|
|
|
More "Felicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who perish themselves at the moment they reach the pinnacle of their ambitious desires. Whence I conclude, my dear children, that there are nothing but beginnings and endings of unhappiness in this world, and that true felicity is only to be hoped for in ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... reflection that the rural philosopher, if only assured of a sympathetic hearing in an enlightened Press and provided with a suitable equipment by the ingenuity of its directors, may contemplate the vagaries of tyrannical misgovernment with fortitude and even felicity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... poetic enthusiasm of a Lucretius) very confident of the adequacy of its own conceptions. They all rather quickened the sense of emptiness in human existence, than satisfied it; {244} at the best they enabled men to "absent themselves a little while from the felicity of death." ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... attempt to describe my father's physical appearance, for that has been done with sympathy, felicity, and power of presentation in my brother's portrait here reproduced. I will say only that he was slight of build and short of stature. He is standing in the little Great Hall at Sutton, in his black overcoat and hat, ready for one ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... figure, ancient or modern, so entirely illustrates the classic definition of oratory, as consisting in action, as the statue of Patrick Henry, which seems instinct with that memorable utterance, "Give me liberty or give me death!" The inventive felicity of the design for one of the pediments of the Capitol might be unfolded as a vivid historic poem; and it requires no imagination to show that Jefferson looks the author of the Declaration of Independence. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... desirous of making a sensation, he was least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... to church, and home and dined with my wife and Deb. alone, but merry and in good humour, which is, when all is done, the greatest felicity of all, and after dinner she to read in the "Illustre Bassa" the plot of yesterday's play, which is most exactly the same, and so to church I alone, and thence to see Sir W. Pen, who is ill again, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... hundred winds and draughts down the chimney, or sputters out for want of feeding. And then—and then it is Chloe, in the dark, stark awake, and Strephon snoring unheeding; or vice versa, 'tis poor Strephon that has married a heartless jilt, and awoke out of that absurd vision of conjugal felicity, which was to last for ever, and is over like any other dream. One and other has made his bed, and so must lie in it, until that final day when life ends, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... detached them both from their duty and religion. Heaven and earth! how dangerous, how irresistible is the power of infatuation! While I remained in the midst of this blind security, waiting for the nuptials of my daughter, and indulging myself with the vain prospect of her approaching felicity, Antonia found means to protract the negotiations of the marriage, by representing that it would be a pity to deprive Serafina of the opportunity she then had of profiting by the German's instructions; and, upon ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... song, enwrapped in feather, Harbinger of pleasant weather, Sing softly unto me. Your tuneful notes at morn and even Are antepasts of joys in heaven That bring felicity. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... "Having said these words, the divine and puissant Narayana in the form of Indra, accompanied by the Maruts, repaired to his eternal abode of inexhaustible felicity. When, O sinless one, duties as practised by the good had such a course in days of old, what man of cleansed soul and learning is there that would disregard the Kshatriya? Like blind men lost on the way, creatures acting and abstaining ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... would board the Rock of Gibraltar itself, and carry it by storm—we poor fellows, valiant Captain! have gazed round upon this ravishing landscape till we can gaze no more. Will Captain Claret vouchsafe one day's liberty, and so assure himself of eternal felicity, since, in our flowing cups, he will be ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... raise of birdes small, Upon this wise, Oh, blessit be the hour That thou was chosen to be our principal! Welcome to be our Princess of honour, Our pearl, our pleasance, and our paramour, Our peace, our play, our plain felicity; Christ ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... general that it may be called proper to mankind in every climate; so deeply rooted also in human belief, that it is found to survive in states of society during which all other fictions of the same order are entirely dismissed from influence. Mr. Crabbe, with his usual felicity, has called the belief in ghosts "the last ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... changing, did not fail soon to disturb the felicity of this union. This was occasioned by the wound received by the Admiral, which had wrought the Huguenots up to a degree of desperation. The Queen my mother was reproached on that account in such terms by the elder Pardaillan and some other principal Huguenots, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of blood. After the death of the first William Emerson, the Concord minister, his widow, Mr. Emerson's grandmother, married, as has been mentioned, his successor, Dr. Ezra Ripley. The grandson spent much time in the family of Dr. Ripley, whose character he has drawn with exquisite felicity in a sketch read before The Social Circle of Concord, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for November, 1883. Mr. Emerson says of him: "He was identified with the ideas and forms of the New England Church, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... case, is the felicity of the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Stinginess has fled from these royal abodes: suppression ceases; your Besenval may go peaceably to sleep, sure that he shall awake unplundered. Smiling Plenty, as if conjured by some enchanter, has returned; scatters contentment from her ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of his life, in the prime of youth and the beauty of youth, he knew the illusions of life for what they were; he despised the world, and made the utmost of the world. His felicity could not have been of the bourgeois kind, rejoicing in periodically recurrent bouilli, in the comforts of a warming-pan, a lamp of a night, and a new pair of slippers once a quarter. Nay, rather he seized upon existence as a monkey snatches ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... necessity of choice would have robbed his manner of that easy self-sufficiency which is one of its greatest charms. Had he succumbed, he would often have fallen away from sober fidelity to Nature. As the matter stands, his great felicity is that he never goes beyond his depth,—and this, not so much from fear, as from ignorance. His insight is anything but profound. He has no suspicion of deeper waters. Through the whole course of the present story, he never attempts to fathom ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... every expectation, and the whole colour of my future life, can be so completely altered? Instead of despair, felicity. Instead of one dark, unvaried scene, a prospect of still increasing pleasure. Instead of standing alone, a monument of misfortune, an object to awaken compassion in the most obdurate, shall I stand alone, the happiest of mortals? Yes, I will never hereafter complain that nature denied me a ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... drunkard, and the man of loose morals are equally contemptible: though the brutes obey instinct, they never exceed the bounds of moderation; and besides, it is beneath the dignity of man to place felicity in the service ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... But how can I act? What can I do? Go to your own country, dear Monsieur Gouache, think no more of us, or of our daughters, marry a woman of your own nation, and you will not be disappointed in your dreams of matrimonial felicity!" ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... of the lovely palaces whose lofty walls of white bask in the warm sun of the Val d'Arno, lives the last surviving branch of the noble house of Carrati in the person of the peerless Signora Florinda. Joyful and happy in domestic felicity, there, too, is Carlton, the American artist, surrounded by everything that wealth can procure, or refined taste suggest, and master of the unbounded estates of Carrati, but above all, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... than her father had been by the counsel of Cassiodorus, and availed herself of his fertile pen for the proclamations in which she addressed the subjects of her son. In writing to the Roman Senate, Cassiodorus made his child-sovereign enlarge on the felicity of the country in which the accession of a new ruler could take place without war or sedition or loss of any kind to the republic. "On account of the unsurpassed glory of the Amal race, the promise of my youth has been preferred to the merits ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... as if the Nation could scarce furnish honest men enow to supply all those imployments. So that the Kings of England are in nothing inferiour to other Princes, save in being more abridged from injuring their own subjects: but have as large a field as any of external felicity, wherein to exercise their own virtue, and so reward and incourage it in others. In short, there is nothing that comes nearer in Government to the Divine Perfection, than where the Monarch, as with us, injoys a capacity of doing all the good imaginable to mankind, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... with a hope dearer than any other which I cherish. But, if I were standing on the threshold of heaven itself, and these loved ones were beckoning me to come in, and I had the choice between an eternity of felicity in their presence and eternal sleep, I would take the sleep rather than take this endless joy at the cost of the unceasing and unrelieved torment of the meanest soul that ever lived. And I would have no great respect for any man who would not. I would not care to purchase my joy ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... instant transition of the voice from the dramatic to the descriptive tone was unfailing and extraordinary. This was perfection of art. Nor was the evenness of the variety less striking. Every character was indicated with the same felicity. Of course the previous image in the hearer's mind must be considered in estimating the effect. The reader does not create the character, the writer has done that; and now he refreshes it into unwonted vividness, as when a wet sponge is passed over an old picture. Scrooge, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... with his haples fall, Affrick to vs doth former ayde denay, O who will helpe men in aduersity: Yet let vs shewe in our declining state, That strength of minde, that vertues constancy, That erst we did in our felicity, Though Fortune fayles vs lets not fayle our selues, Remember boy thou art a Romaine borne, And Catoes Sonne, of me do vertue learne; 1050 Fortune of others, aboue althings see Thou prize thy Countries loue and liberty, All ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... not married to that man Guidascarpi, I presume? No, no: you are merely his . . . friend. May I have the felicity of hearing you call me your friend? Why, you tremble! are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... more eloquent than any words. At last de Sigognac said softly, "I can scarcely believe even yet in the reality of so much bliss. Oh! what a strange, contradictory destiny is mine. You loved me, my darling, because I was poor and unhappy—and thus my past misery was the direct cause of my present felicity. A troupe of strolling actors, who chanced to seek refuge under my crumbling roof, held in reserve for me an angel of purity and goodness—a hostile encounter has given me a devoted friend—and, most wonderful of all, your forcible abduction led to your meeting ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... pre-existence than Wordsworth, for he refers to it more than once; and The Retreate, which is probably the best known of all his poems and must have furnished some suggestion for the Immortality Ode, is based upon it. Vaughan has occasionally an almost perfect felicity of mystical expression, a power he shares with Donne, Keats, Rossetti, and Wordsworth. His ideas then produce their effect through the medium of art, directly on the feelings. The poem called Quickness is perhaps the best example of this peculiar quality, which cannot ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... life and the joys of wedded love, with an agreeable, virtuous, well-born, unambitious, unenterprising husband. All this I found in the Earl of Clanricarde: and believe me, madam, I enjoyed more solid felicity in Ireland with him, than I ever had possessed with my two former husbands, in the pride of their glory, when England and all Europe resounded with ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... we have still a SEAMAN left, who has shewn that the race of heroes is not yet extinct among us, in ADMIRAL ANSON, that great and fortunate commander; who enjoys the singular felicity, in an age of sloth, luxury, and corruption, that his ease is the result of his labour, his title the reward of his merit, and that his wealth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... pleasure, bliss, ecstasy, gratification, rapture, cheer, enjoyment, joy, rejoicing, comfort, felicity, merriment, satisfaction, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... worms and filthy creepers increase, so do evil and corrupt thoughts in an idle person; the soul is contaminated.... Thus much I dare boldly say: he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy—let them have all things in abundance and felicity that heart can wish and desire, all contentment—so long as he, or she, or they, are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in body or mind, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... life drew to its close, it was with all the blessings "which should accompany old age." His domestic life had been one of felicity. His eldest and only surviving son, Edward Browne, had become a scholar after his father's own heart; and though not inheriting his genius, was already renowned in London, one of the physicians to the King, and in a way ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Lind, I suspect that I was myself the greatest lion of the evening; for a good many persons sought the felicity of knowing me, and had little or nothing to say when that honor and happiness was conferred on them. It is surely very wrong and ill-mannered in people to ask for an introduction unless they are prepared to make talk; it throws too great an expense and trouble on the wretched lion, who is compelled, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was not merely a congenial felicity and energy of utterance that Montaigne brought to bear on his English reader, though the more we consider this quality of spontaneity in the essayist the more we shall realise its perennial fascination. The culture-content of Montaigne's book is more than even the self-revelation of an extremely ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... prudent council, once executed with that dauntless daring, which alone stands for armor, and for weapons, and, by the Gods! for bulwarks of defence, must win us liberty and glory, more over wealth, and luxury, and power, in which names is embraced the sum of all felicity. Therefore, now, I exhort you not; for if the woes which you would shun, the prizes which you shall attain, exhort you not, all words of man, all portents of the Gods, are dumb, and voiceless, and in vain! Mark the day only, and remember, that if not ye, at ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... mere command of words, every achievement of those even who, apart from him, are great? I could fancy that, in The Tempest, he wrought with a peculiar consciousness of this power, smiling as the word of inimitable felicity, the phrase of incomparable cadence, was whispered to him by the Ariel that was his genius. He seems to sport with language, to amuse himself with new discovery of its resources. From king to beggar, men of every rank and every order of mind ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... superior power—deity, king, or brahmin—seems to be with them a natural and overpowering inclination. Next to this feeling is the love of contemplation and of abstract reasoning. A dreamy life of worship and thought is the highest felicity of the Asiatic Aryan. On the other hand, if the ancient Europeans were what the Basques and the American Indians are now, they were a people imbued with the strongest possible sense of personal independence, and, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... means ambitious of reigning. A plain country gentleman, with a mind (thank Heaven!) well at ease, and things generally, both external and internal, being in his case consentaneous with happiness, would appear to have reached the acme of human felicity; and no one but a fool cares, in any world, to exemplify the dog's preference for the shadow. Unenvious, therefore, of royalty, and fully crediting that never-quoted sentiment of Shakspeare's "Uneasy," ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... curious mixture of ardent passion and melting, sentimental tenderness. At one moment the Bacchante, drinking long draughts of love and life from his lips, at another, the innocent girl who sought and found a chaste felicity in the mere rapturous contemplation of the man she adored. The longer she knew him, the deeper she penetrated into his character, the more did the Bacchante recede and yield her place to the Psyche. The allegory of Wilhelm's ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... nations, wearied with mental enjoyments, behold nothing in the refinement of manners but the germ of depravity, they are pleased with the idea, that in some distant region, in the first dawn of civilization, infant society enjoys pure and perpetual felicity. To this sentiment Tacitus owed a part of his success, when he sketched for the Romans, subjects of the Caesars, a picture of the manners of the inhabitants of Germany. The same sentiment gives an ineffable charm to the narrative of those ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... felicity with which during the three days of their engagement he had been able to take that note with her, still more at the entertainment of her shy response. It gave him a new and enlarged perception of himself as a man acquainted with passion. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... end, on the Middlesex side, Israel's heart was prophetically heavy; foreknowing, that being of this race, felicity ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the pedants do not even dream and could not comprehend, or they would not be pedants. He was thus furnished with infinite stores of illustrative matter, never to overpower, but always to accompany and season, his knowledge of life. In a few instances this felicity of adoption has been recognised, but not a tenth part of it has ever been systematically put on record. The more widely and the longer a man reads, the more constantly will he find that Scott has been before him, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... his faultless medal and his admirable bust, has succeeded with rare felicity in reproducing for posterity this rugged, shaven face, full of laborious years; a peasant face, stamped with originality, under the wide felt hat of Provence; touched with geniality and benevolence, yet reflecting a world of energy. Sicard has fixed for ever this strange mask; the thin ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... who revived a Pagan worship in the gardens of the Florentine Academy, their direct influence was purely intellectual. But the language of the Hebrew, the idiom of the Hellenistic Greek, lent themselves with a curious felicity to the purposes of translation. As a mere literary monument the English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, while its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance, the standard ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... cannot be painted." But the sage who invented the Franklin stove had no disdain of small utilities; and in general the last word of his philosophy is well expressed in a passage of his Autobiography: "Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune, that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day; thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... amiable man, a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But he seems to have thought that going to Court was like going to heaven; that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision; that the exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflection to all who were suffered to stand at their toilettes, or to bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's objections, and himself escorted her ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to listen than to speak, his conversation, when he did talk, had no trace of anything the least like insanity about it. He had evidently read, not generally only, but deeply as well, and could apply his reading with singular felicity to the illustration of almost any subject under discussion, neither obtruding his knowledge absurdly, nor concealing it affectedly. His manner was in itself a standing protest against such a nickname as "Mad Monkton." He was ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... express my sensations? I was quite overcome, and, bending down, pronounced this vow: "Beautiful lips, which the angels guard, never will I seek to profane your purity with a kiss." And yet, my friend, oh, I wish—but my heart is darkened by doubt and indecision—could I but taste felicity, and then die to expiate the ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... and toward each other. A few days had matured them beyond what might have been looked for in as many years. Life suddenly put on more sober hues, and the future laid off its smiles and beckonings onward to greener fields and mountain-heights of felicity. There was a certain air of manly self-confidence, a firmer, more deliberate way of expressing himself on all subjects, and an evidence of mental clearness and strength, which gave to Irene the impression of power and superiority not wholly agreeable ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... his wings, and crowed among the feathered tribe. But alas! a fair, white partlet has torn his crest out, and he shall crow no more. You will generally find him of a morning, smelling round a beef-cart, with domestic felicity written in every line of his countenance; and sometimes meet him in a cross-street at noon, hurrying homeward, with a beef-steak on a wooden skewer, or a fresh fish, with a piece of tarred twine run ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I did not still seem inclinable to do the lady justice, if she would accept of me? It would be, she dared to say, the greatest felicity the family could know (she would answer for one) that this ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... task I have set myself let me perform with steadiness. The felicity of that period was marred by no gloomy anticipations. The future, like the present, was serene. Time was supposed to have only new delights in store. I mean not to dwell on previous incidents longer than is necessary to illustrate ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... spectator might well be filled with that Amor intellectualis Dei, the beatific vision of the vita contemplativa, which some of the greatest thinkers of all ages, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, have regarded as the only conceivable eternal felicity; and the vision of illimitable suffering, as if sensitive beings were unregarded animalcules which had got between the bits of glass of the kaleidoscope, which mars the prospect to us poor mortals, in no wise alters the fact that order is lord ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... when God is so thoroughly master of us that nothing resists Him: then our heart is truly His kingdom. The other way is, that by possessing God, who is the sovereign Lord, we possess the kingdom of God, which is the height of felicity, and the end for which we were created. As it has been said, to serve God ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... between individuals, which, no matter what forms of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence, without which, felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be attained? Our notion is, that the more we can assimilate life to the existence which our noblest ideas can conceive to be that of spirits on the other side of the grave, why, the more we approximate to a divine happiness ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... an excellent inn at Chapel-house, where he expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life. 'There is no private house, (said he,) in which people can enjoy themselves ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... deins, I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco; it's good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers: there were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight, one of them (they say) will ne'er escape it, he voided a ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... catastrophe of a romance must be inevitably postponed, that suspense must be prolonged, and that the two lovers whose fate we have become interested in, cannot possibly be made happy in the first or even in the second volume. But the expedients employed to delay this term of felicity, are sometimes such as the laws of a civilized society ought really to proscribe. I will mention the first example that occurs to me, though your better memory will directly suggest many more striking and more flagrant. It is taken from the work of no mean artist; indeed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... interesting figures of a time when learning was at a premium; he was a big man amongst big men, and even in this irreverential time genius uncovers at the mention of his name. His versatility was astounding; with equal facility and felicity he could conduct a literary symposium and a cock-fight, a theological discussion and an angling expedition, a historical or a political inquiry ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... permanently into the perilous and invidious station of absolute supremacy which he afterwards occupied. The felicity of Augustus was often vaunted by antiquity, (with whom success was not so much a test of merit as itself a merit of the highest quality,) and in no instance was this felicity more conspicuous than in the first act of his entrance upon the political scene. No doubt his friends and enemies alike thought of him, at the moment of Csar's assassination, as we now think of a young man heir-elect to some person of immense wealth, cut off ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... plan is to call on the "object of your affections" in the forenoon—propose a walk—mamma consents, in the hope you will declare your intentions. Wander through the green fields—talk of "love in a cottage,"—"requited attachment"—and "rural felicity." If a child happens to pass, of course intimate your fondness for the dear little creatures—this will be a splendid hit. If the coast is clear, down you must fall on your knee, right or left (there is no rule as to this), and swear never to rise until she agrees to take you "for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... a rosebud at her waiting suitor, and for the first time fully displayed to him her beauteous face. From this moment new life dawned on our Mirza, and for six weeks he basked in the sunshine of felicity ere threatening clouds loomed up in his horizon. Then Ibrahim Chan returned from the war, and with him came his daughter's suitor. A troop of horsemen had been despatched to Avaria for the bridal gift, and on their return they were to conduct Achmed Chan and his chosen lady home. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... been inexpressibly thrilling. Not since his prep school days had he held a girl's hand, and the brook and the stars sang together in ineffable chorus. It was bewildering to find that so trifling an act could afford sensations so charged with all the felicity of forbidden delight. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... him first at Bayonne; then long subsequently beneath the brick wall at Novogorod; then beside the Bosphorus; and last at—at—Oh, my respectable and cherished friend, where was it that I had last the felicity of seeing your well-remembered and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... The part alluded to, in Warton, is at the commencement of his second Dissertation "On the Introduction of Learning into Great Britain." After rambling with the utmost felicity, among the libraries, and especially the monastic ones, of the earlier and middle ages—he thus checks himself by saying, that "in pursuit of these anecdotes, he is imperceptibly seduced into later periods, or rather is deviating from ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had known his character as displayed here. We have now a most authentic and complete development of the process by which that character was moulded and built abroad. The President of the Massachusetts Historical Society has been privileged to do a service which, with most rare felicity, embraces his indebtedness to his own good name, to his official place, and to the city and State which have invested him with so many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... rankling corruptions of mortality had not yet been lifted before my staring eyes, and I felt as one gazing at a beautiful world, and regarded the fair maid as the angel destined to unfold all its brilliance to my vision, and to hold the chalice to my lips while I sipped the nectar of perennial felicity. Alas, that such moments are brief! They fly like the dreams of a startled slumberer, and when they vanish once, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... bestrode by Death.' But imaginative power of this kind is not the same thing as that susceptibility to the minutest properties and unseen qualities of natural objects which reveals itself in chance epithet of telling felicity, or phrase that opens to us hidden lights. Our generation is more likely to think too much than too little of this; for its favourite poet, however narrow in subject and feeble in moral treatment, is without any peer in the exquisitely original, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... yet had my delight in both. But now I much more pity him that rejoiceth in his wickedness, than him who is thought to suffer hardship, by missing some pernicious pleasure, and the loss of some miserable felicity. This certainly is the truer mercy, but in it grief delights not. For though he that grieves for the miserable, be commended for his office of charity; yet had he, who is genuinely compassionate, rather there were nothing ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... boundaries he may take a pot shot at them. I remember that something more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow's books had been sold in England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie—and you will observe the felicity of its being a game pie, ferae naturae always you see—was the only honorarium he had ever received from this country for reprinting ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... visit gave nothing but pleasure to Leontes. He recommended the friend of his youth to the queen's particular attention, and seemed in the presence of his dear friend and old companion to have his felicity quite completed. They talked over old times; their school-days and their youthful pranks were remembered, and recounted to Hermione, who always took a cheerful ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... mined the soil with his talons, and now the mud-stained sapper is suddenly clad in the finest raiment, and provided with wings that rival the bird's; moreover, he is drunken with heat and flooded with light, the supreme terrestrial joy. His cymbals will never suffice to celebrate such felicity, so ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... these habitations, that these people, or at least a portion of them, were constant residents on this spot, which, indeed, seemed admirably calculated to afford in luxurious profusion all that constitutes Esquimaux felicity. This, however, did not afterward prove to be absolutely the case; for though Igloolik (as perhaps the name may imply) is certainly one of their principal and favourite rendezvous, yet we subsequently ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments, which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motives to bias his counsel. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... father had left her no more than a poor five thousand pounds, which, with what little she had saved of the interest since his death, was all she had to depend on: indeed, if she had placed her chief felicity in wealth, she should not have been so forward in destroying her own expectations, by advising and promoting the event at which they were now so happily assembled; but she hoped she should always have virtue enough to postpone any interested consideration, when it should happen ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... trusted bookkeeper for one of our business concerns, courted and married a lovely young girl from a neighboring town, and settled down to a life of domestic felicity, esteemed by all, questioned ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... retiring to his home for the night, he stood there in mental prayer, his face turned to the setting sun, which sunk beyond a sea of clouds, tinged with the most gorgeous colours, and his mind away among the bright realms of eternal felicity. A faint breeze had arisen, and the heavy clouds began to sail along, denoting rain, when he gave his orders to his faithful dog, to gather his sheep for the night, and urged him to be active, to enable him to proceed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... permanent place as one of the most perfect of Wordsworth's compositions. It has much of the fearless felicity of youth; and its imagery has the sharp and vivid outline of ideas fresh from the brain. The subject—the development of his own great powers—raises him above that willful dallying with trivialities which repels us in some of his other works. And there is real vitality in the theme, both ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... wicked practices as cannot be named in a modern book. They actually reckoned the years, not by the consuls, but by the men they had lived with. To be childless, and therefore without the natural restraint of a family, was looked upon as a singular felicity. Plutarch correctly touched the point when he said that the Romans married to be heirs and not to have heirs. Of offences that do not rise to the dignity of atrocity, but which excite our loathing, such as gluttony and the most debauched luxury, the annals of the times furnish disgusting ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... is hard a wife should not know, and no honest tradesman ought to refuse it; and above all, it is a great pity the wives of tradesmen, who so often are reduced to great inconvenience for want of it, should so far withstand their own felicity, as to refuse to be thus made acquainted with their business, by which weak and foolish pride they expose themselves, as I have observed, to the misfortune of throwing the business away, when they may come to want it, and when the keeping it up might be the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... the attempt to actualise the transcendental religious ideal may, when pursued with ardour, very easily conflict with the morality which makes domestic felicity its end. And again—as we see in the anti-militarist movement in France, in the history of the early Christian Church, in the case of the Quakers and in the teachings of Tolstoy—it may quite well set itself in conflict with national ideals, and dictate ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... took all the guests by boat to Windsor, and very soon the little party at the Antelope was in a state of such perfect felicity as became a proverb with them all their lives afterwards. It was an inn wherein to take one's ease, a large hostel full of accommodation for man and horse, with a big tapestried room of entertainment below, where meals were taken, with an oriel ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "friendship." I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am "too old;" [3] but nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... profession or calling of these Persians—whether they were lawyers or lawgivers, grammarians or warriors—they all, or almost all, adored verbal felicity and tried their hands at verse. Poetry may be called the gold dust on ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... of Scotland, than any other collection with which I am acquainted. Burns gathered oral airs, and fitted them with words of mirth or of woe, of tenderness or of humour, with unexampled readiness and felicity; he eked out old fragments and sobered down licentious strains so much in the olden spirit and feeling, that the new cannot be distinguished from the ancient; nay, he inserted lines and half lines, with such skill and nicety, that antiquarians are perplexed to settle ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... for their hospitality. The narrative carries us, as a matter of course, to a Himalayan Elysium, with its balls, picnics, and its flirtations, among which the leading lady of the piece is drawn to the brink of indiscretion, but steps happily back again into the secure haven of domestic felicity. A good deal of excellent light comedy and sparkling dialogue will always maintain for this novel a creditable place upon the Indian list; and as an indirect illustration of the social wall that separates ordinary English folk from the population which surrounds them, it is complete, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... particular affection in human nature; whereas to rejoice in the good of others is only a consequence of the general affection of love and good-will to them. The reason and account of which matter is this: when a man has obtained any particular advantage or felicity, his end is gained; and he does not in that particular want the assistance of another: there was therefore no need of a distinct affection towards that felicity of another already obtained; neither would such affection directly carry him on to do good to ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... style, and forcible in argument, this treatise is distinguished by great felicity of illustration ... a masterly specimen of reasoning ... a most valuable contribution of the theological ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... lucidity. The result is the throwing of an additional flood of light on the already dazzling truths of Holy Writ. The uses of such a work are self-obvious; and when we add that the plan is carried out with all the lucidity, faithfulness, piety, honest reasoning, and felicity of thought and expression which mark its predecessors, we have only said enough to mark our sense of its value."—Church and ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... day. Bless, we pray Thee, all the workmen who shall be engaged in the erection of this edifice; keep them from all forms of accidents and harm; grant them in health and prosperity to live; and finally, we hope, after this life, through Thy mercy and forgiveness to attain everlasting joy and felicity in Thy bright mansion, in Thy holy temple, not made with hands, eternal in ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... and his felicity, like that of most simple folk, reposed on a simple basis. It was merely this—that Spring had returned to ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... many hundred miles from our families in the howling wilderness, I believe few would have equally enjoyed the happiness we experienced. I often observed to my brother, "You see now how little nature requires, to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence; ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... becoming leaders in the state and in the church, abounding, too, in riches and living in luxury and magnificence, and on the other hand sees worshipers of God despised and poor. A worshiper of self and of nature believes that standing and riches are the greatest and the one felicity possible, thus felicity itself. If he has some thought of God as a result of worship begun in childhood, he calls them divine blessings, and as long as he is not elated by them he thinks that there is a God and worships ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... times drawn to the meeting at Norwich, and even spoke on different occasions with her wonted fire and persuasiveness. It seemed as if her powerful memory was revived, seeing that the stores of Scripture which she had made hers were now drawn upon with singular aptness and felicity. After paying one or two farewell visits to North Repps and Runcton she returned once more to Upton Lane. Once settled there, she received many marks of sympathy from the excellent of all denominations, as well as from the noble and rich. The Duchess of Sutherland and her ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... also during these happy weeks was making a little secret hoard of money, which further considerably added to the good lady's felicity. ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... organisation which held his little world together was determined to put itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska's conduct, or the completeness of Archer's domestic felicity. All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely engaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of, suspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary; ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Mode" contains some good instances of the neatness and felicity with which the author floods a whole stanza with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... "The remembrance of domestic felicity, and of the sweets of society, called forth a sigh from every heart which felt the tender ties of filial or parental affection. We are the first Europeans, and, I believe, I may add, the first human ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... for whatever was excellent in others. No happiness was so great to him as the conferring of happiness on others, and I am glad to write myself his eternal debtor for much of my enjoyment in England, for he introduced me to many lifelong friendships, and he inaugurated for me much of that felicity which springs from intercourse with men and women whose books are the solace of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... march, and an elder son and brother just mounting his horse with a view to coming to our rescue. We followed the retreating army through the Black Swamp road all that weary day, and broke a twenty-four hours' fast at sunset. We had the supreme felicity of extending the hospitalities of our humble house in York to Mr. Lawrence, whom we all revered and loved as a father, towards the close of the war, on his way back from captivity." [Footnote: Case ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... co-operation. We are impelled here to reiterate the slogan which Mr. Daas has so frequently printed in his various journals: "Welcome the Recruits!". Such a welcome is certain to react with double felicity upon the giver. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... dying request, Mr. Gooch. Only one who has loved and lost can know the nature of that obligation." Mr. Gooch sniffed impatiently. Conjugal felicity was a subject that ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... blue-jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... be allowed that both his tragedies and comedies are full of strong and striking thoughts, which show a searching inquisition into the worst parts of human nature. Occasionally he expresses a general truth with great felicity, as when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Mrs. Leaver are pronounced by Mrs. Starling, a widow lady who lost her husband when she was young, and lost herself about the same-time—for by her own count she has never since grown five years older—to be a perfect model of wedded felicity. 'You would suppose,' says the romantic lady, 'that they were lovers only just now engaged. Never was such happiness! They are so tender, so affectionate, so attached to each other, so enamoured, that positively nothing can ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... evil and corrupt thoughts in an idle person; the soul is contaminated . . . Thus much I dare boldly say: he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy—let them have all things in abundance, all felicity that heart can wish and desire, all contentment—so long as he, or she, or they, are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in body or mind, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... serene, happy, &c. And of all mortal men they alone ([4821]Calcagninus holds) are free from calumny; qui divitiis, magistratu et gloria florent, injuria lacessimus, we backbite, wrong, hate renowned, rich, and happy men, we repine at their felicity, they are undeserving we think, fortune is a stepmother to us, a parent to them. "We envy" (saith [4822]Isocrates) "wise, just, honest men, except with mutual offices and kindnesses, some good turn or other, they extort this love from us; only fair persons we love at first sight, desire their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... blue. He had spoken and found that the dream of his boyhood and the hope of his youth had become the proud triumph of his manhood. Mildred Kinloch loved him! loved him as sincerely as when they were both children! What higher felicity was to be thought of? And what a motive for exertion had he now! He would be worthy of her, and the world should acknowledge that the heiress had not stooped when she mated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... "The muted felicity I have witnessed about my arrival is explained, then," I ventured, "Excitement that the end is near and victory close at hand, yet that feeling subdued by the realization that a period of deeper darkness must first be ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... not even give Mulcahy a—a strike for his money,' said the voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called 'trouble' of any kind as the pinnacle of felicity. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... indulged. Pushti[624] or well-being is the special grace of God and the elect are called Pushti-jiva. They depend entirely on God's grace and are contrasted with Maryada-jivas, or those who submit to moral discipline. The highest felicity is not mukti or liberation but the eternal service of Krishna and eternal participation in ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and down Hind; till Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty—O Heaven! one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... one wife will be the most averse to take another. On the contrary, the loss of happiness which he feels when he loses her necessarily urges him to endeavour to be again placed in the situation which constituted his former felicity. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... another test, to pass which a man must not only express his spirit with sincerity, but must also have a strong and original spirit. It will be our business now to search out, delimit and define, not only Mr. Belloc's nicety and felicity of expression, but also the value of the thing which ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... out his arms in despair, and called loudly for the professor to restore him to his original state of silent felicity in the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the laws of computation, as having missed by a single chance; and I could not forbear to revolve the consequences which such a bounteous allotment would have produced, if it had happened to me. This dream of felicity, by degrees, took possession of my imagination. The great delight of my solitary hours was to purchase an estate, and form plantations with money which once might have been mine, and I never met my friends but I spoiled ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of the sketches in Professor Tyler's well-known 'History,' these monographs have much of the brevity of their original purpose; and they are marked by the same picturesqueness of treatment, the same vivacity of expression, and the same felicity of statement, that characterize ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... attempted in Scotland, the people to be orderers of things." This distinguished prelate preached that disobedience to the queen was a greater crime than sacrilege or adultery, for obedience is the root of all virtues and the cause of all felicity, and "rebellion is not a single fault, like theft or murder, but the cesspool and swamp of all possible sins against God and man." Bonner was charged by the government of Mary to preach that all rebels ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and had contrived a private method to double up a number of effeminate antagonists in succession. But, in all his reveries, he had never anticipated peril to Miss Minford from a falling board; nor had it occurred to him that the supreme felicity of saving her from death or injury would ever be the lot ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... themselves at the first misunderstanding, although, too often, the first quarrel is but the prelude to others of a more violent kind, that end in severing the most sacred of all bonds, or rendering the life that might have been one of the purest felicity, an existence of misery. When Edward comes home to-night, forget every thing but your own error, and freely confess that. Then, all will be sunshine in a moment, although the light will fall and sparkle upon ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... different. She was invariably anxious to hear further anecdotes concerning relations and friends, and was such a docile pupil in domestic matters, that the old lady had the felicity of practically ruling two households instead of one. In the fervour of her resolve to turn over a new leaf, Bridgie had made no reservations, but had placed herself and her accounts in Miss Munns's ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of all his productions in fiction, and it affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like the same adequacy and felicity."—Boston Beacon. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... accouchement. Still, she was not the mother of a future King. The people looked upon her as belonging to them more than she had done before, and faction was silenced by the general delight. But she had not yet attained the climax of her felicity. A second pregnancy gave a new excitement to the nation; and, at length, on the 22nd October, 1781, dawned the day ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had made him really afraid of speaking his notions concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... repeated action of leaders. These exaggerate the discontent; they persuade the discontented that the government is the sole cause of all the trouble, especially of the prevailing dearth, and assure men that the new system proposed by them will engender an age of felicity. These ideas germinate, propagating themselves by suggestion and contagion, and the moment arrives when ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... her guest with Charles Stuart and his father, and went all the way over to The Dale to explain Elizabeth's case to Miss Gordon. And Annie was so radiant, and John was so admiring, that Elizabeth fairly glowed in the family felicity, and the sun went down behind the Long Hill ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... with dry grasses. The nest is placed in bushes or vines from eight to ten feet from the ground. Three or four white eggs, speckled with brown, are laid, and it is probable that in the South two broods are raised each season. The home life of Cardinals is a pattern of domestic felicity, so true are the sexes to each other. Even in winter they seem to be paired, for a male and a female are always seen together. However, during the season of incubation the tender solicitude of the male for his mate is best shown. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... them, a strong, beautiful boy, worthy to be the heir of such a house, the heart of the rose was filled with overflowing fragrance. Happiness was heaped upon happiness. Every wish brought its own accomplishment. Wealth, honour, beauty, peace, love—it was an abundance of felicity so great that the soul of Hermas could hardly ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... escaping from his conflicting and profitless emotions, he turned to several letters, which had for hours lain unopened on his table. Every one, the seal of which he broke, seemed to mock his state—every one seemed to attest the felicity of his fortunes. Some bespoke the admiring sympathy of the highest and wisest—one offered him a brilliant opening into public life—another (it was from Cleveland) was fraught with all the proud and rapturous approbation of a prophet whose auguries are at last fulfilled. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fortunately for the country, brought to a pass wherein no retrograde movement can take place, whatever may be the obstructions offered by the interested proprietors of borough influence, or by persons whose ideas of Government have been formed under the tuition of preceding Administrations. It is rare felicity for a nation to be governed by men having the liberality and justice which induce them to confer free institutions peacefully on the country; institutions which merit the gratitude of all who now exist, and will receive the unqualified applause ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... their first amusement, and the society of each other was their chief happiness, the change she now perceived in her mind and manners equally concerned and surprised her. She found her insensible to friendship, indifferent to her husband, and negligent of all social felicity. Dress, company, parties of pleasure, and public places, seemed not merely to occupy all her time; but to gratify all her wishes. Cecilia, in whose heart glowed the warmest affections and most generous virtue, was cruelly depressed and mortified by this disappointment; yet ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... genius and no depth of feeling can confer a momentary interest. Here and there, indeed, the pompous utterance invests them with an unlucky air of absurdity. 'Let no man from this time,' is the comment in one of his stories, 'suffer his felicity to depend on the death of his aunt.' Every actor, of course, uses the same dialect. A gay young gentleman tells us that he used to amuse his companions by giving them notice of his friends' oddities. 'Every man,' he says, 'has some habitual ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... have supplied a solitary text to meet any one of the manifold wrongs with which woman, in her household life, is continually pressed by her tyrannic taskmaster, man,—we feel that we have only paid back one grain, hardly one, of that mountain of more than gold it is our felicity to owe her. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... have felicity in replying to a question, others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question. In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... out of the world the social evils it portrayed will probably preserve longest the picture of them as they then were. Thus far, indeed, he had written nothing to which in a greater or less degree this felicity did not belong. At the time of which I am speaking, the debtors' prisons described in Pickwick, the parochial management denounced in Oliver, and the Yorkshire schools exposed in Nickleby, were all actual existences,—which now ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... interest what you say of the political omens in England. I could wish our country a better comprehension of its felicity. But government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world should last his day. We have had in different parts of the country mobs and moblike legislation, and even moblike judicature, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for it. Our War must now be an Offensive War; and what I am pleading for, concerns only the bare Defensive Part. Most of our present Generals and Officers are fill'd with the true Sprit of Liberty (a most rare thing) which demonstrates the Felicity of her Majesty's Reign, and her standing upon a true Bottom, beyond any other Instance that can be given; insomuch, that considering how great and happy we have been under the Government of Queens, I have sometimes doubted, whether ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... between the King, my master, and the United States of America, I will spare no pains to preserve it by all the means in my power, being assured of a reciprocity of equal good offices in observing the treaty with good faith, ever keeping it in view that the felicity and glory of nations are deeply concerned in the advantages of a wise and prudently ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... master fingered the notes on the sharp edge, his head on one side and his eyes closed—his whole appearance that of one absorbed in intent inward listening. But then suddenly his face beamed with felicity, his whole figure contracted in a frenzy of delight, one foot clutched at the air as though bewitched, as though he were playing a harp with his toes—Master Andres was all at once a musical idiot and a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... found therein signs of most events that ever happened unto him. Or that there is much considerable in that doctrine of Cheiromancy, that spots in the top of the Nails do signifie things past; in the middle, things present; and at the bottom, events to come. That White specks presage our felicity; Blue ones our misfortunes. That those in the Nail of the Thumb have significations of honour, those in the fore-Finger, of riches, and so respectively in other Fingers (according to Planetical relations, from whence they receive their names), as ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... rural philosopher, if only assured of a sympathetic hearing in an enlightened Press and provided with a suitable equipment by the ingenuity of its directors, may contemplate the vagaries of tyrannical misgovernment with fortitude and even felicity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... threw her arms round me, and kissed me repeatedly, trembling with emotion, and shedding many tears of joy. My father's feelings were scarcely less excited. He seemed to have risen from the lowest depth of misery to the summit of felicity, and esteemed himself more fortunate than even Indra the ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of the whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defense. All is peace; and God ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... (conduct) 692; self-help. cleverness, talent, ability, ingenuity, capacity, parts, talents, faculty, endowment, forte, turn, gift, genius; intelligence &c 498; sharpness, readiness &c (activity) 682; invention &c 515; aptness, aptitude; turn for, capacity for, genius for; felicity, capability, curiosa felicitas [Lat.], qualification, habilitation. proficient &c 700. masterpiece, coup de maitre [Fr.], chef d'euvre [Fr.], tour de force; good stroke &c (plan) 626. V. be skillful ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The Golden Scarecrow. The "Men and Women" are Mr. Perrin and Mrs. Comber, from The Gods and Mr. Perrin; Mr. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie, from The Green Mirror; and Mr. Crashaw, from The Captives. The "Incidents" are chosen with an equal felicity—we have the theft of an umbrella from The Gods and Mr. Perrin and, out of the same book, the whole passage in which Mr. Perrin sees double. There is also a scene from Fortitude, "After Defeat." After two episodes from The Green Mirror, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... happy; if all enjoy in safety, under the protection of laws emanating only from the general will, the fruits of their own labor, we ought to fortify and cling to those institutions which have been the source of such real felicity and resist with unabating perseverance the progress of those dangerous innovations which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Adams • John Adams
... be remembered that Rousseau like Weishaupt held that the Golden Age of felicity did not end in the garden of Eden, as is popularly supposed, but was prolonged into tribal and nomadic life. Up to this moment Communism was the happy disposition under which the human race existed and which vanished with the introduction ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... "Felicity and bliss are things which spring from poetry and women; convertible terms, you savage, but often dissevered. Suppose, now, you wrote a great poem, and read it to the lady of your affections, and she said it was better than the Iliad of Homer,—how ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... unsuspected best—when Julia was about. He wanted to buy for her everything in the windows upon which she bestowed the most casual approving glance. It was a delight merely to look at her, and to meditate upon the felicity of being able to do things for so ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... above the level of the sea. But such is the benignity of the climate, that at these prodigious elevations, which even in the south of Europe are above the line of perpetual snow, are to be found cities and towns, corn-fields and orchards, and all the symptoms of rural felicity. The town of Quito itself, the capital of a province of the same name, is situated on a plateau, or elevated valley, in the centre of the Andes, nearly 9000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet there are found concentrated a numerous population, and it contains cities with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... truth of his assertion that he was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of the Mastersingers his contentment should endure any length of time. No sooner was his text written than he had to set ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wish they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... his course, Hope's sun from rest Take thro' the troubled heaving breast; Then disappears adversity, And leaves behind felicity. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... reigned over us these thirty years, and though during so long a time they may have fallen into errors, or may have committed faults, (as what Government is without?) yett I will defy the most sanguin zealot to find in history a period equal to this in which Scotland possessed so uninterrupted a felicity, in which liberty, civil and religious, was so universally enjoyed by all people of whatever denomination—nay, by the open and avowed ennemys of the family and constitution, or a period in which all ranks of men have been so effectually ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... in his ability to treat the momentous and difficult questions he undertook to discuss in these lectures; whilst the remarkable clearness of his views, his brilliant imagination, and an extraordinary affluence of language and felicity of expression, both enlighten the understanding and gratify the most cultivated taste. Professor Mitchell did more than any other man to popularize the science of Astronomy; and the use he has made of it in defence of Christianity seems a fitting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... prostrate throne. France had become a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he had been on the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... that more than ought else that brought him into his wars; he would have been right glad to be like to those ancient princes of whom there has been so much talk after their death; he was as bold a man as any that reigned in his day. . . . After the long felicity and great riches of this house of Burgundy, and after three great princes, good and wise, who had lasted six score years and more in good sense and virtue, God gave this people the Duke Charles, who kept them constantly in great ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... seem as defects in her polity, are the very things which make me tremble. The states of the Christian world have grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time, and by a great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them with greater or less degrees of felicity and skill. Not one of them has been formed upon a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their constitutions are not systematical, they have not been directed to any PECULIAR end, eminently distinguished, and superseding every other. The objects which they embrace are of the greatest ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... solemnity of the engagement which I am about to contract, I have not come to this decision without mature consideration, nor without feeling a strong assurance that, with the blessing of Almighty God, it will at once secure my domestic felicity and serve the interests ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... pervading principle is Love. This classification will embrace all the truly good, and none in whose souls there exists not something that may expand itself into a heaven, both of well-doing and felicity. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... confirmation from the fact, that a Roman attorney, who rented that and other rooms from the family, after his father's death, grew suddenly and unaccountably rich,—I remember as being told with great felicity and vivacity of expression. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... often, in the lonely hours of midnight, sat up with a scanty light and a dying fire awaiting the late return of a son, a husband, or a brother; with many a sigh they would trace the ruin of their domestic felicity and the wreck of their family to some lodge of the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... as your widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... extinction of that strife and competition between individuals, which, no matter what forms of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence, without which, felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be attained? Our notion is, that the more we can assimilate life to the existence which our noblest ideas can conceive to be that of spirits on the other side of the grave, why, the more we approximate to a divine happiness here, and the more easily we glide into the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... has Sir Thomas Browne said,—"There is no felicity in what the world adores: that wherein God himself is happy, the holy angels are happy, and in whose defect the devils are unhappy—that dare I call happiness; whatsoever else the world terms happiness, is to me an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... military successes of that king gave him an authority that few monarchs have been able to wield, while his well-known literary taste and capacity enlisted the admiration of men of culture throughout the Continent. Born to bear the sword, he surprised his subjects by the same felicity in the use of the pen; and the man who could leave to his successors a treasury with a surplus of seventy-two millions of thalers, an army of two hundred and twenty thousand men, a kingdom increased by twenty-nine thousand square miles, and a people grown since his accession from two millions ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... worthy of being known and esteemed, and how we cannot even remember that such a man was born however much money he may have kept in his coffers. And thus he understands that good work and the good name of immortal virtue is the felicity of this life and all or almost all that is to be desired; and therefore he esteems himself more because he is on the road to attain that glory than one who does not know this and never even knew how to desire it. Many are content ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... the terrified hearers did not manifest that intense feeling of gratification which this threat was intended to produce. Each looked on the face of his neighbour, hoping to find there some indication of the felicity which his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... extravagance, or profuseness; it being constant labour, without the least ease or relaxation. It bears, indeed, the colour of that which is commendable, and would fain be thought to take its rise from laudable motives, searching indefatigably after true felicity; now as there can be no true felicity without content, it is this which every man is in constant pursuit of; the learned, for instance, in his industrious quest after knowledge; the merchant, in his dangerous voyages; the ambitious, in his passionate pursuit of honour; the conqueror, in his ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... might be invented and practised for easing our Nations of these Burdens, for promoting our Trade and Plantations by their Industry; and not for the Oppression (whatever some may imagine) of the Poor and Needy, but for their Maintenance and Felicity. And I believe this may be done without putting any Stop to the Importation of Negroes, rather than fail, since they might be kept on in their present Course of Life and Business; only they must raise more Stock and Grain for the Support ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... hard on these deceits and illusions of Nature, which are inseparable from our condition, and looking at age under an aspect more conformed to the common sense, if the question be the felicity of age, I fear the first popular judgments will be unfavorable. From the point of sensuous experience, seen from the streets and markets and the haunts of pleasure and gain, the estimate of age is low, melancholy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... meaning in Soames' mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the craftsmanship, 'rouged with rust' seemed to me a fine stroke, and 'nor not' instead of 'and' had a curious felicity. I wondered who the Young Woman was, and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect that Soames could not have made more of it than she. Yet, even now, if one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... their feelings or express their felicity would require the aid of the most descriptive pen, and even then would be but faintly told, and therefore had much better ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... that and a great deal more besides, he (including Mrs Gambart) had not only effected a sale which, he might say, was the main-sail that had caught the breezes of prosperity by which the craft of the McLeods, so to speak, had been blown so happily that day into the Partridge Bay haven of felicity (tremendous cheering, during which Gambart wiped his bald head and flushed face, and collected himself). Moreover, he continued, it was he who, against McLeod's will, had bought Barker's Mill (hear ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... one of the few people in London who do not," said Dr. Fall, with a smile. "One was an architect, the other a fairly efficient man of a type you will find on the continent of Europe, and who will be an electrician's assistant or a waiter with equal felicity. These men were engaged to assist in the construction of the house, they were brought from Italy with a number of other workmen, and entrusted with a section of its completion. Not satisfied with ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... in the country but looked upon this position as the height of human felicity. To work all the year in that wonderful garden, and see those wonderful things growing! and without doubt any boy who worked there could have all the toys he wanted, just as a boy who works in a candy-shop always has all the ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... have you found me? Thank God for this. I am so glad to see you before I die. It takes the thorn out of my pillow, and puts felicity into my heart to see you again. I know by this you ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... bodily provision, which no part of God's Scriptures teach us, but rather the express contrary. As it is written, 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proeeedeth out of the mouth of God,' that is, the very life and felicity of man consists not in the abundance of bodily things, or the possession and having of them makes no man blest or happy; neither shall the lack of them be the cause of his final misery; but the very life ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... him really afraid of speaking his notions concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and now the mud-stained sapper is suddenly clad in the finest raiment, and provided with wings that rival the bird's; moreover, he is drunken with heat and flooded with light, the supreme terrestrial joy. His cymbals will never suffice to celebrate such felicity, so well earned ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... is it practicable by any human means, to liberate them, without producing the most dreadful and ruinous consequences? We ought to possess them in the manner we have inherited them from our ancestors, as their manumission is incompatible with the felicity of the country. But we ought to soften, as much as possible, the rigor of their unhappy fate. I know that in a variety of particular instances, the legislature, listening to complaints, have admitted their emancipation. Let me not dwell on this subject. I will only ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... his haples fall, Affrick to vs doth former ayde denay, O who will helpe men in aduersity: Yet let vs shewe in our declining state, That strength of minde, that vertues constancy, That erst we did in our felicity, Though Fortune fayles vs lets not fayle our selues, Remember boy thou art a Romaine borne, And Catoes Sonne, of me do vertue learne; 1050 Fortune of others, aboue althings see Thou prize thy Countries loue and liberty, All blessiings Fathers to their Sonnes can wish Heauens powre on thee, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... ended, and he took her view that it was a reward of his courage in having dared the worst. They both felt, as the newly plighted always do, that they were in the best relations with the beneficent powers, and that their felicity had been especially looked to in the disposition of events. They were in a glow of rapturous content with themselves and radiant worship of each other; she was sure that he merited the bright future opening to them both, as much as if he owed it directly to some noble action of his own; he felt ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Gradually satiated with erotic passion, gradually convinced that it is rather a mischief-maker than a reconstructive force in a decrepit society, she is groping, indeed, between her successive liaisons for an elusive felicity, for a larger mission than inspiring Musset's Alexandrines or Chopin's nocturnes. It is somewhat amusing, and at the same time indicative of her vague but deep-seated moral yearnings, to find her writing rebukingly to Sainte-Beuve, as ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... connected with impatience and headstrong obstinacy. Then he put his foot on a plate of sandwiches, and was within an ace of sitting down on a jam tart, much to his own consternation, poor boy, for had he destroyed that, the chief source of his own prospective felicity would have ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thought so Vile Of him whom so long you have call'd your Friend? May all the Blesings Heaven can bestow On us poor Mortals in this World below, Crown all your Days, and may you nothing see But flowing Tides of sweet Felicity; But ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... Frigga, the wife of Odin. She, as well as her husband, possessed wonderful abilities, and, like Juno, was held in the highest esteem and veneration for her power of procuring easy access into the world, and bestowing every felicity connected with the softer endearments of life. Frigga was thought to be the mother of all the Pagan divinities of the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... evil eye, etc. In religious matters, also, they are on the same level, and about the only genuine shouting Methodists that remain are to be found in the colored churches. Indeed, I fear the negro tries to ignore or forget himself as far as possible, and that he would deem it felicity enough to play second fiddle to the white man all his days. He liked his master, but he likes the Yankee better, not because he regards him as his deliverer, but mainly because the two-handed thrift of the Northerner, his varied and wonderful ability, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Baker were now walking behind them, side by side. But his felicity in this respect was not at all sufficient for that gentleman. In their long journey from Egypt, he and Miss Waddington had always been within speaking distance; and who was the stranger of to-day that was thus to come and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... in words. The Aurora of Jasmin is quite his own; 'unbars the doors of the morning'; it is done without noise, like a goddess, patient and silent, who announces herself to mortals only by her brightness of light. It is this finished felicity of expression which distinguishes great writers. The ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... not quite lonely. I have George, whom I love as though he were a son of my own. And there is Aunt Felicity, as the children used to call her, who is certainly very fond of me, as I also am ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... said he with a flourish, "drunk or no, you have a devilish persuading air about you. Behold then, and judge of my felicity!" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... thing could add to the felicity of being acceptable to Miss Effingham," returned Paul, struggling to command his feelings, "it is the manner in which her father and yourself have received ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... by the British. Having freed the South from all marauders, Wayne returned, much shattered in health from the effect of a low fever, to his old home in Pennsylvania, and settled down to civil life, desiring, as he puts it, "to pass many happy hours in domestic felicity with a few of our friends, unfettered by any public employ and consequently unenvied." He was, however, made a member of the Council of Censors, and in 1784 represented his county in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the son of Kunti, of great energy, smelt (the crown) of his head. And beholding Phalguna (in that attitude), he was exceedingly glad; and by worshipping the king of the celestials, he experienced the highest bliss. Then unto that strongminded monarch, swimming in felicity, the intelligent lord of the celestials, Purandara, spake, saying, 'Thou shalt rule the earth, O Pandava. Blessed be thou! Do thou, O Kunti's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... upon dinner; Elmore, starting up, adjourned to the drawing-room, in order to present the handsome stranger to the placens uxor—the pleasing wife, whom, in passing through the hall, he eulogized with an amazing felicity of diction. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the foot. Four days the redman fasts or does penance; four days he mourns, for that is the time required by the soul to travel from the place where it has been liberated from the thralls of earthly life to the place of eternal felicity. At the time of which we are speaking, the body was still cremated, and with it everything that made up the personal effects of the deceased.[11] If a man, his clothes, his weapons, his loom, in case he had practised the art of weaving, were burned; if a woman, the cooking utensils were "killed;" ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... give him the lie direct. When Porthos had left him to give some orders he saw Mousqueton approaching. The face of the steward, despite one slight shade of care, light as a summer cloud, seemed a physiognomy of absolute felicity. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly—a moment-soon—said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination. The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... the venerable successor of St. Peter has been outraged; the temples of the Lord have been profaned and destroyed; the Holy Gospel depreciated; in fine, the inestimable legacy which Jesus Christ gave in his last supper to secure our eternal felicity, the Sacred Host, has been trodden under foot. My soul shudders, and will not be able to return to tranquillity until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I offer to God holocausts of piety," etc. But for some specimens of Ferdinand's command of the vernacular, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Sceptre seemed to be the Queen's least Ornaments; those, other Princes wore in common with her, and her great personal Virtues were the same before and since; but such was the Fame of her Administration of Affairs at home, such was the Reputation of her Wisdom and Felicity in chusing Ministers, and such was then esteemed their Faithfulness and Zeal, their Diligence and great Abilities in executing her Commands; to such a height of military Glory did her great General and her Armies carry the British Name abroad; such was the Harmony and Concord betwixt ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... essentials of poetry to be unity of conception and ingenuity of diction, urges that mechanical correctness must be inspired by depth of feeling, gives technical rules of dramatic action, of the chorus, of metre. For matter such as this a Horace was not needed, but the felicity of its handling has made it to many Horatian students the most popular of his conversational works. It abounds in passages of finished beauty; such as his comparison of verbal novelties imported into ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the veranda door befell upon the earliest visit which Richard made in his quality of correspondent of the Daily Tory. On that day, being admitted by way of the Harley front door, Richard had the felicity of coming in with the before-mentioned daily sheaf of roses. Richard and the blossom-bearing colored youth entered together, the door making the one opening to admit both; and by this fortunate chance—which ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of the opportunity of making inquiries about her relations and friends. As she had concluded, her good mother had died some years before, blessing her absent children. My wife shed some tears, but was consoled by the certainty of her mother's eternal felicity, and the hope ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... yet I know not where it was, neither did they who talked of it; but they had heard the report, and they reported what they had heard. There were also some books, that had been written by men who had been in that house; which books did declare much of the joy and felicity they had in the house. These books I got, and read them over and over; which did much strengthen my belief in the truth of the reports: yet by no means could I tell which was my way. But so ardent were my desires, ...
— A Short History of a Long Travel from Babylon to Bethel • Stephen Crisp
... unto heart, and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms; and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity. ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... difficult to express my joy. The idea of army service was mingled in my head with that of liberty, and the pleasures offered by a great city like Saint Petersburg. I saw myself an officer in the Guards, which, in my opinion was the height of felicity. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... by their bitter snows, were susceptible to volcanoes; they courted them as a counterbalance. Perhaps he had spoken roughly, but his temper had not been under control. One thing he recalled with grim satisfaction. He had sent a barbed arrow up the tube to disturb the felicity of the dove-cote. The duke would be rather curious to know what was meant in referring to the night she had come to his, Courtlandt's, room. He laughed. It would be a fitting climax indeed if ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... quartermasters to chalk up the billets for his soldiers to conquer the country. Cf. "The History of Henry VII," by Lord Bacon: "King Charles had conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind of a felicity of a dream. He passed the whole length of Italy without resistance: so that it was true what Pope Alexander was wont to say: That the Frenchmen came into Italy with chalk in their hands, to mark up their lodgings, rather than with swords ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... breathe between the departure of this pair of lovers and the arrival of Alda's splendid Life Guardsman, who, horses and all, took up his abode at the Fortinbras Arms, and spent his days in felicity with Alda. A very demonstrative pair they were. To Geraldine, often unwillingly en tiers, they seemed to spend their time chiefly in sitting hand in hand, playing with one another's rings and dangles, of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fitfully glad. She was near the man who had enlarged her capacity from girl's to woman's, a little note or two of young feeling to a whole diapason; and though nearness was perhaps not in itself a great reason for felicity when viewed beside the complete realization of all that a woman can desire in such circumstances, it was much in comparison with the outer darkness of the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... His music has none of the piercingness and poignancy and irony, none of the deep humility and grim resignation, so characteristic of Moussorgsky's. It has none of the brilliant Orientalism of Balakirew and Cui, none of Rimsky-Korsakoff's soft felicity and lambency and light sensuousness. It is rude and robust and male, full of angular movements and vigorous blows and lusty, childlike laughter, and, at the same time, of a singularly fine romantic fervor. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... howlings of Madame d'Argenton filled the house, and announced to all the domestics that the reign of felicity was at an end there. After a long silence on the part of Mademoiselle de Chausseraye, she spoke her best in order to appease the poor lady. She represented to her the delicacy and liberality of the arrangements M. d'Orleans had made in her behalf. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... beauty. Give me some sweet alms, Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword, Some poignant moment yet unparalleled In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord Of mystery Love's music never knelled Before;—but nought of the rough alchemy That disillusions all felicity. ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... say that a person loseth all these in consequence of vanity. That man who having acquired knowledge regardeth himself as learned, and with his learning destroyed the reputation of others, never attaineth to regions of indestructible felicity. That knowledge also doth not make its possessor competent to attain to Brahma. Study, taciturnity, worship before fire, and sacrifices, these four remove all fear. When, however, these are mixed with vanity, instead ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... all things with that byass: And I beleeve, in this principally consists, the secret of those Philosophers who formerly could snatch themselves from the Empire of Fortune, and in spight of pains and poverty, dispute felicity with their Gods, for imploying themselves incessantly in considering the bounds which Nature had prescribed them, they so perfectly perswaded themselves, That nothing was in their power but their thoughts, ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... pronounced it the finest sentence in the English language. It is a period (that is, a cluster of sentences) moderately well, but not too well constructed, as the German nurses are accustomed to say. Its felicity depends on a trick easily imitated—on a balance happily placed (namely, "in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries"). As a bravura, or tour de force, in the dazzling fence of rhetoric, it is surpassed by many hundreds ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Non-perception he accepts as annihilation until he finds a better belief. That our perceptions mean BEINGS, rattles that are there whether we hold them in our hands or not, becomes an interpretation so luminous of what happens to us that, once employed, it never gets forgotten. It applies with equal felicity to things and persons, to the objective and to the ejective realm. However a Berkeley, a Mill, or a Cornelius may CRITICISE it, it WORKS; and in practical life we never think of 'going back' upon it, or reading our incoming ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... own imagination; publicly have his talents been depreciated, his principles denounced; as publicly do I therefore, who have known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave recorded, that it is Southey's almost unexampled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and genius free from all their characteristic defects. To those who remember the state of our public schools and universities some twenty years past, it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to have passed from innocence into virtue, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... where my time would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to accept of that desire that from that time to this I have had all things plentifully provided for me without any care at all, my very study of Felicity making me more to prosper than all the care in the whole world. So that through His blessing I live a free and kingly life, as if the world were turned again into Eden, or, much more, as ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... take a permanent place as one of the most perfect of his compositions. It has much of the fearless felicity of youth; and its imagery has the sharp and vivid outline of ideas fresh from the brain. The subject—the development of his own great powers—raises him above that willful dallying with trivialties ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Layton,' said she, pointing to the dumb boy. 'That ball is perfect felicity, he had rather not play with it, the delight is mere possession.' She was turning to the boy again, when Mr. Wingfield said, not without hesitation—'You have not heard when to expect your ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... figures of a time when learning was at a premium; he was a big man amongst big men, and even in this irreverential time genius uncovers at the mention of his name. His versatility was astounding; with equal facility and felicity he could conduct a literary symposium and a cock-fight, a theological discussion and an angling expedition, a historical or a political inquiry and ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... the task I have set myself let me perform with steadiness. The felicity of that period was marred by no gloomy anticipations. The future, like the present, was serene. Time was supposed to have only new delights in store. I mean not to dwell on previous incidents longer than is necessary to illustrate or explain ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... was merely fostering and giving scope to propensities, which he considered as hurtful, and because his avarice desired that this inheritance should fall to no one but himself. To me, it was a scheme of ravishing felicity, and to be debarred from it was a source of anguish known to few. I had too much experience of my father's pertinaciousness ever to hope for a change in his views; yet the bliss of living with my aunt, ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... emotion his re-entrance at the Bourse had caused him, the hero of commercial honor was now to meet the sudden shock of felicity that awaited him in his old home. He entered the house, and saw at the foot of the staircase (still new as he had left it) his wife in her velvet robe, Cesarine, the Comte de Fontaine, the Vicomte de Vandenesse, the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... healthy appetite, and was not ashamed to gratify it; liked a good glass of wine; was peculiarly fond of sociable company, whether as host or guest; and told an amusing story with incomparable zest and point. His verbal felicity was a marked feature of his conversation. His description of Archbishop Benson (revived, with strange taste, by the Saturday Review on the occasion of the Archbishop's death) was a masterpiece of sarcastic ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... combines the flavour of apples, pears, peaches, pine-apples, gooseberries, strawberries, rasps—in fact, it is hard to tell what it does not resemble. But after all, this is rather light food, and although very Eden-like living—minus the felicity—it does not quite satisfy people who have been used most part of their lives to beefsteak ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... the objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. Fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her thoughts and images; trusting that their number, and the felicity with which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of individual value: or she prides herself upon the curious subtilty and the successful elaboration with which she can detect their lurking affinities. If she ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... said some one. And thenceforth Kate's perfect felicity was clouded. She had a great dislike to a thunder- storm, and she instantly began asking her neighbours if they REALLY ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recently been made aware of the fact that this fiddler only availed himself, in his vain exhibitions, of a part of the felis which was not necessary to its felicity after death, I determined to give a portion of my worldly goods toward the building of a light-house on the Norway coast, for which purpose, I heard it averred, this man's performances were given; and I went to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... cheerful tune we lent ear and, hastening to be underweigh, were soon clear of the port. Then, skimming along near the beach in the early morning, our sails spread to a land breeze, laden with fragrance from the tropic forest and the music of many songsters, we sailed in great felicity, dreading no dangers from the sea, for there were none ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... a sensible woman! And now, as I do not wish to interrupt this felicity, I will go and dine at the ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... repairs, Captain Cook set sail for the Cape alone, leaving orders for Captain Clarke to follow him there. The Discovery at length put to sea, and after a stormy voyage joined Captain Cook in Table Bay on the 11th of August. Before setting sail on the longer voyage, Riou had the felicity of being transferred to the Resolution, under the command of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... unsurpassed by any poet in ancient or in modern times. The occasions on which he describes the heavenly bodies, or alludes to them in association with other phenomena, testify to the felicity of his thoughts and to the greatness of his poetic genius. Surely no poet has ever given us a lovelier description of evening, or has added more to its exquisite beauty by his allusion to the celestial orbs, than Milton when he describes the first ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... unenjoyed and unregarded, and we still linger in the same expectation to the moment appointed for our end. All these days, which have thus passed away, have sent multitudes of fools to the grave, who were engrossed by the same dream of future felicity, and, when life was departing from them, were, like me, reckoning on ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... bookkeeper for one of our business concerns, courted and married a lovely young girl from a neighboring town, and settled down to a life of domestic felicity, esteemed by all, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... a more definite belief in pre-existence than Wordsworth, for he refers to it more than once; and The Retreate, which is probably the best known of all his poems and must have furnished some suggestion for the Immortality Ode, is based upon it. Vaughan has occasionally an almost perfect felicity of mystical expression, a power he shares with Donne, Keats, Rossetti, and Wordsworth. His ideas then produce their effect through the medium of art, directly on the feelings. The poem called Quickness is perhaps the best example of this peculiar quality, which cannot be analysed ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... and undines to be beloved by a woman. The object of this passion, in returning their love, imparted a portion of that celestial fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equal to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run, entered together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched constantly over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments were all their works, and the means by which they gave warning of the approach of danger. But though so well inclined to befriend man for their own sakes, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the leading reviews and most respectable publications of the day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenpenced, &c.? The formation of a participle passive from a noun is a licence that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can excuse. If mere convenience is to justify such attempts upon the idiom, you cannot stop till the language becomes, in the proper sense of the word, corrupt. Most of these pieces of slang come ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... would give me the profoundest felicity, the most unbounded satisfaction; but in these worn-out habiliments, in these deteriorated garments, it would not be possible, it would not be fitting that I should officiate in service of One whom, for respect, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... abounds amongst us, who have not sometimes reflected upon loose or careless Education, as one cause thereof: But yet the great weight that right Instruction and Discipline of Youth, is of, in respect both of Peoples present and future Felicity, is (as I take it) far from being generally so settl'd in the Minds of Parents, as to be steadily look'd upon by them as the one thing to that degree necessary, that without due care taken thereof, all other indeavours, to render their ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... confluxes and revellings. To these joys of tumult, the people of the savage and the more cultivated nations sacrificed everything belonging to the peaceful economy of life, with a desperate, frantic fury. All this was the confession that there was little felicity in the heart or in the home. Nor was it found in these resources; if the wild elation might be mistaken for happiness while it lasted, it was brief in each instance, and it subsided in an ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... acquired the copyright and organised the staff. Then it was that Mr. Mark Lemon was appointed sole editor, a new office having been created for Mr. Henry Mayhew—that of Suggestor-in-Chief; Mr. Mayhew's contributions, and his felicity in inventing pictorial and in 'putting' verbal witticisms, having already set a deep mark upon Punch's success. The second volume started merrily. Mr. John Oxenford contributed his first jeu d'esprit in its final ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... frequent guest at the Verne mansion of late, but the fact did not add to his felicity. Marguerite Verne could not play the coquette. She was attentive to her ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... that the three friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was anxious to bind his erratic ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Clayton's renomination. It had been a labor of love, and Kittrell suddenly realized how good it was. He had put into it all of his belief in Clayton, all of his devotion to the cause for which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and in the simple lines he experienced the artist's ineffable felicity; he had shown how good, how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at once he realized the sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would delight and hearten Clayton's followers, how it would please Hardy, and how it would touch Clayton. It would be a tribute ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... betrays) of cruelty and selfishness on his part; might they not be even happier? He forgets to tell himself that they are happy because no tie binds them—nay, he says secretly in his heart that that tie is the only thing wanting to make their felicity perfect. Now, it is too late. The world knows the truth—marriage can never whitewash Virginia in society's eyes—no future can condone the crime of the past. He has settled every farthing he has in the world upon her—no mean fortune—he loads her with gifts—he is ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... 'I have no desire for literary distinction,' said he; 'no ambition. My original wish was to pass my life in easy, quiet obscurity—with her whom I loved. I was disappointed in my wish; she was removed, who constituted my only felicity in this life: desolation came to my heart, and misery to my head. To escape from the latter I had recourse to Chinese. By degrees the misery left my head, but the desolation of heart ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... paradox of L'Esprit. This is to the effect that of all the sources of intellectual difference between one man and another, organisation is the least influential. Intellectual differences are due to diversity of circumstance and to variety in education. It is not felicity of organisation that makes a great man. There is nobody, in whom passion, interest, education, and favourable chance, could not have surmounted all the obstacles of an unpromising nature; and there is no great man who, in the absence ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... moment's dread silence. The thunderbolt had fallen. The festival felicity of two households trembled in the balance. Michael muttered impatiently and went out on ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Marcia, how hard is our fate! that we should be deprived of your dear company, when it would compleat our Felicity—but such is the fate of Mortals! We are never permitted to be perfectly happy. I suppose it is right, else the Supreme Disposer of all things would not have permitted it: we should perhaps have been more neglectful than we are ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies. Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charms of an adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopes springing up in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers, conceiving impossible projects, giving in the germ all the joys of love. Perhaps, indeed, all passion is contained in that thought-germ, as the ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... the only arms I have flown to. But it does not seem as if God ought to take me in because I am in trouble, when I would not go to him when I was happy in something else. But even in the midst of my greatest felicity I had many and many a misgiving; many a season when my conscience upbraided me for my willfulness towards my dear mother, and my whole soul yearned for something higher and better even than Charley's love, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... turning to Ja'afar, said to him, "As my head liveth, the house and that which is therein is Khalif's; for that he is ruler over it and I am in admiration at him, whence there came to him this passing prosperity and exceeding felicity! However, this is no great matter to Him who saith to a thing, 'Be!' and it becometh; what I most wonder at is his understanding, how it hath increased, and whence he hath gotten this loftiness ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... made one of the four streams ferried over by those travelling from the Cazembe to the Mwata ya Nvo, and Dr. de Lacarda[FN22] records it as the "Guarava," probably a dialectic form of Lualava. It is the Luapula of the "Geographer of N'yassi," who, with his usual felicity and boldness of conjecture (p. 38), bends it eastward, and discharges it into ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... beautiful style, which I confess I weakly liked the better for the occasional gallicisms remaining from an inveterate habit of French. Those who know the writings of Mr. Henry James will recognize the inherited felicity of diction which is so striking in the writings of Mr. Henry James, Jr. The son's diction is not so racy as the father's; it lacks its daring, but it is as fortunate and graphic; and I cannot give it greater praise than this, though it has, when he will, a splendor and state ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he was obliged to answer her and lie, revolting at the idea of spoiling, dimming that great and pure felicity. "Yes, yes, be happy, Marie," he said, "for I am very happy myself, and all ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... admirable, if not wonderful, when we consider how close the translator has on the whole (in spite of occasional slips into inaccuracy) kept himself to the most rigid limit of literal representation, phrase by phrase and often line by line. The really startling force and felicity of occasional verses are worthier of remark than the inevitable stiffness and heaviness of others, when the technical difficulty of such a task is ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Death shall pass away, and we, By resurrection sweet, arise new-born Like thee in glory, bright one, Sons of Morn, Without a shade on our felicity, Eyeing the fleeting vapours of the Past, As thou dost now Night's ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford, an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library. To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give a fuller detail of the touching incident upon ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... avoided a too heavy realism, that tendency to harden into caricature which the representation of feeling in sculpture is apt to display. What time and accident, its centuries of darkness under the furrows of the "little Melian farm," have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus of Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, so that some spirit in the thing seems always on the point of breaking out, as though [68] in it classical sculpture had advanced already one step into the mystical Christian age, its expression ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... has at last appeared, and we must confess that, from the time expended in its preparation, we expected a more satisfactory result. The biography, though written in a style of elaborate elegance, and pleasing enough as regards cadence of period and felicity of phrase, tells little about Keats which is new, and leaves many obscure passages of his life in the same darkness in which it found them. Nothing to the purpose is told of the lady who was the object of Keats's passionate love, and who shares with consumption in being the dismal cause ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... enough in all conscience, but she was married in her high-school graduating dress, and went to her grandmother's house, ten miles away, for her wedding-journey. I think it required considerable inward felicity to ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... send me the reviews of my books in the Danish newspapers; and he had the double kindness to translate these into English and to leave out all but those that were likely to be agreeable to my vanity. Of these I remember but a single sentence, and that because it was expressed with felicity. The reviewer said of the fun in "The Hoosier School-Master:" "This is humor laughing to keep from ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... cried the venerable hermit, "hope is at all times our duty, and despair our crime. It is not in the power of events to undermine the felicity of the virtuous. Goblins, and spirits of darkness, are permitted a certain scope in this terrestrial scene; but their power is bounded; beyond a certain line they cannot wander. In vain do they threaten innocence and truth. Innocence is a wall of brass upon which ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
