wrecked, by Stephen's visit. Up to that time, Lady Barbara—who had been nearly three weeks with Martha—had not only delighted in her work, but had shown an enviable pride in keeping pace with her employer's engagements, often working rather late into the night to ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "Enviable Louisa! Would that I had been born with that blessed faculty of never noticing! It stands a woman in better stead than beauty or brains. I used to notice Peter's mistakes. When he said 'I seen,' it jarred on me in my salad days. I tried, oh, so tactfully, to reform him in that respect. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... paradoxical the statement may seem to those who are in the habit of regarding all forms of slavery from the sentimental point of view, it is unquestionable that the condition of serfs under such a proprietor as I have supposed was more enviable than that of the majority of English agricultural labourers. Each family had a house of its own, with a cabbage-garden, one or more horses, one or two cows, several sheep, poultry, agricultural implements, a share of the Communal land, and everything else necessary for carrying on ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... long faithful to him. Mademoiselle was jealous of it, and that often controlled him. I have heard Madame de Fontenelles ( a very enviable woman, of much intelligence, very truthful, and of singular virtue), I have heard her say, that being at Eu with Mademoiselle, M. de Lauzun came there and could not desist from running after the girls; Mademoiselle knew it, was angry, scratched him, and drove him from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... other books, he fairly revels in stirring incident, lively and faithful conception of character, and the powerful but delightful description of natural scenery which have already given his work an enviable and lasting place in ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... of Huron a man of unquestionable claim to remembrance was born. George Kennan, whose enviable privilege it was to let the light in upon the misery of Siberian exile and to awaken the abhorrence of the world for Russian tyranny, was a native of Norwalk, where he grew up a telegraph operator. He worked at night and went ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed common-places that we appear in the world; an inn restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns—sometimes when I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham Common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas—at other times, when ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... he can, allows himself to be loaded with hay; and those who are to be the draught horses trail him thus loaded by the tail, taking care not to overset him. The task of thus serving as the vehicle being evidently the least enviable part of the business, is taken by every one of the ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... Electors are again aspirants for this enviable Throne. We have seen the beautiful Electress zealously soliciting Friedrich for help in that project; Friedrich, in a dexterously graceful manner, altogether declining. Hereditary Saxons are not to be the expedient this time, it would seem; a grandiose Czarina has decided ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... empires had attained enviable prosperity and development in 1914, when the War burst, the three great western democracies, Great Britain, France and Italy, had likewise ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... and enviable those families—the father, mother, and fair daughters, now setting off gaily with their huge boxes—who to-morrow would be beside the ever-delightful Rhine, posting on to Cologne and Coblentz. What a welcome ring in those names! Stale, hackneyed as it is, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... life in Manila then was not an enviable one, though the Christians were slightly more secure. The Chinese quarter was at first inside the city, but before long it became a considerable district of several streets along Arroceros near the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... and without much demur consented to refund the fruit of his knavery, to the amount of two thousand louis. The strangest thing connected with this scandal is, that M. F——, who is an advocate by profession, has always enjoyed an enviable reputation for integrity; and, unfortunately, this prank cannot be attributed to a momentary fit of madness, for the fact that he had provided himself with these cards in advance proves the act to have been premeditated. One of the persons present was especially displeased. This was the ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... his radically artificial life he disclosed a welcome tenderness, a touch of the divine, none the less so for being common duty, shown in the few brief letters to his son's widow and to "our boys." This, and his enviable gift of being able to view the downs as well as the ups of life in the consoling humorous light, must modify the sterner judgment so easily passed upon his characteristic inculcation, if not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... restored and pilgrims flocked to it anew. The virgin Orberosia worked greater and greater miracles. She cured divers hurtful maladies, particularly club-foot, dropsy, paralysis, and St. Guy's disease. The monks who kept the tomb were enjoying an enviable opulence, when the saint, appearing to King Draco the Great, ordered him to recognise her as the heavenly patron of the kingdom and to transfer her precious remains ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... above them mentally, morally, physically,—from whichever angle one viewed him. Moreover, blood will tell, and was he not of the fine old Morton stock? Whatever the Carlton forbears might be, young Farwell's ancestry was not an enviable one. Yes, Willie had settled Delight's future to his entire satisfaction and for nights had been sleeping peacefully, confident that with such a husband as Robert Morton her happiness and good ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... abruptness of the summons, these two great dignitaries arrived at the imperial gate in no enviable state of mind; but when the sultan had informed them of the tumult then raging in the capital, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... and some other families, always camped together in the mountains during this season, and they were off when school closed, in an enviable state of ecstasy and anticipation. Cherry had planned to join them, but an experimental week-end was enough. The camp was in the cool woods, truly, but it was disorderly, swarming with children, the tents were small and hot, the whole settlement laughed and rioted and ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... don't think the position of a married woman discovered kissing a man other than her husband is enviable; do you?' ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... correspondingly enriched the pot of the bank keeper, instead of being out of sorts over it, simply drew the inference that the keeping of the bank was a business that produced sure gain, and the old major with the high white neckcloth and the diamond pin was an extremely enviable man and, above all, one very worthy of emulation. In such a career one got something out of life. My father expressed such opinions, too, when he came home and sat down late to dinner. This he did once in the presence of a recently married sister of my mother, who was visiting in our ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... pressure of a school position, and all the worry and annoyance that are experienced in such a career—all these he had suffered as many others have. He had reached the age of thirty without having enjoyed a single favor at the hands of fate; yet in him were planted the germs of an enviable happiness, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... It is no enviable position to occupy, that of antagonism to so large a proportion of the scientific world and, too, upon subjects of strictly scientific import. That he does thus find himself placed in such relations at the present time, has ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... gave up all their time during the stay in Hobart to the care of those important animals. A feeling of relief spread over the whole ship's company as the last dog passed over the side, for travelling with a deck cargo of dogs is not the most enviable thing from a sailor's point of view. Especially is this the case in a sailing-vessel where room is limited, and consequently dogs and ropes are ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... countenance Saltash enlightened him. "As strike-leader, agitator, and so on. You have achieved an enviable reputation by your ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... a voracious appetite for enjoyment and an expert capacity in entertaining, Etty Desborough was perfectly happy either alone with her family or alone with her books and could endure, with enviable patience, cold ugly country-seats and fashionable people. I said of her when I first knew her that she ought to have lived in the days of the great King's mistresses. I would have gone to her if ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... mind in preference to repose, which was hateful. To such excess did it arrive as I grew up, that difficulty and danger, even pain and remorse, were preferable to that calm sunshine of the breast which others consider so enviable. I could exist but by strong sensations: remove them, and I felt as does the habitual drunkard in the morning, until his nerves have been again stimulated by a repetition of his draughts. My pursuits were of the same tendency: constant variety and change of scene ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Mortlake—the hero of a hundred strikes—set up in print on a poster, was unmistakably superior to Tom Mortlake setting up other men's names at a case. Still, the work was not all beer and skittles, and Mrs. Drabdump felt that Tom's latest job was not enviable. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... passage the most impressive in my life. If I even slumbered for a moment, as at intervals I did sometimes, though never sitting down, but standing or pacing about throughout the night, and if in this way I attained a momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation as rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the momentary trance—this fugitive beguilement of my wo—had been conceded by a demon's subtle malice only ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... theme of universal admiration, the ardor of his ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of mankind profound; but he should have followed up the objects of his high aspirations by a straighter road. His glory would have been truly enviable had he devoted his efforts to the happiness of his subjects, instead of harassing their minds by dissensions, and mowing down their lives by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... another ground on which I had weakly anticipated a different result;—but those who occupy official situations, rendered remarkable by the illustrious names of their predecessors, are placed in no enviable station; and, if their own acquirements are confessedly insufficient to keep up the high authority of their office, they must submit to the mortifications of their false position. I am sure, therefore, that the President and officers of the Royal Society must have sympathized MOST DEEPLY with ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... be 29 degrees above zero. No doubt, deeper down, the temperature was still warmer. We have heard it said, that when men chance to fall into the water in cold regions, in the depth of winter, it feels at first rather warm and agreeable! On scrambling out again, however, their condition is not enviable; for in a few minutes the keen frost causes their garments to become ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bolko was a mild yet enthusiastic youth, glowing with deep, ripe feeling, and needy of human love. He had little joy in the acquisition of what, in other circumstances, might have been considered his enviable fortune. He thought only of the miserable destiny that sentenced him to celibacy or death. His immediate predecessor, riding across a heath to take a last farewell of his bride, had been struck dead by lightning, and the maiden herself had been hurled from life at the edge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... with the people who'd evacuated the cities. The high population of remote places was a protection for Soames and Fran. He worried, though, about Gail, her situation, and that of the three other children, was far from enviable. In the present increasing confusion and tension they were hardly likely to have any ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... the truth. And the truth is this," he continued, with raised voice, while at the same time his cheeks became suddenly scarlet and his eyes flashed with the fire of inspiration—"the truth is this: the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine is the prettiest, sweetest woman in the whole world; happy and enviable is the man whose fortunate destiny will permit him to take her home as his bride, blessed above all men he on whom this noble, fascinating, and amiable girl bestows her love, whom she allows to enjoy the treasures of her mind and heart. Your highness said ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... you think me the most ungrateful woman in the world. I know only too well that to many women my position has always appeared enviable. Poor things, if they only knew! Of course, my husband is a good man. In all ways I do him perfect justice. He is everything that is kind and generous—only, alas, he is not the lover of my dreams. My children are nice handsome ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Legislature met, he prepared an elaborate military bill, the adoption of which would have placed the State in an enviable attitude of defence. The stupid jealousy of colonels and majors who had won bloodless glory, on both sides, in the Mormon War, and the malignant prejudice instigated by the covert treason that lurked in Southern Illinois, succeeded in staving off the passage of the bill, until it was lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... highest purpose of humanity, it was certainly fulfilled by Isaac Watts. His logical and other treatises have served to brace the intellects, methodise the studies, and concentrate the activities of thousands—we had nearly said of millions of minds. This has given him an enviable distinction, but he shone still more in that other province he so felicitously chose and so successfully occupied—that of the hearts of the young. One of his detractors called him 'Mother Watts.' He might have taken up this epithet, and bound it as a crown ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... so quiet it is, so solemnly and nobly cheerful, so verdant, so sweetly shadowed, and so presided over by the stately minster, and surrounded by ancient and comely habitations of Christian men. The most enchanting place, the most enviable as a residence in all this world, seemed to me that of the Bishop's secretary, standing in the rear of the cathedral, and bordering on the churchyard; so that you pass through hallowed precincts in order to come at it, and find it a Paradise, the holier and sweeter for the dead ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... horsemen in front and six behind; in the middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train held up by two pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined a lovely girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about. She was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat could have glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this admired effect by pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair—these are the feelings that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand's lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was surrounded by a multitude of friends. What more could anyone desire? ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... eating and sleeping make up much of life. Then the hearts of the great are corroded by cares and solicitudes which never visit the humble. Still, I do not deny that their condition is not far less enviable than ours. The slave who may be lashed, and tormented, and killed at his master's pleasure, drinks from a cup of which we never so much as taste. But over the whole of life, and throughout every condition of it, there are scattered evils and sorrows which pierce ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Hamburg. Its geographical situation, on a great river navigable by large vessels to the city, thirty leagues from the mouth of the Elbe; the complete independence it enjoyed; its municipal regulations and paternal government, were a few amongst the many causes which had raised Hamburg to its enviable height of prosperity. What, in fact, was the population of these remnants of the grand Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages? The population of Hamburg when I was there amounted to 90,000, and that of its small ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses. She wore on her shoulders—or rather, on her back and not her shoulders, which it scarcely passed—a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her violet shoes. About her face clustered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her apprehensions—for the blow which severed her from her friends was too stunning to be felt immediately in all its rigour—she stood as one almost transported with admiration and surprise. Yet her situation was far from being either enviable or pleasant, though in the midst of a treasure-house of wealth that would have made an emperor the richest of his race. No solution that she could invent would at all solve the problem—no key of interpretation ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... know any position on earth more enviable than yours, Mr Gresham," said she, quite soberly and earnestly; "how ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... instance, be one of the ferocious wild-cats for which the island had been famous long before Wesley Coombs ever dreamed of settling there, Max felt that he would hardly find himself in an enviable position; since the gloom under the trees must prevent him from seeing how to ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... bringing these on shore, seated themselves upon some of the boxes and casks with which the wharf was lumbered, and, opening the bundles, produced therefrom their dinners, which they proceeded to discuss with quite an enviable appetite. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... would like to secure the best man in Mr. Hamerton," and Mr. Craik wrote about it: "You would be an ornament to the University, and might do useful and important work there. For many reasons the Scotch professorships are enviable, for this particularly—that the session is a short one, and would require short residence. It will be pleasant for all of us, your friends, if you go to Edinburgh, for it will compel you to come to England and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... least to be pitied will be our friend Lewis. He will go out after having obtained a brilliant triumph on his own ground, and he will enjoy the good fortune, rare to public men, of quitting power greater than he was when he took it, and with the enviable reputation of owing his greatness, not merely to his talents, but also to the respect and the confidence ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... read the sentence, that the elder of Esmond's two kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other, when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked either way,) that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow and her children, gave them shelter and friendship. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... while a drop of the blood throbs in my veins, and I, who am jealous of my honor, have carefully pondered the matter, and maturely decided that he who entrusts his happiness to Salome Owen will be indeed an enviable man, and pardonably proud of his prize. Once I bartered myself away at the altar, and gave my name and hand for wealth, for aristocratic antecedents, for fashionable status, and five years of purgatorial misery was the richly merited ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... were a millionaire and I a grovelling pauper. I shall have Lavernac and two thousand a-year when my uncle, Sir Theophilus Parker, dies." Hardy rolled out the title with a certain proprietary unction; his cousin had no share in this enviable relationship. "I give the old bird five years at the very worst, and it's a moral impossibility that he should leave me in the lurch. But I don't count on that. My own property has kept me idle all my life; but I've sold it at last, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... thrust themselves into your peaceful and contented society! May that Providence which has hitherto protected you, still continue to pour down those blessings upon you, of which you appear to be so truly sensible, and for which you are justly thankful! May it throw round the shores of your enviable little Eden, 'cherubim and a flaming sword,' to guard its approaches from those who would endanger your peace; and above all, shield you from those, who would perplex and confuse your unsophisticated minds, by mysterious doctrines which they do not themselves comprehend! Remain steadfast to the faith, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... got his early modesty from his father, who was of a very sweet disposition, and some instances of this modesty are given. They are all things that Elspeth did, but Tommy is now represented as the person who had done them. "On the other hand, his strong will, singleness of purpose, and enviable capacity for knowing what he wanted to be at were a heritage from his practical and sagacious mother." "I think he was a little proud of his strength of will," writes the R.A. who painted his portrait (now in America), "for I remember his anxiety that it should be suggested in the picture." ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... dodgery and trickery of legal luminaries, and the total extinction of rent profits is delivered with an easy grace, and with the colour and effervescence of sparkling Burgundy. To be deprived of nine-tenths of your income seems remarkably good fun; to be ruined, an enviable kind of thing. Lady de Burgho commenced her reign with one fixed principle, from which nothing has ever induced her to deviate. Under no conceivable circumstances would she allow eviction. No agent could induce her to sign a writ. "I could not sleep if I had turned out an Irish ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he was gazetted, so, when the Empress announced that 'Gentleman-Cadet Robert Hanna Wick' was posted as Second Lieutenant to the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Krab Bokhar, he became an officer and a gentleman, which is an enviable thing; and there was joy in the house of Wick where Mamma Wick and all the little Wicks fell upon their knees and offered incense to Bobby by virtue ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... the cui bono remains. The professors make money by it; and Miss Cook can make at most, only a little mild and scarcely enviable notoriety. A satirical old friend of mine, when I told him the above facts, chuckled, and said, 'That's quite enough for a girl of sixteen; and anything that's do-able, a girl of those years will do.' It was no use talking to him ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of the immigrants in the interior of the country, was that of those who remained in the cities much more enviable? On this point we are enabled to judge, at least as regards New York. In a letter written by Bishop Dubois, and published in vol. viii. of the "Annals of the Propagation of the Faith," we meet with ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment: To live! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hadn't heard me, which was the best thing she could do; and we sat some time without further speech. Mrs. Ambient had evidently the enviable English quality of being able to be mute without unrest. But at last she spoke—she asked me if there seemed many people in town. I gave her what satisfaction I could on this point, and we talked a little of London and of some of its characteristics at that time of the year. At ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... followed, and for several days lived in reserve among the scattered farms and houses north of Estaires, over the ruins of which Crosthwaite, an officer of mature service, who had just joined the Battalion, was appointed Town Major. His task was not entirely enviable. Houses, roofless or otherwise, had to be subdivided into safe, doubtful, or certain to 'go up.' I cannot help regarding this Flanders retreat as a subject supremely dull. The constant suspicion of mines and booby-traps rendered doubly sordid the polluted ruins which formed the landmarks ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... a letter to the author of Our Village, says: 'You are distinguished in the world as the "gentlewoman" among authoresses, as you are for your rank merely in literature. I have often thought you very enviable for the universality of that opinion about you. You share it with Sir Philip Sidney, who was in his day the gentleman among authors. I look with great interest for your new tragedy. I think your mind is essentially ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... and their general location is near 'Ain 'Aroos. So, after some squabbling and arrangement, they agreed to share our supper with us in peace. Had the case been otherwise, our position was not an enviable one; for we were shut in between their hills and the sea, they were more numerous than our Arabs, and they had entire command of our spring of water. Our camels, too, were all unloaded, and the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... of late that I found out my real name. I'll tell you all about it some time, and then you'll understand better. As to anybody feeling remorse about my life, that's all nonsense. I consider my life rather an enviable one thus far." ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... physical exertion of his own: he would lead us captive by the superior grandeur of his qualities, once fairly manifested; and he aims at dominion, chiefly as it will enable him to manifest these. 'It is not the arena that he values, but what lies in that arena:' the sovereignty is enviable, not for its adventitious splendour, not because it is the object of coarse and universal wonder; but as it offers, in the collected force of a nation, something which the loftiest mortal may find scope for all his powers in guiding. "Spread out the thunder," ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... reply the agents desired the landlords to make, but it did not conduce to making their own existences any the more secure or enviable. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... and friends had beheld her in this enviable state a number of times, and had pronounced her—in ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... not more strenuously engaged, he soon began to regard Sonia with a softening eye. And as Sonia herself was growing up to womanhood, or, in Mr. WATSON'S elegant phrase, "muliebrity claimed her definitely"—well, he is an enviable reader for whom the last page will hold any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... with ridicule from the first chapter to the last, though for what particular fault Drake could not discover, unless it were for that of being a husband at all; so that the interloper in robbing him of his wife was related to have secured not merely the succes d'estime which accompanies such enviable feats, but the unqualified gratitude of all married women and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Thou enviable being! No storms, no clouds in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball—bestride the stick— (I knew so many cakes ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... were the badge of his calling. The gentleman wore powdered queue and ruffled shirt; the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable. Just before the Revolution the lot of the common laborer was not an enviable one. His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison—usually an indescribably filthy hole awaited him the moment he ran into debt. The artisan fared somewhat better. He had spent, as a rule, seven years ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the British race into a great British Empire. Had not Indians also a common nationhood which, despite all racial and religious differences, could be traced back across centuries of internal strife and foreign domination to a period, remote indeed but none the less enviable, when they had been their own masters? Had not the British themselves removed one of the greatest barriers to India's national unity—the multiplicity of her vernaculars—by giving English to the Western-educated classes as a common language, without which, indeed, Indian Nationalism ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... skill in tennis. But this day a new and eager longing was eating at his heart; a strange, dull pang seemed to seize upon it as he noted in a flash that the seat that was to have been his was occupied by an officer many years his senior, a man he knew only by sight and an enviable reputation, a man whose soldierly, clear-cut face never turned an instant, for his eyes were fixed upon a lovely picture on the opposite seat—Amy Lawrence bending eagerly forward and gazing with her beautiful eyes alight with sympathy, interest ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... any other part of civilized Europe. His views have, moreover, been to a great extent adopted in the numerous works that have since been produced by British travellers who, after a rapid drive over the main routes of Norway, have described in terms equally glowing the happy and enviable condition of the Bonde or yeoman ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... not to relinquish my steed, but to hold on by the bridle. My men, who, of course, kept at a safe distance, stood aghast with their mouths open, and for a few seconds my position was certainly not an enviable one. Fortunately, however, the dogs took off the attention of the elephants; and just as they were upon me, I managed to spring into the saddle, where I was safe. As I turned my back to mount, the elephants were so very near that I really expected to feel one of their trunks lay hold of me. ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... that were not true, disconcerted him. He, however, in a milder manner and voice than usual, told us that we were going to England to be exchanged, while there were some in another ship going to England to be hanged. Beside this enviable difference in our situation, compared with those traitorous Irishmen, who had been fighting against their king and country, we were very fortunate in being the first selected to go, as we should of course, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... saw this, felt himself in no very enviable position. The villains into whose hands he had fallen might revenge the death of their companions by murdering him, but he maintained as indifferent a manner as he could assume, while he watched the countenances of those surrounding him. He had the satisfaction of observing that instead of thinking ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... or, I should rather say, surprise. This never left him. To the last everything that presented itself to his gaze, though he had seen it a hundred times, seemed to fill him with fresh surprise. Nothing ever became familiar. What an enviable cast of mind! It must make the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... His childish vanity is nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they carry on them the shadows of battle smoke, and the rust of enviable wounds. Let us take his memory then gladly, and with true homage, rejoicing that its record of happiness appears as stainless as its history of honour, and well satisfied to find one picture in ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... doctor had by this time admitted his doubts—some long blue hills on the sky-line ought to be farther to the west, according to his remembrance. As no one else had any ideas on the subject, the doctor's position was not enviable. We changed our course, and travelled many weary miles through the chaparral, which was high enough to stop our vision, and stiff enough to bar our way, keeping us to narrow roads. At last the bisecting cattle ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... conducted him to the banquet, and presented him to his friends. After the repast, Osmyn related all the vicissitudes of his fortune, his long suffering, his rapid glory, the jealousy and perfidy of his enemies, "But thou," added he, "my dear Zambri, by what good fortune do I find you in such an enviable situation? What! this beautiful house, this crowd of slaves, these sumptuous ornaments!—to what dost thou ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... Lydiard. "What a wonderful existence yours must be," he resumed. "The everlasting question with your needy fellow-creatures, 'Where am I to get money?' is a question that has never passed your lips. Enviable woman!" He paused once more—surprised and puzzled this time. "What is the matter, my dear aunt? You seem to ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... of the Patriot, the local Whig paper, devoted two columns to the speech of this young Democratic upstart; and for weeks thereafter the editor flayed him on all possible occasions. The result was such an enviable notoriety for the young attorney among Whigs and such fame among Democrats, that he received collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons whom he had never seen or known. In after ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... scene. But it was the peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty-one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune and sorrow. Never had her father's position seemed so strong and enviable as during his tenure of the office of Vice-President; but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious. Holding property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so deeply in debt that nothing but the sacrifice of his landed estate could save him from bankruptcy. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the signs on the marts of commerce and on the shops; Goldstein (gold stone), Edelstein (precious stone), Blumenthal (flower-vale), Rosenthal (rose-vale), Veilchenduft (violent odour), Singvogel (song-bird), Rosenzweig (rose branch), and all the amazing list of beautiful and enviable names which Prussia and Austria glorified you with so long ago. It is another instance of Europe's coarse and cruel persecution of your race; not that it was coarse and cruel to outfit it with pretty and poetical names ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... full blooded habit but also from long canoe voyages. He was a placid man—placid yet at times suddenly choleric, and he regarded St. Marys and his own particular plot of land with an undying and tranquil affection. Dibbott's position was, in a sense, enviable, for he stood as administrator between the government and the local Indian tribes, in whose eyes he ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... huge boulder, with the French flag on one side and the Spanish on the other. As we reined in the horses opposite to it for a moment, no one could dispute that we were indeed "'twixt France and Spain." But we did not stay to enjoy this enviable position long; and passing on, endeavoured to realise that we were no longer in France by fixing our eyes on the Pyrenees Orientales; we could also see the Poujastou (6332 ft.) on our left, the Couradilles (6513 ft.), the Mont Segu, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... must admit, a sort of recognition accorded to intellectual achievement, which some American scientific men have found reason to envy. In America, of course, just as in Great Britain, there exists that very enviable distinction, the honorary degree of a university; but in America it is tainted by the freedom with which bogus universities can be organized, and by the unchallenged assumptions of quacks. In Great Britain the honorary ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... much, dearest," he said with a laugh. "Though I see your position clearly—and it is not an enviable one." ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of immense estates in the city, rendered its owner a man of no small consequence in the vicinity. But, more than this, Colonel Dumont was beloved and respected for his many good qualities of mind and heart. In the late war with England he had served in the army, and as an officer had won an enviable distinction by his courage and his talents. Coming unexpectedly into the possession of this estate by the death of an uncle, he retired, at the close of the war, from a profession to which a genuine patriotism alone ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... an eternal farewell to, doubtless, by far the dearest,—happiest period of our existence, the dawn of life's day—that enviable time when "we have no lessons;" when the colt presses, with his unshod foot, the fresh and verdant meadow, while he wonders at the team toiling under a noontide sun, over the parched and arid fallow in ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... The fighting is all well enough but, after all, that takes up but a very small portion of one's time; and marching and, I may say, living generally in this hot, sweltering climate, with its six months of rain, is not enviable work. However, I have gone through one regular campaign, and that as severe a one as British troops have ever performed; and above all, old man, I have met you, and we have come to be great friends, and I have learned what one fellow will do ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... to be spending my time under such enviable circumstances requires some explanation, especially when I state that the exceedingly pretty woman was not ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... has made an enviable reputation for itself wherever and whenever the boats and men have been engaged, ranked third at the beginning of the war. While not of the heaviest type, the boats were of the most improved models, and maintained on a basis that justified the belief that they would ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... as a boy, kept his father's sheep, and, being forced by heavy snow to leave them in the fold, went with his parents to the church, and there heard the Gospel which blesses those who mourn and weep, and calls those miserable who laugh, and those enviable who have a pure heart. And when he asked a bystander what he would gain who did each of these things, the man propounded to him the solitary life, and pointed out to him the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... was indisputably his leader in the courts, and for whose forensic abilities it is known, that he entertains, and has often expressed, the highest admiration. The position of the two men was singular, and to the ex-attorney not very enviable. Scarlett was in high practice before Brougham was even called to the bar. He kept a head of him in their profession throughout; and twice he had filled the first places at the bar, when the respective attainments of these eminent persons were such, that if Brougham had been placed ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... task, nor enviable the lot Of him who thus would plant, on shores unknown, And in a wild and never-trodden spot, A new-born city's first foundation stone. A sturdy courage and a fearless heart Belong to him who plays so bold ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... the papers which Levy had secured for him. The one which related to Mrs. Buckner and the prospector he laid aside at once as too contemptible to be considered, but the other interested him. Gorham was setting himself above other men who held enviable positions in the business and social world. If this affidavit was true—and Covington saw no reason to doubt its authenticity—this demigod might hesitate to emphasize his superiority. With the legality of his marriage questioned, his Czarship might be weakened; and this, as Covington ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of a Golden Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written two or three myself, and the idea took possession ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... injury or offence to others. To the last he retained his freshness of intellectual outlook, his insatiable yet discreet curiosity. Taking it as a whole, should his life be judged a singularly futile or singularly enviable one? Nothing feminine, save on strictly platonic lines, was recorded to have entered it at any period. Did that argue remarkable wisdom or defective courage, or some abnormal element in a composition otherwise deliciously mundane ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... speaking, and there was a pause for a minute or two in the conversation, when Mary Percival said, "What, then, my dear uncle, do you consider as the most enviable position in life?" ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... to be regular ranchers!" he declared, and in less than a week Nort and Dick felt that they were, indeed, on their way to this enviable goal. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... of the least enviable authors who ever lived. He had fame and fortune and friends. But he had not the constitution to enjoy his fortune, and in friendship he had not the gift of fidelity. He secretly published his correspondence with Swift and then set up a pretence that Swift had been the culprit. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... "Royal Transportation Officer." As a matter of fact, the "R" does not stand for "royal," but for "railway," and the "T" is "transport," nothing so grandiose as "transportation." Now an R.T.O.'s job, though it may be a safe one, is not enviable. He is forced to combine the qualities of booking-clerk, station-master, goods-agent, information clerk, and day and night watchman all into one. In consequence of this it is necessary for the traveller's speech and attitude to be strictly soothing and complimentary. ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... that Phyllis had another man in her eye,—the phrase was Lady Earlscourt's and it served very well to express her meaning,—she had made some careful inquiries on the subject of the girl's male visitors, and she had, of course, found out that no other man occupied that enviable position; no social oculist would be required to remove the element which, in Lady Earlscourt's estimation, caused ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... sufficient to make me more particular in the future. A large company was assembled in the parlour, which was heavy with clouds of tobacco-smoke, and brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal. Hard by the chimney stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable situation, whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to take it when the nearest of the company ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dr. Bird when he set out to make a favorable impression, and even a world's champion is apt to be flattered by the attention of one of the greatest scientists of his day, especially when that scientist has made an enviable reputation as an athlete in his college days and can talk the jargon of the champion's particular sport. Henry Ladd promptly capitulated to the charm of the doctor and allowed himself to be led away to supper at Bird's club. The supper passed off pleasantly, and when the doctor requested an ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... good colour. Under cultivation it is in no way particular; it will endure anything but being deprived of light; from its dwarf, stout, and shrubby character, it would form a useful and a handsome edging to the larger walks; and by growing it so extensively an enviable supply of flowers for cutting would be ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... old school chum, Lawrence Colby, who had since become a colonel in the state militia, had opened a military academy, which he called Colby Hall. The place was gaining an enviable reputation as a first-class institution of learning, being modeled after Putnam Hall, which, in its day, had been run somewhat on ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... Preceptress had arrived, the citizens of whatever city we had stopped in hastened to extend to her every courtesy and favor possible for them to bestow. She was the daughter of the woman who held the highest and most enviable position in the Nation. A position that only great intellect could secure ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... in the community was to be inferred. How so striking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still more leading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence of nature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. He took what fell in his way—magistracies, bank directorships, or what else, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means, always in the front social position, and, of course, in universal respect. And how, again, so quiet a spirit adventured ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... one suggested to the angry O'Neil that one of the Anglo-Irish families whom he was reviling as strangers had been four hundred years settled in Ireland, the Milesian replied, "I hate the churls as if they had come but yesterday." Mr. Macaulay seems largely endowed with this (as with a more enviable) species of memory, and he hates, for example, King Charles I as if he had been murdered only yesterday. Let us not be understood as wishing to abridge an historian's full liberty of censure—but he should not be a satirist, still less a libeller. We do not say nor think that Mr. Macaulay's ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Hex-a-poda and Myri-a-poda as the most of us know our alphabet. . . . The humble home of the learned man has become a Mecca, toward which both great and small of the scientific world are bending eager steps. . . . The career of Marvin reads like a romance, and he has fought his way to his present enviable position by sheer grit, and ability, having had to combat with all the narrow criticism and misconceptions usual in the case of a progressive thinker in a small town. Indeed, it is said that even now his native village fails to recognize the honor ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... aside for a moment from the many duties, the interesting cares and soul-stirring pleasures of your enviable situation, and read a few lines from a stranger? They come to you, not from the cold and sterile regions of the North, nor from the luxuriant yet untamed wilds of the West, but from the bright and sunny land where ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... want of suitors," said courteous Mr. Engelman. "A most majestic person. Witty and accomplished. Possessed of an enviable little fortune, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... sent to Mr. Jenkinson. Upon the whole, these circumstances, with the pleasure of shooting and boating on the river, added to the glorious view it yields, and which is enough at any time to cheer the mind, render this neighbourhood one of the most enviable situations to live in that I have seen in Ireland. The face of the country gives every circumstance of beauty. From Killodeernan Hill, behind the new house building by Mr. Holmes, the whole is seen to great advantage. The spreading part of the Shannon, ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... arrested before the grave,—at least stilled and impeded. You will smile incredulously, perhaps (for I see you do not know who I am), when I tell you that I might once have been a monarch, and that obscurity seemed to me more enviable than empire; I resigned the occasion: the tide of fortune rolled onward, and left me safe but solitary and forsaken upon the dry land. If you wonder at my choice, you will wonder still more when I tell you that I have never ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beautiful lakes and along the pleasant rivers of that broad wilderness lying between the majestic St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain. You have, in seasons of relaxation from the labors of a profession in which you have achieved such enviable distinction, indulged in the sports pertaining to that wild region. You have listened to the glad music of the woods when the morning was young, and to the solemn night voices of the forest when darkness enshrouded the earth. You are, therefore, familiar with the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... lord. I have no intentions with regard to Miss Gibson. She may be a very worthy young lady—I have no doubt she is. Lady Harriet seems determined to push me into such a position that I cannot but acknowledge myself to be—it is not enviable—not pleasant to own—but I am, in fact, a jilted man; jilted by Miss Kirkpatrick, after a tolerably long engagement. My interviews with Miss Gibson were not of the most agreeable kind—as you may conclude when I tell you she was, I believe, the instigator—certainly, she was the agent in ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... way the husband was kind, and attentive to business. But he had fallen a victim to playing cards for money. When that passion would seize him he would leave his business, his hired help, his home and wife and little one, and would lose himself for days at a time seeking to satisfy that passion. An enviable husband, father, citizen, and neighbor but for that evil; but how wretchedly that ruined all! Dr. Holland, of Springfield, Massachusetts, says: "I have all my days had a card-playing community open to my observation, and yet I am unable to believe that that which is the universal resort ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... "A very enviable situation," remarked Sparkle, "However," continued Tom, "he has done some good in the world, and may live to do more. He became a partner in the great agency house in the City, of Basset, Farquhar, and Co.; besides which, he purchased the late Mr. Whitbread's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the possession of a donkey by present, or buying, you will attain to enviable heights in the business or social world, and if single, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... knew that Julia and I would have led a tranquil, matter-of-fact, pleasant enough life together, but for the unlucky fate that had carried me across to Sark to fall in love with Olivia. There was something enviable in the tranquil prosperity I had forfeited. Guernsey was the dearest spot on earth to me, yet I was practically banished from it. Julia was, beyond all doubt, the woman I loved most, next to Olivia, but she was lost ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... hour, but his stakes were high and he played every shot. His calm, impassioned countenance bore the unmistakable stamp of the professional gambler, and, serene as a quiet mill-pond, he bore his losses or pocketed his winnings with the enviable sang froid which results from a long and intimate acquaintance with ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
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