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More "Forte" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... euery element God hath appered vnto many a one Inspyrynge them / with grete wytte refulgent Who lyst to rede many dayes agone Many one wryteth trouthe / yet c[om]forte hath he none Wherfore I fere me / lyke a swarme of bees Wylde fyre wyll lyght ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... this system of "revelation" was an idea of Rigdon. Smith was not, at that time, an inventor; his forte was making use of ideas conveyed to him. Thus, he did not originate the idea of using a "peek-stone," but used one freely as soon as he heard of it. He did not conceive the idea of receiving a Bible from an angel, but readily transformed the Spaniard-with-his-throat-cut ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... expulsiva et visiva, per hoc purgetur, et cerebrum a sua superfluitate purgetur, etc. Etiam qui sternutat frequenter, dicitur habere forte cerebrum."—Aristotelis ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... do the polite to her"), and sought Mary at the piano, hanging with pleasure on the slim form in the rich silk dress. This caught numberless lights from the candles, as did also the wings of her glossy hair. He watched, with a kind of amused tenderness, how at each forte passage head and shoulders took their share of lending force to the tones. He never greatly enjoyed Mary's playing. She did well enough at it, God bless her!—it would not have been Mary if she hadn't—but he came of a musical ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... fabellis concinne lepideque texendis Mirus artifex Neminem habuit parem. Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta, Quam nullo illi labore constiterint, Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici; Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat, Apte varie copioseque alluderet, Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... farmer's son bringing home his cows of an evening, and his sister going out to meet him at the sound of his well known voice, with her milk-white pail, he would find the one poring over Latin and Greek, and the other running her fingers over the chords of a harp or piano-forte." ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... opponent in disputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... now some twenty-nine years of age, and had had but little success as a writer. He must have felt that parody was not his forte, and, with his connection with le Mercure, an opportunity was presented to deal with actualities, where his powers of observation might come into play. He was, as he says of himself, born an observer. "Je suis ne de maniere que tout me devient ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... ... once, ter please her, but I reckon hit didn't make much of a showin' under this." He ran his fingers reflectively through his heavy beard for a moment; then, with his voice still a forte whisper, he added, "Say, stranger, I've got a leetle drap o' white liquor hid out in the woodshed whar Smiles kaint find hit, an' ef yo'd delight ter wet yo'r throat afore she ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... his great fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the "Last Judgment," which occupied him eight years; in 1542 he was appointed architect of St. Peter's, and he planned and built the dome; sculpture was his great forte, but his genius was equal to any task imposed on him, and he has left poems to show what he might have done in the domain of letters as he has done in those of arts, with which his fame is more ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... incident of this novel is that most extraordinary of all punishments known to English criminal law, the peine forte et dure. The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic, and, perhaps, in some degree psychological. Around a pathetic piece ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 'Don Carlos' and came out in its favor before the aesthetic tribunal of Tiefurt. Wieland noticed it favorably in the Merkur, spoke flatteringly of it in conversation and declared himself now convinced that Schiller's forte was the drama. Henceforth the two men were fast friends and presently Schiller was toying with the thought of marrying Wieland's favorite daughter. 'I do not know the girl at all', he wrote, 'but ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... quoting Froude's denial that a sentence described by the Spanish Ambassador de Silva as having been passed upon a pirate could have been pronounced in an English court of justice, Freeman asked, "Is it possible that Mr. Froude has never heard of the peine forte et dure?" Freeman of course knew it to be impossible. He knew also that the peine forte et dure was inflicted for refusing to plead, and that this pirate, by de Silva's own account, had been found guilty. But he wanted to suggest that Froude was an ignoramus, and for the purpose of beating ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... civium Tiberim compleri, cloacas referciri, e foro spongiis effingi sanguinem.... Caedem tantam, tantos acervos corporum extruetos, nisi forte illo Cinnano atque Octaviano die, quis unquam in foro vidit?"—Oratio prov P. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... thanks, or anything of the sort," resumed Camilla, "I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—" Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Byron, gravures l'eau-forte, par Rveil, d'aprs les dessins de A. Colin. Paris. Audot, diteur du ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... chief forte lay in water athletics. He was like a duck himself, and never tired of teaching those boys who showed an inclination to learn. It was of vast importance to know just what ought to be done should a swimmer be suddenly seized ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... is not my 'forte', 'pon honour:— Though who would n't make a hazard When the ball ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... you, pray? A pack of pretty poppets! Mammy's darlings! Must go home to by-by, mustn't you?" Sneering was Joe Green's forte. ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... only his forte but his fault," replied Mr. Arnold; while Euphra, fixing one more ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... after the departure of the troops, Commodore Warren sent a small vessel to Boston with two French prisoners. One of them was Monsieur Bouladrie, who had been commander of a battery outside the walls of Louisburg. The other was the Marquis de la Maison Forte, captain of a French frigate which had been taken by Commodore Warren's fleet. These prisoners assured Governor Shirley that the fortifications of Louisburg were far too strong ever to be stormed ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... analytical chemist, says) "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve the ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... some forte—like huntin' an' such, But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much; Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me; Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!" When I tickled the back of ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... us, though, from a Chinese doctor! Mechanical surgery is his forte; for a stomach ache he will pinch your neck; for a broken rib he will nearly crack the bones of your arm, and if you faint under this he will hang you up by your ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... law was against the use of torture, which, however, made progress, especially in state trials, under the Tudors. A man who refused to plead in an English court was subjected to the peine forte et dure, which consisted in piling weights on his chest until he either spoke or was crushed to death. To enforce the laws there was a constabulary in the country, supplemented by the regular army, and a police force in the cities. That of Paris consisted of 240 ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Katrina as a being to be loved, pitied, and spared the ruder shocks of life. Lovingly we sharpened her pencils, cheerfully we covered her books, unenthusiastically but patiently we wrote her compositions; for Katrina's mind worked slowly, and literature was obviously not her forte. In return, Katrina blossomed and existed and shed on us the radiance of a smile which illumined the dim school-room even as her optimistic theories of life leavened ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... crime veritable est d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.' ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... cheetah, in which this animal killed deer and other animals; and on another, on elephants, for tigers. Two tigers were killed, and Louis Belgrave had the honor of shooting one of them. Felix brought down a couple of cobras; and killing them seemed to be his forte. Khayrat invited the party to witness a battle between his mongoose and a couple of cobras his hunters had caught; and he killed them both, one ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... it could no more be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much, even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... farigxis klare, froste. La plena luno hele allumigis cxiujn objektojn sur la korto, kie nun estis senvivo, funebro.—CXe la fenestro de rugxa cxambro, apoginte sin al la kadro, staris tiatempe silente, senmove la juna virina figuro. La vizajxon forte alpremigita je la vitro, sxi rigardadis eksteren. Jam longe sxi staris tiel enprofundigxinta en pensoj. SXiaj rigardoj estis dirigitaj al unu punkto sur la korto. Rigide eltendita kusxis tie antaux sia logxejo Oje, la mortinta rusa cxashundo. Akre, klare desegnigxis la konturoj de la senviva ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 4 • Various
... students four stories high." "HOUSEKEEPER.—A highly respectable middle-aged Person who has been filling the above Situation with a gentleman for upwards of eleven years and who is now deceased is anxious to meet a similar one." "TO PIANO-FORTE MAKERS.—A lady keeping a first-class school requiring a good piano, is desirous of receiving a daughter of the above in exchange for the same." "The Moor, seizing a bolster boiling over with rage and jealousy, smothers her." "The Dying Zouave the most wonderful mechanical ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... ladders made of wild vines, the little garrison slipped out through what had seemed an impassable fissure in the crater, got in the rear of the army and demolished it completely. That's the kind of man that Spartacus was. Fighting was his forte. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... don't become poetical, it isn't your forte; but listen while I talk of matters more important. You've sometimes heard me mention ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... regrets that her poor people have seen so little of their vicar lately. Mrs. B. is sorry to report the failure of her attempts to get her sheep to church, in face of the new Ritualistic developement, the processions, and the surplices. Mrs. C., whose forte is education, declines any longer to induce mothers to send their children to "such" a master. The curates shudder as Mrs. D. laments their frequent absence from the Penny Bank, not that they can do any good there, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Sulla marina, dove il Po discende Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, Prese costui della bella persona Che mi fu tolta, e il modo ancor m' offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte: 10 Caino attende chi vita ci spense.' Queste parole da lor ci fur porte. Da che io intesi quelle anime offense Chinai 'l viso, e ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Krech grinned. "If I lay the foundation, it's up to you to erect the edifice. Brain-work, not manual labor, is my forte." Then he added more seriously, "I've thought of something; instead of the accomplice being actually a member of the household, mightn't he be just some one who has the entree—the run of the house? Some one who could carry off the situation if he ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... spectacle, in which I was entrusted with a part. The piece chosen was Iphigenie en Aulide. Mademoiselle de Sabran and her brother, as well as a young Strogonoff, were, it is said, perfect actors. Armand de Polignac had a little part. Tragedy was not my forte. But in the second piece I achieved a little success, which the Chevalier de Boufflers was kind enough to celebrate in a very bright couplet, sung at the close. He gave me the name of the Little White Mouse. After that the Queen ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the tactile sense, that sense of touch wherewith man acquaints himself with this earth-clot swimming in space. Davos contemplated the tips of his fingers as he sat in the grateful cool, his ten voices as he named them. With them he sang, thundered, and thought upon the keyboard of his grand piano-forte. A miracle, indeed, these slender cushions of fat, ramified by a network of nerves, sinews, and bones as exquisite in their mechanism as the motion of the planets. If hearing is a miracle, so is touch; the ear is not a resonator, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... spent about 330 pounds. He did not know that he could say anything more. He had spoken several times on his journey down, and it seemed to him that he had said the same thing over and over again. His forte was not in public speaking, but he hoped they would take the will for the deed. They never could forget the very kind and hearty reception they had received in every place they had visited in ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... distressed was it by constant butchery. In such a condition of morale an advance upon it might have changed history. In truth, the genius of Lee for offensive war had suffered by a too long service as an engineer. Like Erskine in the House of Commons, it was not his forte. In both the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns he allowed his cavalry to separate from him, and was left without intelligence of the enemy's movements until he was upon him. In both, too, his army was widely scattered, and had to be brought into action by piecemeal. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Yes, most intimately. He was the pleasantest and most conversable member of the diplomatic corps while I was there; a man of good fancy, acuteness, irony, cunning, and egoism. No heart, not much of any science, yet enough of every one to speak its language: his forte was Belles-lettres, painting, and sculpture. In these he was the oracle of the society, and as such, was the Empress Catharine's private correspondent and factor, in all things not diplomatic. It was through him I got her permission for poor Ledyard to go to Kamschatka, and cross ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English logography seem to be his: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Patriot. It amused Marrineal almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's lukewarmness, by the vigor of his own attacks upon ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pleaded Iff; "it is, if you don't mind my mentioning the fact, not your forte. Silence, on the other hand, suits your style cunningly. So shut up ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... preparatoire; question prealable, sometimes called q. definitive. Desmaze, Supplices, 177. Desjardins, p. xx. Howard, passim. The English have long boasted that torture is not allowed by their law; and although the peine forte et dure was undoubted torture, the boast is in general not unfounded. Torture was abolished in several parts of Germany in the eighteenth century, but lingered in other parts until the nineteenth. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... amazing Madame Dubarry—was lodged "in a suite of delectable boudoirs" facing the Marble Court, above the private apartments of the King. Everywhere appeared the initial L linked with the torches of Love. One of the objects most admired in the drawing-room was an English piano-forte, with a case adorned with rosewood medallions, blue and white mosaics and gilded metal. In this room there were chests of drawers of antique lacquer and ebony, statues of marble, and garnishings of sculptured bronze. At night all was ablaze with the lights of the great luster of ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... taking them within her own fondled them, saying,—"And thou wilt surprise my lord and his friends by thy rare playing of the clavichord, and 'tis possible so great and wealthy a man will own a piano-forte of which we have heard so much; and mayhap thou will be presented at Court, and in great London town thou mayest see many musicians from France, for 'tis not improbable they are brought over the channel at the instance ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... difference between the cases supposed. A man of universal scientific attainment will be less strong in one subject than another: and in the course of his Geological allusions, if Mechanical Science be his forte,—in the course of his Metaphysical allusions, if Mathematical Science be his proper department,—he may easily err. Above all, the limits of the knowledge of unassisted Man must infallibly be those of the age in which he lives. But, with the Ancient of Days, it is not so. He at least ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... uniform, full and fatigue dress, armament, and tactics. He understood, without difficulty, the advantages of the percussion gun, but the attempt to explain rifled cannon to him was in vain. Artillery was not his forte; but he avowed, nevertheless, that Napoleon had owed more than one ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... by surprise is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... aiding in lifting the anchors broke down, and one of the anchors refusing to let go, was broken in half. The condenser of the paddle engines seems to have been proved too small in this trip. For some time she went against a stiff head-wind and sea— which is now well known to be the great ship's forte—with perfect steadiness; but on getting into the channel she rolled slowly but decidedly, as if bowing—acknowledging majestically the might of the Atlantic's genuine swell. Here, too, a wave actually overtopped her ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney becoming one of the busiest persons on record in his ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... haven't thought of anything but that very thing ever since I found that they had hidden it, and I can't yet see any good way of getting it. My forte is direct action and that fails in this case, since no amount of force or torture could make Crane reveal the hiding-place of the solution. It's probably in the safest safe-deposit vault in the country. He wouldn't carry the key on him, probably wouldn't have it ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... mass of sand, then entirely uninhabited, far out in the ocean, called Coney Island.... The only distinguished contemporary he had ever met was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, who had visited him.... He confessed to having no talent for industry, and that his forte was 'loafing and writing poems:' he was poor, but had discovered that he could, on the whole, live magnificently on bread and water.... On no occasion did he laugh, nor indeed did I ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... amenes, sur ce point d'YPRES, dans une lutte acharnee, a concentrer leurs moyens, une forte artillerie lourde largement approvisionee, renforcee de minenwerfers, de corps d'armee ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... both to the appearances of things and the thoughts of the mind. He is aware that life is more than food—that it is a subjective state quite as much as an objective reality. He refers to himself more than once, half humorously, as a fellow whose forte lay in transcribing what was before him, to be seen and felt, tasted and heard. This extremely modern denotement was a marked feature of his genius, often overlooked. He had a desire to know all manner of men; he had the noble curiosity ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... carefully learned, those other lines called "Children"; and there were only five days in which to learn them. Memorizing poetry, particularly when she could not quite understand its meaning, was not Peace's strong forte, and it was small wonder that she was dismayed at this change of program; but it was useless to protest. When Miss Peyton decided to do a certain thing, "all the king's horses and all the king's men" could not alter her decision. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the mine; but after a few days' longer work in it Billy found that the vein panned out badly, and selling out his interest in it returned to his home once more, convinced that mining was not his forte, though he certainly had dug out enough of the yellow ore to prove to his mother that he had not ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He lives on the ground floor for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story for the air! He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the baron and me together.—N.B. when you come to see me, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... qui adverso vix flumine lembum Remigiis subigit: si brachia forte remisit, Atque illum in praeceps prono ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... inevitably lose the travelling season, and come in for the droughts and famines. The tide, however, turned in my favour a little; for I obtained, by permission of the Admiralty, a passage in the British screw steam-frigate Forte, under orders to convey Admiral Sir H. Keppel to his command at the Cape; and Sir Charles Wood most obligingly made a request that I should be forwarded thence to Zanzibar in one of our slaver-hunting cruisers ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to their northern homes. It was both directly and indirectly through one of these officers that the claims of Nice as a sanatorium came to be put so plainly before Smollett. [Losing its prestige as a ville forte, Nice was henceforth rapidly to gain the new character of a ville de plaisir. In 1763, says one of the city's historians, Smollett, the famous historian and novelist, visited Nice. "Arriving here shattered in health and depressed in spirits, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Girton, She is learned in Latin and Greek, But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on That the prudish remark with a shriek. In her accents, perhaps, she is weak (Ladies ARE, one observes with a sigh), But in Algebra—THERE she's unique, But her forte's ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... of Arnold's best lyric verses and most beautiful nature pictures; but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot, such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles, the principal character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold's dramas show that his forte was not in ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... "Stealing is not my forte," Josie said to herself, "but I fancy this photograph will never be missed by the present occupant of this house. I may ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... Rogero hastily departed for Constantinople to slay his rival. In his absence, Bradamant besought Charlemagne not to compel her to marry Leo unless he could defeat her in single combat; and her angry parents, on learning of this, took her from the court and shut her up in the tower of Rocca Forte. Rogero, in the mean time, reached Leo's realms just as the Greeks engaged in battle with the Bulgarians. Because of his hatred for Leo, he fought with the Bulgarians, and when their king fell he rallied their scattered troops and put the Greeks to flight. Rogero then followed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... la simple et forte, Simbol de glorie et de piete, Tour de pauvres femmes mortes Pour leur ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... 20th of July, 1629, the English flag floated, for the first time, over the fortress of Quebec. "There was not in the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this examinate's knowledge, any victuals, save only one tubb of bitter roots"—such is the evidence of one of Kirke's captains. This, in brief, is the story of the first of the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... temple de Salomon que les premiers califes conquerants ont rebati, s'assujettiraient difficilement a un Gouvernement Chretien quelconque, qui ne disposerait pas de beaucoup de ressources et d'une forte garnison, pour en imposer aux hordes des Bedouins et pour reduire par les armes tout ce qui s'opposerait ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... empire and sea-tyranny—that he is able to use his Hotspurs and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature a neuropath ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... obsequious tutors of his sons with his novel mode of instilling the rudiments of the Latin tongue, although he knew not a word of the language; and the obedient mistresses of his daughters with his short road to attaining a perfection in playing the piano-forte, without knowing a note of the gamut: but what could they say; why, nothing more or less than they were 'astonished;' which was vague enough to be as ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... incarnate—that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, both in rhythm ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside like ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... good for any amount within reason. But we didn't mean what she meant, so we departed. Going down I became perhaps a little too excited over the coming event and went to some length to inform the assembled skirts that when it came to cutting ice I, not seeking to boast, but I was there, forte, and such pastimes as writing names or doing Dutch rolls I considered rudimentary in the skating number and ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... Galuppi's, I forget which. His voice went like the wind, and his fingers leapt over the imaginary keys. The various passions succeeded one another on his face; you observed on it tenderness, anger, pleasure, sorrow; you felt the piano notes, the forte notes, and I am sure that a more skilful musician than myself would have recognised the piece by the movement and the character, by his gestures, and by a few notes of airs which escaped from him now and again. But the absurd thing was to see him from time to time hesitate ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... with a persuasive eloquence, enlivened with wit and humor, he at once rose to prominence at the bar of Northern Ohio. The Cuyahoga bar was for many years considered the strongest in the State, but amongst all of its talented members, each with his own peculiar forte, for the faculty of close and long-continued reasoning, clearness of statement, nice discrimination, and never ending ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... meant to be meant. As a consequence, Commodore Warren was speedily on the look-out, off the coast of Cape Breton, and in the course of events fell in with, and captured, the "Vigilant," seventy-four, commanded by Captain Stronghouse, or, as his title runs, "the Marquis de la Maison Forte." The "Vigilant" was a store-ship, filled with munitions of war for the French town. Here was a glorious opportunity. If the saints could only intimate to Duchambon, the Governor of Louisburgh, that his supplies had been cut off, Duchambon might think of capitulation. ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... management, became so celebrated. Mendelssohn produced works in almost every department of musical composition, a great variety of chamber music, symphonies, overtures, one opera, and a very large collection of music for the piano-forte and organ. Probably his fame will last longer through the influence of three works—viz., the "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, which opened the new world of the romantic; the oratorio of "Elijah," which is in very many respects one of the most beautiful ever ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... day's post. Your appointment to the 14th, notwithstanding all his prejudices about the army, has given him sincere pleasure. I believe, between ourselves, that your college career, of which he has heard something, convinced him that your forte did not lie in the classics; you know I said so always, but nobody minded me. Your new prospects are all that your best friends could wish for you: you begin early; your corps is a crack one; you are ordered for service. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of a story is her forte, you put her below Wilkie Collins or Mrs. Oliphant; if you say her object is to give a picture of English society, she is surpassed by Bulwer and Trollope; if she be called a satirist of society, Thackeray is her superior; if she intends to illustrate the absurdity of behavior, she is ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... life from day to day Nae "lente largo" in the play, But "allegretto forte" gay Harmonious flow: A sweeping, kindling, bauld ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room—"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"—but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... very neat and apposite, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous and respectful attention. They were really entertained with Kant's Metaphysics! At last I took one of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte; and, when there was a pause, she began an Italian air. She was anxious to please him, and he was enraptured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it was over, he praised the singer warmly, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... sur les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter dans ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... Jerry, now arousing himself and sauntering to the fire; "I hardly ever feel well,"—complaining was Jerry's especial forte, an excuse for all his laziness; yet his appetite never failed; and when, as was sometimes the case, one of the neighbours sent a small piece of meat, or any little article of food to his wife, under the plea of ill health ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... having a maiden's cheer [face], for like oft apply to like, and spake by the tongue of the serpent to Eve, and said: Why commanded you God that ye should not eat of all the trees of Paradise? This he said to find occasion to say that he was come for. Then the woman answered and said: Ne forte moriamur, lest haply we die, which she said doubting, for lightly she was flexible to every part. Whereunto anon he answered: Nay in no wise ye shall die, but God would not that ye should be like him in science, and knowing that when ye eat of this ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... when guarding points, to do so with that portion of the staff which lies between your hands. This portion really corresponds with the "forte" of a sword or stick. If you have learned fencing with the foils it will be of the greatest possible advantage to you, for you will then understand how slight an effort brought to bear on the foible of your opponent's staff—in this case it will be somewhere within two feet ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... criticism of morals and manners viva voce, was his real forte. When he settled down to that he was great. But, as you found when you approached Meredith about him, his initial mistake had produced that 'rather low opinion of Wilde's capacities,' that 'deep-rooted contempt for the showman in him,' which ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... Pat. You'll find your own work all in good time. It mayn't be what you'd like it to, but it'll be something that you can do better than any one else," said Miss Jinny with kind wisdom. "Look at me. I'm sure that books and catalogues is my forte, but the Lord knows better. He's given me the sense to see it, too, and so mama is comfortable and happy and someone else who hasn't a dear mother depending on her does the library ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... is better to be joked about your own special forte than not to have it mentioned, so he ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. His special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... her wonder at this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed herself of the token ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... brother Doctor there, perhaps, may try.' 'What I? dear Sir,' the Doctor interposes 15 'What plant my thistle, Sir, among his roses! No, no; I've other contests to maintain; To-night I head our troops at Warwick Lane: Go, ask your manager.' 'Who, me? Your pardon; Those things are not our forte at Covent Garden.' 20 Our Author's friends, thus plac'd at happy distance, Give him good words indeed, but no assistance. As some unhappy wight, at some new play, At the Pit door stands elbowing a way, While oft, with many a smile, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... He cleared a breathing space before us. For a short time it was really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to undergo the peine forte et dure as the condition of our presence! We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness itself, would have ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Domino turmae, gelidamq. resurgens Linquit humum Saulus: sed non redit ossibus ardor, Non oculis lumen; subitis exterrita monstris Haud aliter juveni stupuerunt pectora, quam cum Fulmina si flammis straverunt forte bisulcis Coniferam pinum, aut surgentem in sidera quercum, Agricola exsurgit conterritus, et pede lustrat Exustum nemus, et pallentes sulphure campos. Explorat late noctem, caecosq. volutat Hinc atq. hinc oculos, et ab omni nube Tonantes ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Stephen, "they must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... acuteness of his analytical mind seemed to unravel and lay bare the true features of the case, with an ease and power that required scarce an effort. His powers of ratiocination were very great, and this was the forte of his mind; his conclusions were clearly deduced from arguments ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... constantly hold up to him the example of her father and brothers, and how they would manage in this and that case? or shall she say cheerily and once for all to herself,—"My husband has no talent for business; that is not his forte; but then he has talents far more interesting: I cannot have everything; let him go on undisturbed, and do what he can do well, and let me try to make up for what he cannot do; and if there be disabilities come on us in consequence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... of the marchers. As the procession approaches and the music becomes louder, one hears in the bass an accentuation of the characteristic rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to a brief piano, as if the winding path had led the procession away again. Then there is another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, as if the marchers were quite near; and then a pianissimo, as if they had passed behind a hill and almost ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... till now so round and shapely an arm, hands so small and white, tipped with pink filbert nails. He did not learn the game so quickly as might be. He, like Maurice, was pondering over the unusual position in which he found himself; but analysis of any sort was not his forte; so he soon forgot all save the delicate curve of Madame's chin and throat, the soft ripple of her laughter, the abysmal gray ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... enjoy comparative safety. The expense of putting it up would be very small, and it would avoid the constant friction which is bound to exist at present in a country where honesty is not the chief forte of the lower people, and where quarrels are ever rampant. Even during the short stay of Messrs. Clemenson and Marsh's caravan, several articles were stolen under their very eyes in the Consulate shelter, and at the time of my visit caravans, British ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... we set this aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, as it were, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... second army corps, its military centre being at Amiens, where also is its court of appeal. Laon is the capital, and Soissons the seat of a bishopric of the province of Reims. Other important places are Chateau-Thierry, St Quentin and Coucy-le-Chateau. La Forte-Milon has remains of an imposing chateau of the 14th and 15th centuries with interesting fortifications. The ruined church at Longpont (13th century) is the relic of an important Cistercian abbey; Urcel and Mont-Notre-Dame have fine churches, the first entirely in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be proud to avail ourselves of your professional services to do a little in the domestic and appalling murder line; but our forte is ballet or pantomime; perhaps, as you have your own silk tights, the latter department might suit you best. Our artist is considered very great, and shall convert our "Jim Along Josey" wood-cuts into your portrait. We will also pledge ourselves to procure an illuminated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... HENRY GRATTAN, born at Dublin, July 3, 1746; died May 14, 1820. He was the greatest of Irish patriots, and the greatest of Irish orators. His forte was reasoning, but it was "logic on fire." A distinguished writer described his eloquence as a "combination of cloud, whirlwind, and flame." His style was elaborated with great care. His language is select, and his periods are ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... talking to Sir Thomas, my dear," he said. He tried to speak casually, and, as a natural result, infused so much meaning into his voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern coughed confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He abandoned it in favor of directness. "He was telling me that you had refused Lord Dreever ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... your letter that you are in trouble of some nature, and, also, that you are building hopes, if not actually depending, upon the crude labors of your pen. Let me tell you frankly at once that literature is not your forte. It you have sent literary work to other parties like that inclosed to me you will never hear from it again. In the first place, you do not write correctly; in the second, you have nothing to say. We cannot afford to print ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... had not until quite recently been printed. He composed fifty-three works for the church, a hundred and eighteen for orchestra, twenty-six operas and cantatas, a hundred and fifty-four songs, forty-nine concertos, sixty-two piano-forte pieces, and seventeen pieces for ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... was very infectious; it began with a low, mirthful ripple, well down in the throat, and rose in rapid leaps of musical joy till it had traveled a whole octave of bubbling happy sounds, when it culminated in a peal of double forte shakes and trills, that made it a joy to hear, and finally it died out in an "Oh, dear me! ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... neither the living nor the dead, went to the burial-ground with his men, and jumped upon the spot, which immediately gave out the soft note as before. Africaner ordered an immediate exhumation, when the source of the mystery proved to be the piano-forte of the missionary's wife, which being too cumbrous an article to take away, had been buried there, with the hope of being one day able to recover it. Never having seen such an instrument before, Africaner had it dissected for the sake of the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... ordonne qu'on vous fasse prisonnier, parceque, ayant envoye une requisition a Pontoise pour des vivres, vous avez repondu que vous ne les donneriez pas, sans qu'on envoie une force militaire assez forte pour les prendre. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... observed the count, good-naturedly, seeing Baldassare's embarrassment at having his ignorance exposed. (The cavaliere never could leave poor Adonis alone.) "We all know your forte is the ballroom; there you beat ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... piano forte do autor Erard, de 3 cordas, por 280$, garantido; na rua da Quitanda n. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... an eloquent man, although a ready and frequent public speaker. His voice was not musical. His strong forte was invective. He was nearly always denouncing somebody. Apparently, he was never so happy as when making another miserable. Sometimes his personal allusions were very broad. He was accustomed in his speeches to refer to one of Missouri's United ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... not lost much, it was several times intimated to her during her progress up the hill. "The speakers from a distance" had all failed to appear except two. The forte of one of these seemed to be statistics. He astonished his audience if he did not edify them, putting into round numbers every fact connected with the temperance cause that could possibly be expressed by figures—the quantity of spirits consumed in Canada, the money ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Minister who is not at its head: all the resources of Russian influence and of Russian corruption are lavished to render his people rebellious and his administration unsuccessful. From this peine forte et dure we believe that Europe will now be relieved; and if the people or the sovereigns of the Continent, particularly those of Germany and Italy, make a tolerable use of the freedom from foreign dictation which the weakness of ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... terminetur: nec alicui liceat, [4] Romanae Ecclesiae, cujus in omnibus causis debet reverentia custodiri, relictis his sacerdotibus, qui in eadem Provincia Dei Ecclesiam nutu Divino gubernant, ad alias convolare Provincias. Quod siquis forte praesumpserit; & ab officio Clericatus summotus, & injuriarum reus judicetur. Si autem majores causae in medium fuerint devolutae, ad Sedem Apostolicam sicut Synodus statuit, & beata consuetudo exigit, post judicium Episcopale referantur. By these Letters it seems to me that ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... hat, gold-lace, and breeches, who, no doubt, had something to do with the ceremonial of the Sessions. I saw, too, a procession of a good many old cabs and other carriages, filled with people, and a banner flaunting above each vehicle. These were the piano-forte makers of York, who were going out of town to have a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... hire lyht, So doth the semly sonne bryht. When briddes singeth breme; Deowes donketh the dounes, Deores with huere derne rounes Domes forte deme; Wormes woweth under cloude, Wymmen waxeth wounder proude, So wel hit wol hem seme, Yef me shal wonte wille of on, This wunne weole y wole forgon Ant wyht in wode ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... masterpieces of humor, which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried in the courts of an orthodox morality and found lamentably wanting; or else, by way of giving them another chance, they are being subjected to the peine forte et dure of modern analysis, and are revealing hideous and melancholy meanings in the process. I have always believed that Hudibras owes its chilly treatment at the hands of critics—with the single and most genial exception of Sainte-Beuve—to ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... teachers, music became a customary part of the education of ladies. Many of the planters themselves in their leisure moments indulged in this delightful amusement. Robert Carter had in his home in Westmoreland County a harpsichord, a piano-forte, an harmonica, a guitar and a flute, and at Williamsburg an organ. He had a good ear, a very delicate touch, was indefatigable in practicing and performed well on several instruments. Especially was he fond of the harmonica, and spent much time in practicing ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... si forte indulsit cura soporem, Et toto versata thoro jam membra quiescunt, Continuo templum et violati Numinis aras, Et quod praecipuis mentem suboribus urget, Te videt in somnis; tua sacra et major imago Humana turbat pavidum, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Je l'ignore. Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, Rouget, tu me ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... in the true path to excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... His forte was that of a brilliant writer and most industrious compiler, a popularizer of science. He was at times a bold thinker; but his prudence, not to say timidity, in presenting in his ironical way his thoughts on the origin of things, is annoying, for we do ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... sir—Sir Duncan Yordas—the oldest family in Yorkshire. Men of great power, both for good and evil, mainly, perhaps, the latter. It has struck me sometimes that the county takes its name—But etymology is not my forte. What has he to do with us, you ask? Sir, I will answer you most frankly. 'Coram populo' is my business motto. Excuse me, I think I hear that door creak. No, a mere fancy—we are quite 'in camera.' Very well; reverend sir, prepare your mind for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... PHYLLIS. In nemore umbroso Phyllis mea forte sedebat, Cui mollem exhausit tussis anhela sinum: Nec mora: de loculo deprompsi pyxida loevo, Ipecacuaneos, exhibuique trochos: Illa quidem imprudens medicatos leniter orbes Absorpsit numero bisque quaterque decem: ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... be the stepping-stones to success, you know." "That's good of you to say as much, Jack, old chap, when I do think up some of the greatest fool notions ever heard of," acknowledged Toby; "but it's my plan to keep right on, and encourage my brain to work along that groove. I feel it's going to be my forte in life to invent things. I'd rather be known as the man who had lightened the burdens of mankind than to be a famous general ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... houses, but has to remain in the town and pass the night at different houses, especially of those gentlemen who take pleasure in tapping him on the nose. Anton Prokofievitch is very fond of good eating, and plays a good game at cards. Obeying orders always was his forte; so, taking his hat and cane, he set out ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... out of sight when I remembered about there being bears on that mountain; so I rose and undertook to forge ahead too. I was not a great success at it however. I know now that if ever I should turn to a life of crime forgery would not be my forte. I do not forge readily. Eventually, though, I reached the summit, he being already there. We had come up for the view, but I seemed to have lost my interest in views; so, while he looked at the view, I reclined in a prostrate position and resumed panting. That was three years ago and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... talent did not permit him to ascend the scale, and he now kept a shop in the small seaport town of Overton, where he repaired damaged articles of science—a watch one day, a quadrant or a compass another; but his chief employment and his chief forte lay in telescopes; and accordingly, a large board, with "Nicholas Forster, Optician," surmounted the small shop window, at which he was invariably to be seen at his employment. He was an eccentric person, one of those who had narrowly escaped being clever; but there was an obliquity in his mind ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... you, I wouldn't chance it. Fighting has never really been your forte; Witness Larissa, and your rapid transit, Chivied by slow foot-sloggers of the Porte; Far better make for Denmark o'er the foam; There is no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... joyously. "Why, they're my forte—-I am quite at home in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. Please ask ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... cantus gallorum, vt per haec et alia signa constet ibi habitare gentes: nam et fluuius decurrens monstrat signa saepe certissima in suo exitu: ignoratur tamen si tenebrae per totum territorium sint eiusdem densitatis, an forte sint in circuitu per aliquod spacium, et ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... in which she was to live, and shrunk with timid modesty from the arduous task of preparing herself, by application and study, for this sacred duty. The fashions of the day were rapidly running into the attainment of accomplishments among the young of her own sex, and the piano forte was already sending forth its sonorous harmony from one end of the Union to the other, while the glittering usefulness of the tambour-frame was discarded for the pallet and brush. The walls of our mansions were beginning to groan ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... began awkwardly, for argument was not his forte, and Marina had always conquered him. "'Chi troppo abbraccia nulla stringe,' one gains nothing who grasps too much. Thou wast ever one for duty, and if the Senator Marcantonio will ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... created pairs, and dispersed in space to seek out their particular mates. A harmony pervades the whole, a perfect modulation of numbers, never, perhaps, surpassed, and rarely equaled in compositions of their class. This was the forte of Thomas Ingoldsby; a harsh line or untrue rhyme grated on his ear like the Shandean hinge." These observations are just. As a rhymer, Mr. Barham has but one ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... think I could manage the rights!" Jack said. "Spelling is not my forte, and Howard, who is great at it, missed ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... conversation with Jones on business affairs, unless in the presence of a third party. Jones represented that if they went on as they were now doing, the property would soon be swallowed up by the lawyers. To this Mr. Brown, whose forte was not eloquence, tacitly assented ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Spake in his owne linqua[62] to thiss Efect, "Gent men, I know you are men come to seeke a fortune, if You want money or Plate goe alonge with me, I will shew you wheir their is more then you all can carry away." wee gave no credit to him, butt was minded to fall on uppon the forte to take their greate gunns for the shipp, haveing none on board. Our Party being so tired, and cutt off, wee weare feigne to leave the greate gunns, money, all the Rest of the rich traide which was in that small towne. three of our Doctors being in the Hospitall Church dressing of our wounded men, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... e la selva si scoiora, Al tuo serena ombroso Muovine, alto Riposo, Deh ch'io riposi una sol notte, un hora: Han le fere, e git augelli, ognun talora Ha qualche pace; io quando, Lasso! non vonne errando, E non piango, e non grido? e qual pur forte? Ma poiche, non sent' egli, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the simbols of the ancient World, up to the real discoveries of the present time proceeded the solution of the relation of the Eternal time, motion, and distance. Which set forte the discovery of the generational cosmological Parents of this planet, are discovered that these can be ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... nisi forte insanit, neque in solitudine, neque in convivio honesto." That is, "No man dances, in private, or at any respectable entertainment, except he ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... peculiar to that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... appeal unto some passion, Some to men's feelings, others to their reason; The last of these was never much the fashion, For Reason thinks all reasoning out of season: Some speakers whine, and others lay the lash on, But more or less continue still to tease on, With arguments according to their "forte:" But no one ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... compie anno di sorte, l'Italia l'alza in cima della spada mirando al segno; e la sua rossa strada ne brilla insino alle sue alpine porte. Tu tendi la potenza della morte come un arco tra il Vodice e l'Hermada; varchi l'Isonzo indomito ove guada la tua Vittoria col tuo pugno forte. Giovine sei, rinato dalla terra sitibonda, balzato su dal duro Carso col fiore dei tuio fanti imberbi. Questo, che in te si compie, anno di guerra splenda da te, avido del futuro, e al domani terribile ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... of the corn meal; Mr. Cobbett says, "it is not a word to squall out over a piano-forte," "but it is a very good word, and a real English word." It seems to mean something which is half pudding, half porridge. Homany is the shape in which the corn meal is generally used in the southern states of America, but Mr. Cobbett has never seen it. Samp is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... one, was devoted to joy. In the evening there was a concert, which was chiefly performed by the nobility. Ferdinand played the violoncello, Vereza the German flute, and Julia the piana-forte, which she touched with a delicacy and execution that engaged every auditor. The confusion of Julia may be easily imagined, when Ferdinand, selecting a beautiful duet, desired Vereza would accompany his sister. The pride of conscious excellence, however, quickly overcame her timidity, and ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... afternoon. He is a most interesting man to talk to. Only don't—" She nearly said, "Don't protect him." But the bell was ringing for lunch, and, as often happened, Cecil had paid no great attention to her remarks. Charm, not argument, was to be her forte. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, Dixerat, ecquis adest ? et, adest, responderat echo. Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes; Voce, veni, clamat ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the Earl of St. Vincent sailed for England, in the Argo, on the 31st. His lordship also mentions, that he has just received great news from Egypt. The siege of Acre was raised on the 21st of May; and Bonaparte, leaving all his cannon and sick behind, had got again to Cairo. The La Forte French frigate had been taken by the English La Sybille, but that poor Captain Coote had been killed; "and here," says his lordship, "we must shed a tear for dear Miller! By an explosion of shells, which he was preparing on board the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... hoped to hear tidings of the army. A few weeks after the departure of the troops, Commodore Warren sent a small vessel to Boston with two French prisoners. One of them was Monsieur Bouladrie, who had been commander of a battery outside the walls of Louisburg. The other was the Marquis de la Maison Forte, captain of a French frigate which had been taken by Commodore Warren's fleet. These prisoners assured Governor Shirley that the fortifications of Louisburg were far too strong ever to be ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... down the room and entered the line, bearing the old air of superiority. "I'll show them how to spell," he thought as he took his place. Spelling had been his strong forte in the old days of school, and it was soon evident that he retained his former ability. The letters of the most confusing words fell from his lips as though the very pages of the spelling-book were engraved upon his brain. He held his ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... play, Leonard desisted in confusion at my beholding such savage doings, but cool and easy, not having turned a hair; Aubrey, panting, done up, railing at him as first cousin to Hercules, all as a delicate boast to me of his friend's recovered strength. Aubrey's forte is certainly veneration. His first class of human beings is a large one, though quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For instance, he teases Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than the victim can bear, and then relieves his feelings in ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to its sober senses." That no living man was better qualified for the accomplishment of so praiseworthy a purpose will now appear: "It has been my opinion of my humble self, that whatever small forte I might possess was to conciliate and soften down ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside like ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... plantation. But that which turned most to their profite, in time, was an entrance into the trade of Wampampeake; for they now bought aboute 50^li. worth of it of them; and they tould them how vendable it was at their forte Orania; and did perswade them they would find it so at Kenebeck; and so it came to pass in time, though at first it stuck, & it was 2. years before they could put of this small quantity, till y^e inland people knew of it; ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day, and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his sufferings." Rightly must this mode of torture have been named peine forte et dure. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but there is absolutely no foundation ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... pity that your sight returned to you to enable you to do so dastardly a deed; and I am beginning to have my doubts whether or not you have not been duping us all along, and, under that guise, spying upon us—which seems to be your forte. This revelation makes me angrier than ever," he went on, "for it leaves you with no possible hope of pardon for your atrocious conduct, which merits the whole ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... decision of that case in behalf of the press as the dawn of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America. To the ladies now present, the lovers of sweet sounds, it may not be uninteresting to know that the first piano forte (harpsichord) imported into America, arrived in this city for the musical gratification of the family ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... It is better to be joked about your own special forte than not to have it mentioned, so he was ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... L'histoire racontee, dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... been printed. He composed fifty-three works for the church, a hundred and eighteen for orchestra, twenty-six operas and cantatas, a hundred and fifty-four songs, forty-nine concertos, sixty-two piano-forte pieces, and ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... adopted by a Berlin family and in whom, in spite of careful education, the evil disposition of his father comes to the surface. In this artificial treatment of the theory of heredity Clara Viebig's art does not appear to the best advantage; her forte is rather unbiased objectivity and penetrating observation of every-day life. The other novels having their scene in Berlin are distinguished for a keen sense for realities, as, for example, The Daily Bread (1900), a treatment ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... collateral proof of the matter be needed, here we have it—Mr. B. was an editor. Irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. It was his strong point—his virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a Brownson to convince him that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sort," resumed Camilla, "I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—" Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the formation of new ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... his forte; it never was. The plot of the Lay, if not exactly non-existent, is of the simplest and loosest description; the whole being in effect a series of episodes strung together by the loves of Margaret and Cranstoun and the misdeeds of the Goblin Page. Even the Book supplies no real or necessary ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... with a less tragic history is La Roche Gageac on the Dordogne, below Sarlat. "Ma chere patrie," wrote the old chronicler, Jean Tarde, "une petite ville bien close et tres forte dependant de la temporalite de l'evesque de Sarlet, la quelle ne fut ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... questions touching pay, the amount retained for clothing, promotion, roster, reserve, uniform, full and fatigue dress, armament, and tactics. He understood, without difficulty, the advantages of the percussion gun, but the attempt to explain rifled cannon to him was in vain. Artillery was not his forte; but he avowed, nevertheless, that Napoleon had owed more than one victory ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... rejoignit. Je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyage me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa definitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: "Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expressed, of men and things? Explosive violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... earth-clot swimming in space. Davos contemplated the tips of his fingers as he sat in the grateful cool, his ten voices as he named them. With them he sang, thundered, and thought upon the keyboard of his grand piano-forte. A miracle, indeed, these slender cushions of fat, ramified by a network of nerves, sinews, and bones as exquisite in their mechanism as the motion of the planets. If hearing is a miracle, so is touch; the ear is not a resonator, as has been so long maintained, but an apparatus which ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... remained silent, petrified with amazement. And Liszt when in the full development of his genius, had, as we have seen, been the art-comrade of George Sand; he had spent the whole of the summer season of 1837 at Nohant, transcribing Beethoven's symphonies for the piano-forte whilst she wrote her romances; she was familiar with his marvellous improvisations. In her "Trip to Chamounix" (Lettres d'un Voyageur, No. VI.) she has drawn a vivid picture of their extraordinary effect, describing his unrehearsed organ recital in the Cathedral of Freibourg to his little party ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... sir, a Papist is not—curse it, this isn't handsome of me, Willy. I beg your pardon. Confound all religions if it goes to that. Still at the same time I'm bound to say as a loyal man that Protestantism is my forte, Mr. Reilly—there's where I'm strong, a touch of Hercules about me there, Mr. Reilly—Willy, I mean. Well, you are a thorough good fellow, Papist and all, though you—ahem!—never mind though, you shall see ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... naturally impetuous. There could be no greater mistake; or, if he is such by natural disposition, this is one of the points where his seminary training has taught him to control and master himself. The forte of his character is his unchanging equanimity. And yet there must have been in him a wondrous amount of nervous energy to enable him to survive very serious injuries to his frame in early life, and to endure the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... thus raised having subsided, Mademoiselle Cormon asked the reason of her success. Then began the /forte/ of the gossip. Du Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a monster, who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling Hospital supplied. His immoral habits were at last revealed! these Parisian saturnalias ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Man" is good enough to say of me that "cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible." With your permission, I propose to cut up "A Devonshire Man"; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former or to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... hand. Not having a half-penny at command, she was helpless. Without money and without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the correspondence was going on. She supported herself by playing the piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the means of making her acquainted with a countrywoman of his, whose name is unpronounceable ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Miss Pat. You'll find your own work all in good time. It mayn't be what you'd like it to, but it'll be something that you can do better than any one else," said Miss Jinny with kind wisdom. "Look at me. I'm sure that books and catalogues is my forte, but the Lord knows better. He's given me the sense to see it, too, and so mama is comfortable and happy and someone else who hasn't a dear mother depending on her does the library ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... Superiorum meorum voluntate, Dei gloriam et animarum salutem promoturus; verisimile esse putavi, me turbulento hoc, suspicioso ac difficillimo tempore, sive citius, sive aliquanto tardius, in medio cursu abreptum iri. Quapropter ignarus quid de me futurum sit, quum Dei permissu in carceres et vincula forte detrudendus sim, ad omnem eventum scriptum hoc condidi: quod ut legere, et ex eo causam meam cognoscere velitis, etiam atque etiam rogo. Fiet enim, ut hac re non parvo labore liberemini, dum quod multis ambagibus inquirere vos audio, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... the romance of his life was over, and he eventually joined his regiment with some reckless hopes of "stopping a bullet" as he phrased it. Gloomy cynicism, however, was not his forte; and when, before the year was out, he was again promoted, he found that life was anything but a burden, although he was so ready ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... go and do the polite to her"), and sought Mary at the piano, hanging with pleasure on the slim form in the rich silk dress. This caught numberless lights from the candles, as did also the wings of her glossy hair. He watched, with a kind of amused tenderness, how at each forte passage head and shoulders took their share of lending force to the tones. He never greatly enjoyed Mary's playing. She did well enough at it, God bless her!—it would not have been Mary if she hadn't—but he came of a musical family; his mother had sung Handel ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sent for by vessels to other parts of the world. It is hardly strange that the Legislature did not even take the measure into consideration, and it does not appear that Jefferson ever returned to it. Practical legislation was not his forte. But his influence told nobly, as has been related, in barring slavery from the Northwestern territory, and, had just a little more support been found in 1784, would have saved the Southwest also to freedom, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... magno in populo cum saepe coorta est Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus; Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat; Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant: Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet: Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam Prospiciens genitor, coeloque invectus aperto Flectit equos, curruque volans dat ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... for it was the forte of the cardinal to prepare surprises for the agreeable entertainment of his guests. The ladies and gentlemen, the cardinals and princes of the Church, crowded around him begging for an explanation of the mystery, a ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... dull; and it is observed on all sides how very little great A and great B, notwithstanding the high position they have earned for themselves in their calling, know of matters out of their own line. On the other hand, the man of whom it was said that 'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very few are aware how its force is wasted ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, at totus in illis: Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum; Arreptaque manu, Quid agis, dulcissime rerum? Suaviter, ut nunc est, inquam: & cupio omnia quae vis. Cum affectaretur, Num quid vis? occupo. At ille, Noris nos, inquit; ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... schoolmaster had read in Rabe's grammar: Nemo saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, and had always looked upon dancing as a species of insanity. True, he had watched puppies and calves dancing when they felt frisky, but he did not believe that Cicero's maxim applied to the animal world, and he was in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... dowry, he was master of nearly a thousand pounds and a well-stocked farm; and increasing annual gains by his writings, seemed to augur future independence. But the Shepherd, not perceiving that literature was his forte, resolved to embark further in farming speculations; he took in lease the extensive farm of Mount Benger, adjoining Altrive Lake, expending his entire capital in the stocking. The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of sound mind and having full knowledge in respect of the subject concerning which justice demands an answer, and forasmuch as you are diabolically refractory, you have necessarily been put to torture, and you have been, by the terms of the criminal statutes, tried by the 'Peine forte et dure.' This is what has been done to you, for the law requires that I should fully inform you. You have been brought to this dungeon. You have been stripped of your clothes. You have been laid on your back naked on the ground, your limbs have been stretched ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... be heard, and I will never stoop to noisy banging. How I hate these orchestral players! How they scratch and blow like pigs and boasters! When I did play with them they made fun of my red hair and delicate touch. The leader could not understand me, and kept on yelling "Forte, Forte." It was in the Fifth of Beethoven, and I became angry and called out in my poor German (ah! I hate German, it hurts my teeth): "Nein, so klopft das Schicksal nicht an die Pforte." ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... others stood in her way she might not consider them at all; if she pledged her word, it might not always be profitable to keep it; but she liked to be on pleasant terms with everyone, and would be amiable to the last, no matter what happened. Comedy was her forte, rather than tragedy. If tragedy entered her life she would probably turn it into ridicule. Wholly without care, whimsical and generous to a degree, if it suited her mood, Louise Merrick possessed a nature capable of great things, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... that of the soft voices singing the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," while the strings gently pulse; and the fortissimo C major chord on the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzo-forte minor chords, is as dazzling in its brilliancy to-day as when it was first sung. The number of unisons, throwing into relief the two minor chords on C and F, should be especially noted. The chorus in the next number is poor, matched with this, though towards the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the famous "Selah," which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the staff on your ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... him play, was so pleased that she granted him a pension of twelve hundred francs. He became one of the first violins at the Opera, but his special forte was as leader of orchestras, and he held that post at the Conservatoire, on account of his efficiency, until 1815, when the advent of the allied armies caused it to ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... was one of those persons who seem never to absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could see the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison with the Hub; but she had never, thus far, led ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, both in rhythm ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... had been taken, we told the maestro we would like to hear the boys sing. It was plain he did not consider singing their strong forte, but our wishes were met. One boy, standing, wielded the baton, beating time. When the singing was done with, the maestro said he would like us to see the class in arithmetic, if we had time. Accordingly fourteen or fifteen boys, from ten to fourteen years of age, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Hottentots of the present time. Sir Garnet Wolseley, making his way to Coomassie, as a crow would fly, is just about the manner in which we may be sure that Germanicus made his way into Germany—as straight as he could go. But military history is not the forte of the author of the Annals. He knew it and avoided it as much as he could,—very unlike Tacitus, who, practically acquainted with military as well as civil affairs, writes with an obvious liking, of combats and civil wars, and, according to military authorities competent to pass an opinion, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... congenial surroundings of the shop she found it easy to live in to-day, leaving the future to unfold as it would. Her shorthand book lay unopened; she began to feel the truth of Marion's assurance, "Your forte is dainty, feminine things, Alex, in spite of your ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... touches. I will cite as an example the aria of 'Orpheus,' 'Che faro senza Euridice' Change its expression by the smallest discrepancy of time or modulation, and you transform it into a tune for a puppet-show. In music of this description a misplaced piano or forte, an ill-judged fioriture, an error of movement, either one, will alter the effect of the whole scene. The opera must, therefore, be rehearsed under my own direction, for the composer is the soul of his opera, and his presence is as necessary to its success as is ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... best-natured of the lot—had become quite swelled-headed with the big salary he received. Arithmetic was not his forte. As he could hardly write, he was trying to work out, with a number of sticks—each representing one day's salary—how much money he had already earned, and how much more he was likely to earn. It evidently seemed to him a large fortune—indeed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... had but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was entitled to peace he still had ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... of the passage. The terms of the allusion yield conclusive evidence as to how the Poet stood in 1592. Though sneered at as a player, it is plain that he was already throwing the other playwriters into the shade, and making their labours cheap. Blank-verse was Marlowe's special forte, and some of his dramas show no little skill in the use of it, though the best part of that skill was doubtless caught from Shakespeare; but here was "an upstart" from the country who was able to rival him in his own line. Moreover, this Shake-scene was a Do-all, a Johannes Fac-totum, who could ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and Latin all forgot, Non idoneus is Willis, minus et sufficiens, He may have a sanum corpus, but he lacks a sana mens.'" "Nay," says Willis, "such an answer is but trifling with the court, I have preached a Latin sermon, and the classics are my forte, You must name the books I failed in, you must give me every chance Of a fresh examination at the hands of Lord Penzance." Lord Penzance supported Willis: "Bishop, you must file," said he, "Some more ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... little sharper, she would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the prim sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and melody were well marked, and there was no mistaking ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... battalion with architects' clerks on the one hand, or students at law on the other,—you may have, in your algebra class, a goldsmith who is afraid of being snobbish if he speaks to a map-engraver, or a tailor who does not presume to address an opinion on Archimedes' square to a piano-forte maker. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... forte placet veteres sopire querelas Anthemium concede mihi; sit partibus istis Augustus longumque Leo; mea ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... HOME DEPARTMENT,—Though I enjoy reading the Home Department, I have never before written anything for it, as writing is not my forte, but I feel almost compelled to send this to express my indignation at the light sentence passed on those three men in the Smith assault case. I think it perfectly outrageous that they should get off so easily. Such a crime, ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... German is seldom amusing, Since humour is hardly his forte, But I've frequently smiled in perusing His latest pronouncement on sport; For it seems that he thinks it the duty Of sportsmen to aim at the goal Of adding to bodily beauty A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... have ever heard. The lame and lisping boy from Maine had ripened, under the Southern sun, into a master orator. The original, ever-varying, and beautiful imagery with which he illustrated and enforced his arguments impressed Webster, Clay, Everett, and even John Quincy Adams. But his forte lay in arraigning his political opponents, when his oratory was "terrible as an army with banners;" nothing could stand against the energy of his look, gesture, and impassioned logic, when once he was fairly under way, in denouncing the tricks and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more and more that of an endless introduction to a new era. The ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... versatile: books and book-making are indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous departments of science and of art. Thus, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, as it were, compelling his heart into his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... jest at him; had he abandoned the expedition? Oliver could not understand indecision; perhaps he did not see so many sides to the question, his mind was always quickly made up. Action was his forte, not thought. The night came, and ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Woolson's forte. Her men and women are not mere puppets, but original, breathing, and finely ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... newly appointed lieutenant governor of the colony, to move his principal city above the falls on the James, where he would enjoy every advantage in an attack by a European foe, or better still, that he locate it on the Chowan River in modern North Carolina, "foure dayes Journey from your forte Southewards." In an earlier passage of his instructions, he had already been advised that he should be guided by the general principle of seeking the sun, "which is under God the first cause both ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... hollow and admitted of two hired-men, who operated the beast at a moderate salary. These men drilled a long time on what they called a heifer dance—a beautiful spectacular, and highly moral and instructive quadruped clog, sirloin shuffle, and cow gallop, to the music of a piano-forte. The rehearsals had been crowned with success, and when the cow came on the stage she got a bouquet, and made a bran mash on one of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... fallacious as the breath of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;—'tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making a drawing by it;—this is aenigmatical, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of literature, fiction is the one to which, by nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women will of course be found competent to the highest success in other departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a prolific writer of historical tales and stories of adventure-intrigue, his particular forte being tales of India and the Near East. Twelve of his novels are listed in THE CHECKLIST OF FANTASTIC LITERATURE, with themes of mysticism, black versus white magic, lost-race, and even true science fiction. Many others of his stories are ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the slender ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... batimens destines au cabotage. Peu osent se hasarder sur les vaisseau employes aux voyages de long cours, parce qu'ils craignent d'etre transportes et vendus dans les iles.—Au physique, tous ces noirs sont generalement vigoureux,[1] d'une forte constitution, capables des travaux les plus penibles; ils sont generalement actifs.—Domestiques, ils sont sobres et fideles.—Ce portrait s'applique aux femmes de cette couleur.—Je n'ai vu faire aucune distinction entr'eux a cet egard et ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... annoying for Milly regularly to find her own and the family purse reduced to a state that demanded rigid economy. The Invader, stirring in that limbo where she lay, might have answered that rigid economy was Milly's forte and real delight, and that it was well she should have nothing to spend in ridiculously disguising the fair body they were condemned to share. Mildred certainly left behind her social advantages which both ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... with the steamboat-hands, and I resolved to let them go ashore as little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however, before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a piano-forte, for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made up my mind to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from which I should be covertly attacked, and nothing else; and as this house was destined to the flames, I should have left the piano ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... first he refused to plead. It is the first instance I have met with in history of a prisoner standing 'mute of malice.' Coke read him a lecture on the subject, pointing out that by his obstinacy he was making himself liable to peine forte et dure, which meant that order could be given for his exposure in an open place near the prison, extended naked, and to have weights laid upon him in increasing amount, he being kept alive with the "coarsest bread obtainable and water from the nearest sink or puddle to the place ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... yet it must be said that there is scarcely a quatrain in which the rhyme does not trip him into a platitude, and there are too many swaggering with that expression forte d'un sentiment faible which Voltaire condemns in Corneille,—a temptation to which Dryden always lay too invitingly open. But there are passages higher in kind than any I have cited, because they show imagination. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... letter was quite long, which surprised me, for writing essays is not Annetta's forte, and hers are generally as brief as St. Clair's. Annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behavior, but there isn't a shadow of orginality in her. Here is ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... seen my comedy 'The Hornet of Judah'—No?—Ah, she vas a great comedy, Sampson. All London talked of her. She has been translated into every tongue. Perhaps I play in your company. I am a great actor—hein? You know not my forte is voman's parts—I make myself so lovely complexion vith red paint, I fall in love vith me." He sniggered over his stout. "The Redacteur vill not redact long, hein?" he said presently. "He is a fool-man. If he work ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... consequence, Commodore Warren was speedily on the look-out, off the coast of Cape Breton, and in the course of events fell in with, and captured, the "Vigilant," seventy-four, commanded by Captain Stronghouse, or, as his title runs, "the Marquis de la Maison Forte." The "Vigilant" was a store-ship, filled with munitions of war for the French town. Here was a glorious opportunity. If the saints could only intimate to Duchambon, the Governor of Louisburgh, that his supplies had been cut off, Duchambon might think of capitulation. But unfortunately the French ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... niceties were developed with much attention to detail, and at home and while in Washington she was gratifyingly popular. "A brilliant conversationalist," she had heard herself called when fifteen, and the art of conversation, hitherto far from neglected, became by choice and practice her forte. Brilliancy in speech ever remained her only seriously attempted accomplishment. Clever of speech, from childhood, she had early learned to utilize this ability to attain any desired end. And talk she could, and talk she did, and as she grew older, by sheer talking she ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... est d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.' ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... for that theer whisperin' and shout-in' in the course of a piece of music," said Sennacherib. "Pianner is pianner, and forte is forte, but theer's no call to strain a man's ears to listen to the one, nor to drive him deaf with t'other. Same time, if the young gentleman 'ud like to come an' gi'e us a lesson now ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... point de vue litteraire ou au point de vue social, la figure d'Henry Reeve etait essentiellement originale, et il devait ce caractere non seulement a la nature de son esprit, mais a l'education qu'il avait recue. Sur la base anglaise de la forte instruction classique son pere [Footnote: A momentary lapse of memory. It is scarcely possible that the Duc d'Aumale did not know that Reeve's father died whilst Reeve was still an infant, and that his ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the most barbarous and cruel of the punishments of our English statutes was that distinguished by the name of Peine forte et dure, or pressing to death with every aggravation of torture. It was adopted as a manner of punishment suitable to cases where the accused refused to plead, and was commuted about the year 1406 from the older method of merely starving the prisoner to death. ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... tout entire dans sa main sans que l'adjudant lcht pourtant le bout de la chane... Le cadran tait azur... la bote nouvellement fourbie..., au soleil, elle paraissait toute de feu... La tentation tait trop forte. ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... husband a value that was not recognized outside of his family. In this respect there seems a surprising compensation in human life. But this remark I make only in passing. Mrs. Fluker, admitting in her heart that farming was not her husband's forte, hoped, like a true wife, that it might be found in the new field to which he aspired. Besides, she did not forget that her brother Sam had said to her several times privately that if his brer Pink wouldn't have so many notions and would let him alone in his management, they would all ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... know the forte of Herr von Francius? And—excuse me—are not your windows opposite to ours, and open as a rule? Can I not hear the music you practice, and shall I not ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Inland and secrets of those countreys, and also for further search of the passage to Cataya (whereof the hope continually more and more increaseth) that certaine numbers of chosen souldiers and discreet men for those purposes should be assigned to inhabite there. [Sidenote: A forte to be built in Meta Incognita.] Wherevpon there was a strong fort or house of timber, artificially framed, and cunningly deuised by a notable learned man here at home, in ships to be caried thither, wherby those men that were appointed to winter and stay there the whole yere, might as well ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... comfortable circumstances, highly educated, handsome, attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some ways resembled her, Diana Dombey, who did not quite approve of her, being a little ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... I, "music may be talked of in England, but to possess the very soul of harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Browghty crag[538] was tane by the Englismen, beseiged by the Governour, but still keapt; and at it was slane Gawen, the best of the Hammyltonis,[539] and the ordinance left. Whareupon, the Englismen encouraged, begane to fortifie upoun the hill above Broughty hous, which was called the Forte of Broughty, and was verray noysome to Dondy, which it brunt and laid waist; and so did it the moist parte of Anguss, which was not assured, and under ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... long at Singapore. His principal object was to procure a vessel to trade between that place and Sarawak. Trading, however, was not his forte; but he already felt the deepest interest in the welfare of those people. By accident—or, more properly, by Providence—he appears to have been sent to put a stop to an unnatural war, and to save the lives of the unfortunate rebels; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... birth of another son,—Caspar Anton Carl; and to this event Dr. Wegeler attributes the unrelenting perseverance of the father in keeping little Ludwig from this time to his daily lessons upon the piano-forte. Both Wegeler and Burgomaster Windeck of Bonn, sixty years afterward, remembered how, as boys, visiting a playmate in another house across the small court, they often "saw little Louis, his labors and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... se 'l libro non erra, Lo spirito maggior tremo si forte, Che parve ben, che morte Per lui in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... "The Philharmonic Society in London presented to him.....a magnificent grand-piano forte of Broadwood's manufacture." Schindler says expressly, "Presented by Ferd. Ries, John Cramer, and Sir George Smart." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... afraid to go too far, the organist wipes his palms upon his trousers legs, squares his shoulders, and plunges into the program that he has played at all weddings for fifteen years past. It begins with Mendelssohn's Spring Song, pianissimo. Then comes Rubinstein's Melody in F, with a touch of forte toward the close, and then Nevin's "Oh, That We Two Were Maying" and then the Chopin waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, and then the Spring Song again, and then a free fantasia upon "The Rosary" and then a Moszkowski mazurka, and then the Dvorak Humoresque ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... Humor was not his forte, and his attempt in this direction in the weeks that followed would have been humorous were they not so pathetic. How I did my part I cannot tell. Those weeks are to me now like the memory of an ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... days you find some of the traits that distinguished him later on. For one thing he disdained the drudgery of committee work: he chafed at the confinement of the conference room; eagle-like he yearned to spread his wings. His forte was talking. He loathed to mull over dull and unresponsive reports. He frankly admitted a disinclination to work, and it makes him one of the most superficial of men in what the world calls culture. His intelligence has ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... dorgs hez some forte—like huntin' an' such, But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much; Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me; Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!" When I tickled the back ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... "Why, they're my forte—-I am quite at home in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. Please ask me any question ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... a stick, and threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except on business," confronted her. Should she go on? Did the sign refer to her? ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf the noble ship and all on board ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... could remain at home after tea, it was his delight to settle himself comfortably down in the big rocking chair, in the well-lighted sitting-room, and to muse and doze, while Alice sang, and played upon the piano-forte. He had so many other cares, that he did not like to be troubled with bad reports of his children's conduct, This was so well understood by all the family, that even George seldom ventured to go to him with a complaint. The management of domestic ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... overpowered by six plantons—at the order of Monsieur le Directeur—and reincarcerated in the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon one woman. She was beaten badly, I tell you, before she gave in. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... are great square edifices of a grand and gloomy aspect, built of dark blue stones (pietra forte) measuring from 3 to 4feet. The bases, to the height of from 20 to 30 feet, consist of coarsely chiselled rubble work, which lessens the baldness, and contributes character and effect to the from 200 to 300 feet of plain wall. At intervals are strong bronze banner-rings and torch-sockets, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat, Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis. Vix illud lecti bis sex cervice subirent, Qualia nunc hominum producit corpora tellus.” ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... quis forte de nobilibus offert filium suum Deo in monasterio, si ipse puer minori aetate est, parentes ejus faciant ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... locusts;' and, in another article, accuses them of 'having undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of being champions of politeness.' The other papers summarized are the Free Briton, a violent opponent of the Craftsman, the British Journal, and the Universal Spectator, the forte of the last two ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... like to this. Each day a weight was added to that already lying on the breast of a strong man, bound on his back by the cords of his oppressors, until relief and destruction came together, and the man was crushed; such was the peine forte et dure." ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... and argue the point with my mother pro and con. But the fact is, the thing was distasteful, and wouldn't bear thinking about, much less arguing. I was too lazy to go and explain the matter, and writing was not my forte. Besides, I didn't want to thwart my mother in her plans, or hurt her feelings; and so the long and the short of it is, I solved the difficulty and cut the knot by crossing quietly over to Norway. I wrote a short note to ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... in all that is eloquent, logical and veracious—and of which, I am proud to say, the distinguished subject of this memoir had the honor once of being chosen semi-monthly secretary, after a sharp and close canvass. In the transactions of this society the principal forte of Daniel was debating; albeit the character of his elocution was not the most brilliant, and it was not often until after the ayes and noes were called, that it could be determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether he himself understood ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... "Multa ego premo et causa principis et universitatis nostrae cohibeo, quae (si alibi essem) evomerem in vastatricem Scripturae et Ecclesiae Romanae.... Timeo miser, ne forte non sim dignus pati et occidi pro tali causa: erit ista felicitas meliorum hominum, non tam foedi peccatoris. Dixi tibi semper me paratum esse cedere loco, si qua ego principi ill. viderer periculo hic vivere. Aliquando certe moriendum est, quanquam jam edita vernacula quadam ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... et famuli, et ancillae, a domo properantes, forte obliti, infantem in cunis jacentem secum non auferent, Daemones incipiunt commessari et vociferari, prospicereque per fenestras formis ursorum, luporum, felium, et monstrare pocula vino repleta. Ah, inquit pater, ubi infans meus? Vix cum haec dixisset, unus ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing but indifferently good salon-music. With the works of several American composers he was, however, unfamiliar. He has done little or nothing himself as a composer and declared that it was not his forte. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... vain my mother assured him she was quite satisfied; and if he would but lay by a little for the children, we should all have plenty, both for time present and to come: but saving was not my father's forte. He would not run in debt (at least, my mother took good care he should not), but while he had money he must spend it: he liked to see his house comfortable, and his wife and daughters well clothed, and well attended; and besides, he was charitably ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... etiam tenuis cautusque ferendis, Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum Reddiderit junctura novum: si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum; Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis Continget: dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter. Et nova factaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si Graeco fonte cadant, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... translations of Spanish ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review" from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854, and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression was exhausted in six weeks. It passed through five editions before ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... be a dancing man. Too lazy. Now I'll undertake to steer any girl and dance down any fellow you please. Dancing's my forte.' And Dolly glanced from his trim feet to his flashing gem with the defiant air of ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Sir, is not my 'forte', 'pon honour:— Though who would n't make a hazard When the ball is ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... stuffing him with rosemary and onions. But he could not bring himself to share her point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant too soon. So, of course, I 've had ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... with the Indians (not to friend), had the last winter destroyed and kild up all our hoggs, insomuch as of five or six hundred (as it is supposed), there was not above one sow, that we can heare of, left alive; not a henn nor a chick in the forte (and our horses and mares they had eaten ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... interesting than loud talkers. I resolved to try my utmost to be quiet and interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are not, or have ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attempt to utilise him in the green-grocer's shop when Tom at twenty-one married Jessica—who was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But it was not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when he was given a basket of stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavy it was nor where he took it, so long as he did not take it ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... up his yesterday's figures, generally, I should say; or else by unrolling a ball of red tape. Well-docketed papers and statistical facts are his forte." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... prominent taste of his wife, which is for music, is the only one denied to him. He afforded an amusing instance of this fact last night, when Mrs. Hare, having performed several airs on the piano-forte, he asked her, "Why she played the same tune so often, for the monotony was tiresome?"—an observation that ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... characters. As usual with George Eliot, her plot in this story is poor, involving improbable incidents and catastrophes. She is always unfortunate in her attempts to extricate her heroes and heroines from entangling difficulties. Invention is not her forte; she is weak when she departs from realistic figures. She is strongest in what she has seen, not in what she imagines; and here she is the opposite of Dickens, who paints from imagination. There was never such ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... for, I covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with which it came, showed that we were widening our distance, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... have known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat,—and, dearest of all, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... a year Uncle Sammy Fired away at his logical forte: Discussion was his occupation, And altercation his sport; He argued himself out of churches, ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... written by Mr. Moncrieff, the music by Mr. S. Nelson. The poetry is throughout sparkling and characteristic, and "an Historical Introduction on the origin and customs of Gipsies," prefixed to the Songs, is so attractive as to be likely to share the popularity of the piano-forte accompaniments. It is written with considerable care and neatness, and the peculiar tact requisite to produce an interesting paper on a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... nemore umbroso Phyllis mea forte sedebat, Cui mollem exhausit tussis anhela sinum: Nec mora: de loculo deprompsi pyxida loevo, Ipecacuaneos, exhibuique trochos: Illa quidem imprudens medicatos leniter orbes Absorpsit numero bisque quaterque decem: Tum tenero ducens suspiria pectore ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... in width. On our right appeared Fort Amsterdam, mounting no less than sixty guns in two tiers, capable, it seemed, of blowing us all out of the water, while there was a chain of forts on the opposite side, and at the bottom of the harbour the fortress, said to be impregnable, of Forte Republique enfilading the whole, and almost within grape-shot distance. Athwart the harbour was moored a Dutch thirty-six gun frigate and a twenty-gun corvette. The commodore had been ordered to diplomatise, and so he did in the most ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... was a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. His special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and praised ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... our cousin, Susan Morgeson. She had taken tea out but twice, since she was grown, she told us, then it was with her friend Lois Randall, a seamstress. To this girl she read the contents of her blank-books, and Lois in her turn confided to Veronica her own compositions. Essays were her forte. We met her at Susan Morgeson's, and, as I never saw her without her having on some article given her by Veronica, this occasion was no exception. She wore an exquisitely embroidered purple silk apron, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... some difficulty in justifying Washington's course by the opinion of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologics, 1 ma., 2 dae., Quaest. XCVI, Art. 4), who says that an unjust law is not binding in conscience "nisi forte propter vitandum scandalum vel turbationem." Aquinas is speaking of an unjust law which may be resisted unless scandal or tumult would result from resistance. Washington is speaking of a law which he considers right, but which he would not enforce if it ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... unresponsive quiet around her. Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... What has he done? But another question is less easy to answer, What can he, or should he, or shall he yet do? And here we venture to express a long-cherished opinion. Pure history, or that species of biography which merges into history, is his forte, and ought to have been his selected province. He never could have written a first-rate fiction or poem, or elaborated a complete or original system of philosophy, although both his imagination and his intellect are of a very high order. But he has every ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... century and a half ago the populace of Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking- stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'—pressed slowly to death under planks,—for refusing to plead to an indictment for witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to memory, as one of the necessary preliminaries in order to do justice to his subject. He had that day returned from a pilgrimage to one of the pictures, and was able to inform the artists who were present with regard to the smallest accessory. We fancied, had painting, and not penning, been his forte, he could have reproduced the picture for us on the spot, could we, at the same time, have transformed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... we had been forced to have recourse to heavy ordnance for this purpose. On the Tunisian frontier, where the population is both less fanatical and less warlike, we had followed a different course of procedure. We had gained the Bey's friendship by promising to support his power against the Forte's claim to suzerainty over him. Still, year after year the Sultan made as though he were fitting out a naval force to send to Tripoli and exercise this same suzerainty by deposing the Bey; and every year our squadron used to proceed to Tunis, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Ac ne forte putes me, quae facere ipse recusem, Cum recte tractant alii, laudere maligne; Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet; falsis terroribus implet, Ut magus; & modo me ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... I enjoy reading the Home Department, I have never before written anything for it, as writing is not my forte, but I feel almost compelled to send this to express my indignation at the light sentence passed on those three men in the Smith assault case. I think it perfectly outrageous that they should get off so easily. Such a crime, perpetrated in cold ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... his residence not far from Bloomsbury-square, and applied for an engagement. The manager, after scrutinizing the various qualifications of the youthful candidate, inquired, "and pray sir, to what particular parts have your studies been directed? What is your forte?" "Why, sir, (replied the youth in a modest tone) I rather think that I excel in your line." "My line! (exclaimed the manager with peculiar complacency) what is that? What do you mean?" "To confess the truth, (rejoined ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... non erra, Lo spirito maggior tremo si forte, Che parve ben, che morte Per lui in questo ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... a sweet glance at Sir Robert, who immediately led her to the piano-forte, followed by the Scottish merchant of the Baltic, whither the noble symphony of "The Douglas," "hound and horn," soon gathered the rest of the company. The remainder of the evening passed away delightfully in the awakened harmony. Mrs. Montresor ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... a man with greater facility of labor than Seward. When once he is at work, it runs torrent-like from his pen. His mind is elastic. His principal forte is argument on any given case. But the question is how far he masters the variegated information so necessary in a statesman, and the more now, when the country earnestly has such dangerous questions with European ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... in-office; and in reply to the second, it was maintained[a] that the privilege of an ambassador, whatever it might be, was personal, and did not extend to the individuals in his suite. At the bar, after several refusals, he was induced by the threat of the peine forte et dure to plead not guilty; and his demand of counsel, on account of his ignorance of English law, was rejected, on the ground that the court was "of counsel equal to the prisoner and the commonwealth." He was found guilty, and condemned, with four of his associates. ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... phantasmatum Extra systematis nostri fines lucentium Naturam indagaverit Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... to avail ourselves of your professional services to do a little in the domestic and appalling murder line; but our forte is ballet or pantomime; perhaps, as you have your own silk tights, the latter department might suit you best. Our artist is considered very great, and shall convert our "Jim Along Josey" wood-cuts into your portrait. We will also pledge ourselves to procure an illuminated cocked hat. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... large audience, without any apparent effort on his part. Besides, it was musical. The hearer went away with its expressive inflections and cadences still sounding in his ears. But his voice was not his only forte. He had a mind as full of sanctified wit and quick perception as an egg is full of food. A clear thinker, a cogent reasoner, and I may add, full of love and the Holy Ghost, it is not a matter of wonder that ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... meted out that "peine forte et dure," that acme of humiliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible that many a little girl in that room solemnly averred and believed she would kill herself before submitting to it. Pupasse's voluminous calico skirt would be gathered up by the hem and tied up over her head! Oh, the horrible ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood." Nothing could surpass Louis's obsequiousness: "Sicut mandasti ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus," etc. He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: "Quod si forte obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos in verbo regio pollicemur tuae Beatitudini atque promittimus exsequi facere tua mandata, omni appellationis aut oppositionis obstaculo prorsus excluso," etc. Louis was never more to be distrusted than when he bound ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and spacious, though there is nothing gaudy or gay about it. Let us walk in. It is plainly furnished, though the articles are rich and tasteful. This is the sitting room. Who is that beautiful lady sitting at the piano-forte? Do you not recognize her, gentle reader? Of course you do. It is Mrs. West, and an old acquaintance. She is no longer the little angel, though I cannot tell her height or her weight; but her husband thinks she is just as much of an angel now as when she ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... aspectabilis constructione ut recte Philosophemur duo sunt imprimis observanda: Unum ut attendentes ad infinitam Dei potentiam & bonitatem ne vereamur nimis ampla & pulchra & absoluta ejus opera imaginari: sed e contra caveamus, ne si quos forte limites nobis non certo cognitos, in ipsis supponamus, non satis magnifice ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... known to the readers of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of their gay tints yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... exist, in the popular mind; and fire, in an insurance sense, as distinct from explosion, was accurately defined by Justice McIlvaine, of the Supreme Court of Ohio (1872), in the case of the Union Insurance Company vs. Forte, i.e., an explosion was a remote cause of loss and not the proximate cause, when the fire was a burning of a gas jet which did not destroy, though the explosion caused by the burning gas-jet did ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... hardly a finer effect in music than that of the soft voices singing the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," while the strings gently pulse; and the fortissimo C major chord on the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzo-forte minor chords, is as dazzling in its brilliancy to-day as when it was first sung. The number of unisons, throwing into relief the two minor chords on C and F, should be especially noted. The chorus in the next number is poor, matched with this, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... everywhere. The port was old, the champagne dry, And every kind of luxury Which Melbourne could supply was there. They had the staple Christmas fare, Roast beef and turkey (this was wild), Mince-pies, plum-pudding, rich and mild, One for the ladies, one designed For Mr. Forte's severer mind, Were on the board, yet in a way It did not seem like Christmas day With no gigantic beech yule-logs Blazing between the brass fire-dogs, And with 100 deg. in the shade On the thermometer displayed. Nor were there Christmas offerings Of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... down the spine and the course of the nerves, using gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... so happened that Charlie Flint, after Marion had startled and disgusted him, sought refuge with her. She was pretty and dainty, and did not look strong-minded; not in the least as if her forte was to preach, so he made ready to have a running fire of small ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... methods than those of military force to settle the problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more and more that of an endless introduction to a new era. The work of a temporary Conference ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and the brilliant blue of the Arizona sky—is the memory of that talk of Mr. Muir's during the long drive, a talk which for range and raciness I have never heard equaled. He often uses the broad dialect of the Scot, translating as he goes along. His forte is in monologue. He is a most engaging talker,—discursive, grave and gay,—mingling thrilling adventures, side-splitting anecdotes, choice quotations, apt characterizations, scientific data, enthusiastic descriptions, sarcastic comments, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... She considered it to be her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the Chateau of La Roche Jagu, on the summit of a hill overhanging the river Trieux and defending the entrance. It has more of the character of a "maison forte" than of a "manoir," as was termed the habitation of a knight, and of those who holding a fief, yet did not possess the seignorial right to a castle with towers and donjon. The manoir might be enclosed ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... that this system of "revelation" was an idea of Rigdon. Smith was not, at that time, an inventor; his forte was making use of ideas conveyed to him. Thus, he did not originate the idea of using a "peek-stone," but used one freely as soon as he heard of it. He did not conceive the idea of receiving a Bible from an angel, but readily transformed the Spaniard-with-his-throat-cut to an ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except on business," confronted her. Should she ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... de Pontoise.—J'ai ordonne qu'on vous fasse prisonnier, parceque, ayant envoye une requisition a Pontoise pour des vivres, vous avez repondu que vous ne les donneriez pas, sans qu'on envoie une force militaire assez forte pour les prendre. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... Nocte brevem si forte indulsit cura soporem, Et toto versata thoro jam membra quiescunt, Continuo templum et violati Numinis aras, Et quod praecipuis mentem suboribus urget, Te videt in somnis; tua sacra et major imago Humana turbat pavidum, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... of easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room—"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"—but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... in the Pillory about an hour when it so happened that the Reverend John Jones, the chaplain of the jail, came into the yard. Seeing a group of warders at the mouth of the labor-cell, he walked up to them, and there was Josephs in peine forte et dure. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... avoir ete autrefois une grande et forte ville. Elle a un tres-beau port. On voit a Zara le corps de ce saint Simeon a qui N. S. fut presente dans le temple. Elle est entouree de trois cotes par la mer, et son port, egalement beau, est ferme d'une chaine de fer. Sebenico ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Landa Rolfoni quaesitam existimarem esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam nempe Americae e regione Gronlandiae, quae forte hodie Estotilandia," etc. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... them of 'having undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of being champions of politeness.' The other papers summarized are the Free Briton, a violent opponent of the Craftsman, the British Journal, and the Universal Spectator, the forte of the last two lying ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... appris? Je l'ignore. Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... says, except John Blakman has yet written a special life of Henry VI, and Blakman's is not an opus absolutum but a "fragmentum duntaxat operis longe majoris alicubi forte nunc etiam latentis." ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... in the room: a gentlewoman who has said farewell to youth, but not to feminine grade and delicacy; and an old man, who is lying on a sofa near one of the open windows, whilst his daughter plays passages of Handel's music on the piano-forte. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... inclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, 'during hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the 'English and mathematical.' Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... subitement plus forte et, n'hsitant davantage Monsieur, dis-je, ou Madame, j'implore vritablement votre pardon; mais le fait est que je somnolais et vous vntes si doucement frapper, et si faiblement vous vntes heurter, heurter la porte de ma chambre, que j'tais peine sr de vous avoir entendu.—Ici ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan Whittemore—a ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... rejoicings were going on out of doors, Cathelineau and Forte, the two priests, and a few others—the wise men of the town—were collected together within the auberge, and were consulting as to their ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... See, for example, the letter given by Wadding: Annals, ii., p. 16 (Rome, 1732). Tanta me amaritudo cordis, abundantia lacrymarum et immanitas doloris invasit, quod nisi ad pedes Jesu, consolationem solitae pietatis invenirem, spiritus meus forte deficeret et penitus anima liquefieret. Wadding's text should be corrected by that of the Riccardi MS., 279. f^o 80a and b. Cf. Mark of Lisbon, t. i., p. 185; Sbaralea, i., ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.' ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... with the two sailors, and tried to obtain from them some description of the passengers on board the Falcon. But description was not their forte. He gained nothing but a clumsy mass of separate facts concerning passengers and crew, which assisted him little in forming an opinion as to whether Brian Luttrell had, or had not, been on board. He was ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and apposite, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous and respectful attention. They were really entertained with Kant's Metaphysics! At last I took one of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte; and, when there was a pause, she began an Italian air. She was anxious to please him, and he was enraptured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it was over, he praised the singer ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... unconscious] Ach so—so—SO! Das ist etwas neues! [His umbrella begins to beat time, moving more and more vigorously, till at last he is conducting elaborately, stretching out his left palm for pianissimo passages, and raising it vigorously for forte, with every now and then an exclamation.] Wunderschoen!... pianissimo!—now the flutes! Clarinets! Ach, ergoetzlich ... bassoons and drums!... Fortissimo!... Kolossal! Kolossal! [Conducting ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... sea-tyranny—that he is able to use his Hotspurs and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... flag under that of England proclaimed her to be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his services. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... affair. The rules and conditions governing the encounter offended the delicate sensibilities of the gang. Like artists who feel themselves trammelled by distasteful conventions, they were damped and could not do themselves justice. Their forte was long-range fighting with pistols. With that they felt en rapport. But this vulgar brawling in the darkness with muscular opponents who hit hard and often with sticks and hands was distasteful to them. They could not develop any enthusiasm for it. They carried pistols, but ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... as little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however, before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a piano-forte, for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made up my mind to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from which I should be covertly attacked, and nothing else; and as this house was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... all united, and this reform, which works admirably, will probably soon be extended to the other colonies. What generally happens is, that one man with a penchant for the forum goes into partnership with another whose forte lies in the office; and thus, though all lawyers meet on an equality, the two branches of the profession practically remain apart. But the new regime offers great advantages to juniors, who are thus no longer dependent upon attorneys, but are brought face to face ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Shakespeare's forte lay in characterization, and that endlessly diversified. But when he sketched each several character it seems that he was never content till he had either found or fabricated the aptest words possible for representing its form and pressure most true to life. No two characters being ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... arrangement is by no means peculiar to that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the slender gentlemen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... at him; had he abandoned the expedition? Oliver could not understand indecision; perhaps he did not see so many sides to the question, his mind was always quickly made up. Action was his forte, not thought. The night came, and still Felix ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... is good enough to say of me that "cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible." With your permission, I propose to cut up "A Devonshire Man"; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former or to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... void came a sharp click as of a well-oiled gun-lock. It was followed by the first notes of a piano-forte accompaniment. A soprano voice began singing Schubert's "Fischermadchen." What a delicious timbre! The clear ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... delight in musical sounds, and will in no long time imitate snatches of a tune. The present professor of music in the university of Oxford contrived for himself, I believe at three years old, a way for playing on an instrument, the piano forte, unprompted by any of the persons about him. This ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... of the English law was against the use of torture, which, however, made progress, especially in state trials, under the Tudors. A man who refused to plead in an English court was subjected to the peine forte et dure, which consisted in piling weights on his chest until he either spoke or was crushed to death. To enforce the laws there was a constabulary in the country, supplemented by the regular army, and a police force in the cities. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... about sixteen feet. The Wenuses then desisted from their labours of inflation, and suddenly plunging into the tanks, reappeared inside these opalescent globules. I can only repeat that speculative philosophy, and not sapoleaginous hydro-dynamics, is my particular forte, and would refer doubtful readers, in search of further information, to the luminous hypothesis advanced by Professor Cleaver of Washington to account for the imbullification of ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... philosophy, in single instances, than can be discovered in the mass of harangues poured forth by Mr Cobden, were the flowers ever so carefully culled and separated from the loads of trashy weed. His forte consists in a coarse but dauntless intrepidity, with which respectability and intellect shrink from encounter. The country squire, educated and intelligent, but retiring and truth-loving, retreats naturally from contest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was entitled to peace he still had to ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... nuntius advolare terris, 55 qui pastum famulo daret probato, raptim desilit obsequente mundo. Cernit forte procul dapes inemptas, quas messoribus Abbacuc propheta agresti ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... PROF. MARFA. My forte is more in writing pamphlets than in taking shots. Still a regicide has always a place ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... no hope left for us but to try to pass the Surgeons as desperately sick, and we expended our energies in simulating this condition. Rheumatism was our forte, and I flatter myself we got up two cases that were apparently bad enough to serve as illustrations for a patent medicine advertisement. But it would not do. Bad as we made our condition appear, there were so many more who were infinitely ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of this little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a white dress ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... with a commanding presence and amiable countenance. He was bold, earnest, energetic, persevering; artless, and honest as the day. He said exactly what he meant. His mental vision was clear, strong, and accurate. Imagination was never active; oratory was not his forte. Demonstrative evidence suited him best. In his religious character he was conscientious, devout, and reverent, never excited ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Diogenes of Istria was all that now afforded enjoyment to the broken-down old hero. It was with intense delight that he heard the social grandeur and distinctions that had cost him so dear made ridiculous by this half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to jeer at the pomp that surrounded the governor, and imitate French elegance in a highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor princely friend's delight ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... oratione,[1202] quam forte reperiens solam homo barbarus, accensus libidine et sui minime compos, irruit rabiosus in eam. Conuersa illa et tremefacta, suspiciens aduertit hominem plenum diabolico spiritu. "Heu," inquit, "miser, quid agis? Considera ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed in the Burnham case at the opening of ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... this novel is that most extraordinary of all punishments known to English criminal law, the peine forte et dure. The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic, and, perhaps, in some degree psychological. Around a pathetic piece of old jurisprudence ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... case in behalf of the press as the dawn of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America. To the ladies now present, the lovers of sweet sounds, it may not be uninteresting to know that the first piano forte (harpsichord) imported into America, arrived in this city for the musical gratification of the family ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... if I were you, I wouldn't chance it. Fighting has never really been your forte; Witness Larissa, and your rapid transit, Chivied by slow foot-sloggers of the Porte; Far better make for Denmark o'er the foam; There is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... ut absolutum ex eo forte oritur quod spatium concipimus per modum substantiae"—Ad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... sine morte, fuga est vitae, quam turba malorum Non vitanda gravem, non toleranda facit? Dulcia dat natura quidem, mare, sidera, terras, Lunaque quas, et sol, itque reditque vias. Terror inest aliis, moerorque, et siquid habebis, Forte, boni, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... marriage act. The supplies voted for this year were L7,860,250; and the national debt amounted to L127,500,000. In the course of the session, it may be remarked, that the ancient and barbarous custom of peine forte et dure, by which felons refusing to plead, were stretched on their backs and pressed to death by heavy weights, was abolished by an act, which declared that all who acted thus contumaciously were to be adjudged guilty of the crimes laid to their charge. At the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a tutor—Cirindey of Corpus—whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean's niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... validus tenuisset forte catervas, Vix quisquam profugus vitam servasset inertem: Non audita Ducis verum mandata supremi Omnibus, insequitur fugientes plurima turba, Perque agros, passim, trepida formidine captos Obtruncat, saevumque adigit per ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the above will be noted in the case of Franz Liszt; but, aside from the fact that this greatest of piano-forte virtuosos, though living, has practically retired from the held of art, to omit him from such a volume as this would be an unpardonable omission. In connection with the personal lives of the artists sketched in this volume, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... called away previous to the feast, to administer extreme unction to a dying man in the neighborhood. He was a priest of uncommon sanctity, beloved in the family, and respected in the neighborhood, where he had displayed uncommon taste and talents for exorcism;—in fact, this was the good Father's forte, and he piqued himself on it accordingly. The devil never fell into worse hands than Father Olavida's, for when he was so contumacious as to resist Latin, and even the first verses of the Gospel of St. John in Greek, which the good Father never ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of anything but that very thing ever since I found that they had hidden it, and I can't yet see any good way of getting it. My forte is direct action and that fails in this case, since no amount of force or torture could make Crane reveal the hiding-place of the solution. It's probably in the safest safe-deposit vault in the country. He wouldn't ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... so? (He says "Yes" with his eyes, bows, and moves up C. The piano is now forte. BELINDA accompanies him up a little, then stops. He turns in entrance up C., and they exchange glances. TREMAYNE exits to R., behind yew hedge. BELINDA stays looking after him, then moves down to back of table and picking up the book of poems, gives that happy ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... up to the time they left the settled districts of Western Australia, they had only spent about 330 pounds. He did not know that he could say anything more. He had spoken several times on his journey down, and it seemed to him that he had said the same thing over and over again. His forte was not in public speaking, but he hoped they would take the will for the deed. They never could forget the very kind and hearty reception they had received in every place they had ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... into melody—the excitement of rapid motion, the calmness of the slow; the agony of delay, of waiting and postponement, with the triumph and relief when the expected note arrives at last. Finally, the effects of shading must be added, the contrasts between piano and forte—loudness that brings the tones so near that they may seem threatening in their insistence; softness that makes them seem far away ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... passion, Some to men's feelings, others to their reason; The last of these was never much the fashion, For Reason thinks all reasoning out of season: Some speakers whine, and others lay the lash on, But more or less continue still to tease on, With arguments according to their "forte:" But no one ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... yet a stronger reason in his name, why he should keep retired from his old employer; and as he lives with his sister and her husband, they participate in that retirement. Walter sees them sometimes—Florence too—and the pleasant house resounds with profound duets arranged for the Piano-Forte and Violoncello, and with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... been repeatedly asked, since the publication of "Roughing it in the Bush," to give an account of the present state of society in the colony, and to point out its increasing prosperity and commercial advantages; but statistics are not my forte, nor do I feel myself qualified for such an arduous and important task. My knowledge of the colony is too limited to enable me to write a comprehensive work on a subject of vital consequence, which might involve the happiness of others. But what I do know I will endeavour to sketch with a light ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... call him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... attention, could neither read nor be read to, nor occupy himself in any way; but he was amused by talk around him, and companionship was never lacking. Wilmet, whose forte had never been conversation, found herself in a stream of small talk with inquiring friends of all degrees in the hierarchy; but was most at her ease when the female Harewoods were prattling good-humoured ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yesterday's figures, generally, I should say; or else by unrolling a ball of red tape. Well-docketed papers and statistical facts are his forte." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Rovereda Davido, Et Verona tibi, Quosdanovice, patet. Vae mihi (raptor ait Gallus) ne forte per Alpes Heu! Bona pars ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... only vow that I did my best to follow this sound advice; but who but a Raffles can control his every look? It was never my forte, as you know, yet to this day I cannot conceive what I did to excite the treacherous corporal's suspicions. He was clever enough, however, not to betray them, and lucky enough to turn the tables on us, as you ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... distinction. This fluency and force of language, so often found in striking disparity to his other attainments, has armed critics and students of his racial peculiarities with the opinion that talking is his peculiar forte. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... promptness and decision of his movements, you might almost think him quick and naturally impetuous. There could be no greater mistake; or, if he is such by natural disposition, this is one of the points where his seminary training has taught him to control and master himself. The forte of his character is his unchanging equanimity. And yet there must have been in him a wondrous amount of nervous energy to enable him to survive very serious injuries to his frame in early life, and to endure the severe physical labors of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... counter attack. He saw an opening, feinted to enlarge it, and drove in quickly, throwing his last ounce of strength into the effort. This time it could not be said to have been parried. Something else happened. His blade, coming foible on forte against Mr. Caryll's, was suddenly enveloped. It was as if a tentacle had been thrust out to seize it. For the barest fraction of a second was it held so by Mr. Caryll's sword; then, easily but irresistibly, it was lifted out of Rotherby's hand, and dropped on the turf a half-yard ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... dont je faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: 'Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for her sister. She considered it to be her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... has also commenced the publication of Beethoven's Sonatas for the piano forte, from the newly revised edition, published ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the slender gentlemen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... vesperum erunt sub manu secundi qui numerabit eos et ex more concludet. The word fenestra is illustrated by a previous section of the Rule, No. LXXXII. p. 30. Nullus habebit separatim mordacem pavulam ad evellendas spinas si forte calcaverit absque Praeposito domus et secundo: pendeatque in fenestra in qua codices collocantur. Ducange says that the word is used for the small cupboard in which the Sacrament was reserved. Here it is evidently ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... for Tertius C. Marrineal and The Patriot. It amused Marrineal almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's lukewarmness, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Kate," said the Chamberlain, and aimed a furious thrust in tierce. Montaiglon parried by a beat of the edge of his forte, and forced the blade upwards. He could have disarmed by the simplest trick of Girard, but missed the opportunity from an insane desire to save his opponent's feelings in the presence of a spectator. Yet the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Burnit hasn't found his proper forte as yet," interposed Sharpe. "He was really cut out for the illuminating business." And he led the way to the table, upon which Bobby had already noted that five places ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... You've seen them do it, when their load's too great. "If I mistake not," he begins, "you'll find Viscus not more, nor Varius, to yoar mind: There's not a man can turn a verse so soon, Or dance so nimbly when he hears a tune: While, as for singing—ah! my forte is there: Tigellius' self might envy ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the order of Monsieur le Directeur—and reincarcerated in the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating her up, six men ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... six years younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attempt to utilise him in the green-grocer's shop when Tom at twenty-one married Jessica—who was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But it was not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when he was given a basket of stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavy it was nor where he took it, so long as he did not take it to its destination. Glamour ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... interests and his convictions. He had come into collision with the Russian authorities by refusing to perform military service. In prison he would not recognise the right of judges and jailers, and had consequently spent most of his time in a strait waistcoat and a dark cell. His forte was silence and dogged unyielding obstinacy. On escaping from Russian prisons he had gone to America: he had starved and tramped, but he had never accepted any sort of help. How he lived was a mystery to all. He was known to be an ascetic and a woman-hater, and ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Caesar stood in the front rank (Sueton. Iul. 55). For encomiums on his style see Cic. Brut. 252, and Quintilian, x. 1, 114, who considered him second only to Cicero, and remarkable for vis, acumen, concitatio, and elegantia. The language of Tac. Dial. 21 is less complimentary, 'Nisi forte quisquam aut Caesaris pro Decio Samnite aut Bruti pro Deiotaro rege ceterosque eiusdem lentitudinis ac teporis libros legit, nisi qui ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... d'un paquet de Lydia E. Pinkham's Sanative Wash (Lotion Sanitaire) dans assez d'eau pour obtenir une pinte apres la filtration; la secretion etant tres forte on doit employer la moitie de cette quantite a laquelle on ajoutera une pinte d'eau chaude. Employez la lotion chaque jour en l'injectant dans ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... in particular odes, are his forte; there are indeed few departments of learning in which he has not extensive knowledge, and he is also well read in the Greek and Roman authors. Everything he studies, he studies merely from the love he bears to the science ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... with pink filbert nails. He did not learn the game so quickly as might be. He, like Maurice, was pondering over the unusual position in which he found himself; but analysis of any sort was not his forte; so he soon forgot all save the delicate curve of Madame's chin and throat, the soft ripple of her laughter, the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... is freely criticised. Mrs. A. regrets that her poor people have seen so little of their vicar lately. Mrs. B. is sorry to report the failure of her attempts to get her sheep to church, in face of the new Ritualistic developement, the processions, and the surplices. Mrs. C., whose forte is education, declines any longer to induce mothers to send their children to "such" a master. The curates shudder as Mrs. D. laments their frequent absence from the Penny Bank, not that they can do any good there, but "we are always glad of the presence and sympathy of our clergy." ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... "Thy forte was less to act than speak, Maryland! Thy politics were changed each week, Maryland! With Northern Vandals thou wast meek, With sympathizers thou wouldst shriek, I know thee—oh,'twas like thy ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... her spirits rose rebelliously above her control; and, in a fit of utter recklessness of what might be thought of her by her fine new acquaintance, she suddenly, but softly, arose, and stealing on tip-toe behind Signor Piozzi, who was accompanying himself on the piano-forte to an animated arria parlante, with his back to the company, and his face to the wall; she ludicrously began imitating him by squaring her elbows, elevating them with ecstatic shrugs of the shoulders, and casting up her eyes, while languishingly reclining her head; as if she ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... day might be very profitably spent here, especially if he could fall in with any of the French-Canadians, of whose peculiarities he had heard so much. The study of human nature was always Mr. P.'s particular forte. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... was termed charming, an excellent concert number. "Begin the first figure somewhat louder and slightly slower, then increase the movement and subdue the tone. Everything which is to be played softly should be practised forte." ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with haycocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dure must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford, substantial, well-bridged, many-steepled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... for herself," said the neighbors, "and so can Peter. He comes to the most genteel houses, even to the burgomaster's where he gives Miss Charlotte piano-forte lessons." ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... further preface, to recount his adventures at length to this casual acquaintance. This communicative gentleman is, of course, Clitophon; but before we proceed to the narrative of his loves and woes, we shall give a specimen of the author's powers in the line which appears to be his forte, by quoting his description of the painting above referred to:—"On entering the temple, my attention was attracted by a picture representing the story of Europa, in which sea and land were blended—the Phoenician ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of the Arizona sky—is the memory of that talk of Mr. Muir's during the long drive, a talk which for range and raciness I have never heard equaled. He often uses the broad dialect of the Scot, translating as he goes along. His forte is in monologue. He is a most engaging talker,—discursive, grave and gay,—mingling thrilling adventures, side-splitting anecdotes, choice quotations, apt characterizations, scientific data, enthusiastic descriptions, sarcastic comments, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... that it is "de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque, a la fois, la tete, le coeur, le corps." It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... has he logic or grasp with his reasoning powers, though of this, also, he is ambitious. Observation is his forte. To see, and to tell with grace, often with dignity and pathos, what he sees, is his proper vocation. Yet, where he fails, he has too much tact and modesty to be despised; and we cannot enough admire the absence of faults ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... year Uncle Sammy Fired away at his logical forte: Discussion was his occupation, And altercation his sport; He argued himself out of churches, he argued ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature a neuropath ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... impressive figure—one that would have inspired with profound respect any male creature living saving that incorrigible non-respecter of persons and personages, especially of lady principals—the Boy. For the "forming" of young ladies, Miss Jane had a positive forte, but the genus boy was an unknown quantity to her, and worse—he was a positive terror. For one of them to invade the sacred precincts of her school, or its grounds, seemed to her maiden soul rank sacrilege; to scale her garden wall after dark for the purpose of attaching a letter ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, or in ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the one hand, or students at law on the other,—you may have, in your algebra class, a goldsmith who is afraid of being snobbish if he speaks to a map-engraver, or a tailor who does not presume to address an opinion on Archimedes' square to a piano-forte maker. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... words to say as to the prevalent ideas in respect to French cookery. Having heard much of it, with no very distinct idea what it is, our people have somehow fallen into the notion that its forte lies in high spicing,—and so, when our cooks put a great abundance of clove, mace, nutmeg, and cinnamon into their preparations, they fancy that they are growing up to be French cooks. But the fact is, that the Americans and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... contributor to the early "Blackwood," where his fine translations of Spanish ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review" from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854, and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression was exhausted in six weeks. It passed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... but how dost thou do? thou bard not of a thousand but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... cousteau resplendissant, qui tant as dure et qui as este si large, si ferme et si forte, en manche de clere yvoire: duquel la croix est faicte d'or et la supface doree decoree et embellye du pommeau faiet de pierres de beril; escript et engrave du grand no de Dieu singulier, Alpha ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced veal. Liking is ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his management, became so celebrated. Mendelssohn produced works in almost every department of musical composition, a great variety of chamber music, symphonies, overtures, one opera, and a very large collection of music for the piano-forte and organ. Probably his fame will last longer through the influence of three works—viz., the "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, which opened the new world of the romantic; the oratorio of "Elijah," ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... memory, I had easily mastered my little part of Pasquino, and, putting on the costume of the actor who had fallen ill, I found myself a full-fledged if a new performer. I was to speak in the Venetian dialect; that was inconvenient for me rather than difficult, but at Forte, where we were, any slip of pronunciation would ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... flammae, et Sol redditus orbi: Assistunt Domino turmae, gelidamq. resurgens Linquit humum Saulus: sed non redit ossibus ardor, Non oculis lumen; subitis exterrita monstris Haud aliter juveni stupuerunt pectora, quam cum Fulmina si flammis straverunt forte bisulcis Coniferam pinum, aut surgentem in sidera quercum, Agricola exsurgit conterritus, et pede lustrat Exustum nemus, et pallentes sulphure campos. Explorat late noctem, caecosq. volutat Hinc ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Sorbonnists. He must be praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... sarcasm," pleaded Iff; "it is, if you don't mind my mentioning the fact, not your forte. Silence, on the other hand, suits your style cunningly. So shut ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... were hung up like a trophy between two foxes' tails, which served the purpose of bell pulls. At this moment, my topographical observations were disturbed by the arrival of the scout with candles, and two strange-looking fellows in smock frocks, bringing in, as I supposed, a piano forte, but which, upon being placed on the table, proved to be a mere case: the top being taken off, the sides and ends let down in opposite directions, and the cloth pulled out straight, displayed an elegant dinner, smoking hot, and arranged in as much form as if the college ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... his hopes that his little Cilly, as he called her, would be less shy another time, and Honora responding heartily, he quickly fell into the parental strain of anecdotes of the children's sayings and doings, whence Honora collected that in his estimation Lucilla's forte was decision and Owen's was sweetness, and that he was completely devoted to them, nursing and teaching them himself, and finding his whole solace in them. Tender pity moved her strongly towards him, as she listened to the evidences ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fluker, in spite of accidents, had ever set upon her husband a value that was not recognized outside of his family. In this respect there seems a surprising compensation in human life. But this remark I make only in passing. Mrs. Fluker, admitting in her heart that farming was not her husband's forte, hoped, like a true wife, that it might be found in the new field to which he aspired. Besides, she did not forget that her brother Sam had said to her several times privately that if his brer Pink wouldn't have so many notions and would let him alone in his management, they would all ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... characters, lay before the old general, and he cast the pen aside with a sigh. "It is abominable work to write letters," he said; "I cannot comprehend why you, Gneisenau, who are so good a soldier, at the same time know so well how to wield the pen. It is not my forte, although I had a notion once to be a savant, and really become a sort of writer. In those calamitous days, subsequent to 1807, despair and ennui sought for some relief to my mind, and made me write a book, and I believe ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... 'l libro non erra, Lo spirito maggior tremo si forte, Che parve ben, che morte Per lui in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Becher's, and from thence to one or two other houses on the Green, after which the rest of the day was devoted to his favourite exercises. The evenings he usually passed with the same family, among whom he began his morning, either in conversation, or in hearing Miss Pigot play upon the piano-forte, and singing over with her a certain set of songs which he admired,[59]—among which the "Maid of Lodi," (with the words, "My heart with love is beating,") and "When Time who steals our years away," were, it seems, his particular favourites. He appears, indeed, to have, even thus early, shown a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the stout heart of the American nation quickly rallied, and inspired by the loyal determination of Abraham Lincoln the United States turned once more to their apparently hopeless task" (Colonel G. F. R. Henderson). McClellan's forte was organisation, and although at first slow in the field, he had assembled and trained a magnificent fighting force, with which he was "feeling his way to victory." He suffered defeat indeed at Gaines's Mill (June 27, 1862), the first act ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... then he told her how it chanced that he, King Cole's son, in that forest held his court, And the sole reason that there seemed to be Was, he was being hermit there for sport; But he confessed the life was not his forte, And therewith both ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... which I think will double in value at my return. As to the music, upon the footing it now is she can never make progress, though she sacrifices two thirds of her time to it. 'Tis a serious check to her other acquirements. She must either have a forte-piano at home, or renounce learning it. For these reasons I am impatient to go in the country. Her education is not on an advantageous footing at present. Besides, the playfellows she has at home makes it the most favourable moment for her to be at liberty a few weeks, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of pane santo, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of pan forte da Siena, compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,—a mixture as pernicious as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... veritable est d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... anything that really shocked her last night? Why didn't I wait for her this morning and find out the worst?" And his lips twisted awry—for to find out the worst was not his forte. Meditation, seeking as usual a scapegoat, lighted on Rosek. Like most egoists addicted to women, he had not many friends. Rosek was the most constant. But even for him, Fiorsen had at once the contempt and fear that a man naturally uncontrolled and yet of greater scope has for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... went back to the workroom, and to the dozen or more young women there assembled. If she was a shade paler than her wont they were not likely to notice it—if she was more silent even than usual, why silence was always Miss Stuart's forte. Only the young person to whom Miss Catheron had given the sovereign looked at her curiously, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... balliui & ministri feriarum, ciuitatum, burgorum, & villarum mercatoriarum mercatoribus antedictis conquerentibus coram ijs celerem iustitiam faciant de die in diem sine dilatione secundum legem mercatoriam, de vniuersis & singulis qu per eandem legem poterunt terminari. Et si forte inueniatur defectus in aliquo balliuorum vel ministrorum prdictorum, vnde ijdem mercatores vel eorum aliquis dilationis incommoda sustinuerint vel sustineant, licet mercator versus partem in principali recuperauerit damna sua, nihilominus balliuus vel minister alius versus nos, prout delictum exigit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the life of Erskine before alluded to; as, also, to the trial of Mary Ann Carlile, which will show, and clearly, the style of the eloquence of her advocate on the occasion, combined as it is with powerful argument, and that clearness and lucid order which were his forte. And now, reader, to use the words of Cicero, in concluding one of his epistles to a friend, "vale ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... entrusted with a part. The piece chosen was Iphigenie en Aulide. Mademoiselle de Sabran and her brother, as well as a young Strogonoff, were, it is said, perfect actors. Armand de Polignac had a little part. Tragedy was not my forte. But in the second piece I achieved a little success, which the Chevalier de Boufflers was kind enough to celebrate in a very bright couplet, sung at the close. He gave me the name of the Little White Mouse. After that the Queen called me her little white mouse, and showed me a thousand ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... lose, and happy in the knowledge that no amount of bruises could do him any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer. Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action. Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. In the competition of the previous year both had entered in their ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... animals; and on another, on elephants, for tigers. Two tigers were killed, and Louis Belgrave had the honor of shooting one of them. Felix brought down a couple of cobras; and killing them seemed to be his forte. Khayrat invited the party to witness a battle between his mongoose and a couple of cobras his hunters had caught; and he killed them ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... with a sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... in my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as every ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... certainly, for it was the forte of the cardinal to prepare surprises for the agreeable entertainment of his guests. The ladies and gentlemen, the cardinals and princes of the Church, crowded around him begging for an explanation of the mystery, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... them, because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Standen und von ihren Gegensatzen nicht beruhrt wurden.—BACHMANN. Hengstenberg, i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, aut solos non insanio; tertium enim non est, nisi (quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes.—HOBBES, quoted by DE MORGAN, 3rd June 1858: Life of Sir W. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... with rosemary and onions. But he could not bring himself to share her point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant too soon. So, of course, I 've had ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... hundred of them had not until quite recently been printed. He composed fifty-three works for the church, a hundred and eighteen for orchestra, twenty-six operas and cantatas, a hundred and fifty-four songs, forty-nine concertos, sixty-two piano-forte pieces, and seventeen ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... Washington Irving is admirable at a sketch, one of the liveliest and most graceful of essayists, and quite equal to the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... painting are not our forte. Cf. Hazlitt's review of the "Life of Reynolds" (X, 186-87): "Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... animals, and that it could no more be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much, even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely one and the same relation to their weights and velocities; that the effect ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... excuse my describing the scene which ensued, for, as I have before said, and as the reader has probably assented, description is not my forte; beside, I am in a devil of a hurry to get the ship under weigh, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... says Baron de Grimm, "n'est presque jamais faux, mais malheureusement il a voix, figure, tout, contre lui. Une sensibilit'e forte et profonde, qui faisait disparaitre la laideur de ses traits sous le charme de l'expression dont elle les rendait susceptible, et ne laissait aper'cevoir que lea caract'ere et la passion dont son 'ame 'etait remplie, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sister. She considered it to be her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... as La Martina; we always lunched with her on our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... suggested that they try Boston. That city was a musical centre and Camilla would be sure to meet with a good reception there. Accordingly under the guidance of the American the entire party went to Boston. Mr. Jonas Chickering, the piano-forte manufacturer kindly welcomed her and invited her to call at his residence on Boylston street, two doors from the building now occupied by the Art Club. So much pleased was he with her simple manners and her wonderful playing ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... had taken, Spake in his owne linqua[62] to thiss Efect, "Gent men, I know you are men come to seeke a fortune, if You want money or Plate goe alonge with me, I will shew you wheir their is more then you all can carry away." wee gave no credit to him, butt was minded to fall on uppon the forte to take their greate gunns for the shipp, haveing none on board. Our Party being so tired, and cutt off, wee weare feigne to leave the greate gunns, money, all the Rest of the rich traide which was in that small towne. three of our Doctors being in the Hospitall Church dressing of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... learned Orientalist, you could not decorously have rejected him; and yet, once admitted, he would have beggared you before any means could have been discovered by the learned for putting a stop to him. [Greek Text: Aperantologia] was his forte; upon this he piqued himself, and most justly, since for covering the ground rapidly, and yet not advancing an inch, those, who knew and valued him as he deserved, would have backed him against the whole field ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... been my particular athletic forte, and now when my very life depended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on the occasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head the rooter's raucous and reproachful cries of "Ice ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was entitled to peace he still had to fight for ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... how dost thou do? thou bard not of a thousand but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless, lank-jawed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... broken in half. The condenser of the paddle engines seems to have been proved too small in this trip. For some time she went against a stiff head-wind and sea— which is now well known to be the great ship's forte—with perfect steadiness; but on getting into the channel she rolled slowly but decidedly, as if bowing—acknowledging majestically the might of the Atlantic's genuine swell. Here, too, a wave actually overtopped her towering hull, and sent a mass of green water inboard! ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... that he could remain at home after tea, it was his delight to settle himself comfortably down in the big rocking chair, in the well-lighted sitting-room, and to muse and doze, while Alice sang, and played upon the piano-forte. He had so many other cares, that he did not like to be troubled with bad reports of his children's conduct, This was so well understood by all the family, that even George seldom ventured to go to him with a complaint. The management of domestic affairs was ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, Prese costui della bella persona Che mi fu tolta, e il modo ancor m' offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte: 10 Caino attende chi vita ci spense.' Queste parole da lor ci fur porte. Da che io intesi quelle anime offense Chinai 'l viso, e tanto il tenni basso, Finche il Poeta mi disse: 'Che pense?' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... herself would be meted out that "peine forte et dure," that acme of humiliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible that many a little girl in that room solemnly averred and believed she would kill herself before submitting to it. Pupasse's voluminous calico skirt would be gathered up by the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... not his forte, and his attempt in this direction in the weeks that followed would have been humorous were they not so pathetic. How I did my part I cannot tell. Those weeks are to me now like the memory of an ugly nightmare. The ghostly old man moving out and in of his little daughter's room in useless, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... began more firmly, "you take a pinch of sand from this box—so." Tee-making is not my forte, and I was painfully conscious that I worked under the critical gaze of fully twenty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the castle of Conway, built by King Edward the First, says: 'Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis Erery;' and Matthew of Westminster (ad ann. 1283), 'Apud Aberconway ad pedes montis Snowdoniae fecit erigi castrum forte'" (Gray). ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... autrefois une grande et forte ville. Elle a un tres-beau port. On voit a Zara le corps de ce saint Simeon a qui N. S. fut presente dans le temple. Elle est entouree de trois cotes par la mer, et son port, egalement beau, est ferme ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... number that turns up is not precisely the one you want, you can still contrive to use it equally:—in vita est hominum quasi cum ludas tesseris; si illud quod maxime opus est jactu non cadit, illud quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas.[1] Or, to put the matter more shortly, life is a game of cards, when the cards are shuffled and dealt by fate. But for my present purpose, the most suitable simile would be that of a game of chess, where the plan we determined ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... famous "Selah," which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Verum nuperrime forte contigit, ut primam tragoediae Grotianae editionem, Hagae, an. 1601. publicatam, beneficio amicissimi mihi viri nactus fuerim, ejusque decem priores paginas, quibus, praeter chorum, actus primus comprehenditur, a Jacobo meo, optimae spei adolescente, transcriptas nunc ad te mitto. Vale, vir doctissime, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... and purity incarnate—that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... him to do so; desired him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which once ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... so celebrated. Mendelssohn produced works in almost every department of musical composition, a great variety of chamber music, symphonies, overtures, one opera, and a very large collection of music for the piano-forte and organ. Probably his fame will last longer through the influence of three works—viz., the "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, which opened the new world of the romantic; the oratorio of "Elijah," which is in very many respects one of the most beautiful ever written, just as it is ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... falsa legat, taceat vel forte repente, Ante pios fratres, lector in Ecclesia. Est opus egregium sacros jam scribete libros, Nec mercede sua scriptor ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... rushed to me; by a strong effort, I recovered myself, swallowed the glass of water she brought, and walked to the piano-forte, where Rosa ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... far as to survey the lady from a distance, and argue the point with my mother pro and con. But the fact is, the thing was distasteful, and wouldn't bear thinking about, much less arguing. I was too lazy to go and explain the matter, and writing was not my forte. Besides, I didn't want to thwart my mother in her plans, or hurt her feelings; and so the long and the short of it is, I solved the difficulty and cut the knot by crossing quietly over to Norway. I wrote a short note to my mother, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... but love and admire, ventured to remove her to a more comfortable apartment, where the daylight shone brightly in through the iron bars of the window. Here she could see the clouds and the birds soaring in the free air. She was even allowed, through her friends, to procure a piano-forte, which afforded her many hours of recreation. Music, drawing, and flowers were the embellishments of her life. Madame Bouchaud, the wife of the jailer, conceived for her prisoner the kindest affection, and daily ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... afraid of you, Esther, at least I think not; but—" He hesitated, and then stopped, and I knew he was thinking of Fred and Carrie; but he need not. Of course Carrie would work as heartily as any of us; idling was never her forte; and Fred —well, perhaps Fred ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for what traveler of taste does not doff his bonnet to the mother-church of the town through which he happens to be traveling, or in which he takes a temporary abode? The west front, always the forte of the architects's skill, strikes you as you go down, or come up, the principal street—La Rue des Carmes—which seems to bisect the town into equal parts. A small open space, which, however, has been miserably encroached upon by petty shops, called ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... meus est mos, Flumineas propter salices et murmura Cami, Multa movens mecum, fumo inspirante, iacebam. Illic forte mihi senis occurrebat imago Squalida, torva tuens, longos incompta capillos; Ipse manu cymbam prensans se littore in udo Deposuit; Camique humeros agnoscere latos Immanesque artus atque ora hirsuta videbar: Mox lacrymas inter ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... einzelne Manner gegeben, die uber ihrer Zeit Standen und von ihren Gegensatzen nicht beruhrt wurden.—BACHMANN. Hengstenberg, i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, aut solos non insanio; tertium enim non est, nisi (quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes.—HOBBES, quoted by DE MORGAN, 3rd June 1858: Life of Sir ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... drawing-room and sat down at the piano-forte, to try to get over the time till Edward's return as well as I could. I was bent upon mentioning to him the drive I had taken with Henry, as I quite agreed with the latter that any attempt at concealment would fatally endanger my future peace, and I had ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... realised some fifteen or perhaps twenty per cent., of which the lawyer took the larger share. Something of this sort has been done in other businesses besides farming. Frank, however, was not the man to remain in a state of tutelage, working for another. His forte was not saving—simple accumulation was not for him; but he looked round the district to discover those ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... cabotage. Peu osent se hasarder sur les vaisseau employes aux voyages de long cours, parce qu'ils craignent d'etre transportes et vendus dans les iles.—Au physique, tous ces noirs sont generalement vigoureux,[1] d'une forte constitution, capables des travaux les plus penibles; ils sont generalement actifs.—Domestiques, ils sont sobres et fideles.—Ce portrait s'applique aux femmes de cette couleur.—Je n'ai vu faire aucune ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... themes. The daughter of a Dartmouth professor, she was cradled in literature, and has made it in a certain way the work of her life. There is nothing, however, of the pedantic about her. She is the embodiment of a woman's wit and humour; but her forte is a certain crisp and lively condensation of persons and qualities which carry a large amount of information under a captivating cloak of vivacious and confidential talk with her audience, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... judices, corporibus civium Tiberim compleri, cloacas referciri, e foro spongiis effingi sanguinem.... Caedem tantam, tantos acervos corporum extruetos, nisi forte illo Cinnano atque Octaviano die, quis unquam in foro vidit?"—Oratio prov P. Sextio, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat,—and, dearest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the forlorne hope of all dispayre Against the Forte where Beauties Army lies, Assayld with death, yet armed with gastly feare, Loe! thus my loue, my lyfe, my fortune tryes. Wounded with Arrowes from thy lightning eyes, My tongue in payne my harts counsels bewraying, My rebell ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... spada mirando al segno; e la sua rossa strada ne brilla insino alle sue alpine porte. Tu tendi la potenza della morte come un arco tra il Vodice e l'Hermada; varchi l'Isonzo indomito ove guada la tua Vittoria col tuo pugno forte. Giovine sei, rinato dalla terra sitibonda, balzato su dal duro Carso col fiore dei tuio fanti imberbi. Questo, che in te si compie, anno di guerra splenda da te, avido del futuro, e al domani ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... tender babies" (as some Saturn, turned analytical chemist, says) "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve the preservation ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... Pax, don't become poetical, it isn't your forte; but listen while I talk of matters more important. You've sometimes heard me ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... troubled woman, growing nervous at sight of the unresponsive quiet around her. Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... through the blinds of No.—Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... this little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a white dress ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Thames, the Cotswolds, the Severn, and the sea, and with a hinterland narrowing down to the Cornish peninsula, developed a slower but more lasting strength. Political organization seems to have been its forte, and it had set its own house in some sort of order before it was summoned by Ecgberht to assume the lead in English politics. From that day to this the sceptre has remained in his ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Rosa!" I said quietly. "You have invited me into this carriage simply to lie to me. But you are an indifferent liar—it is not your forte. My dear child, do you imagine that I cannot see through your poor little plan? Mrs. Sullivan Smith has been talking to you, and it has occurred to you that if you cast me off, the anger of that—that thing may be ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... difficulty in justifying Washington's course by the opinion of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologics, 1 ma., 2 dae., Quaest. XCVI, Art. 4), who says that an unjust law is not binding in conscience "nisi forte propter vitandum scandalum vel turbationem." Aquinas is speaking of an unjust law which may be resisted unless scandal or tumult would result from resistance. Washington is speaking of a law which he considers right, but which he would not enforce if it should occasion such evils. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the very soul of harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Explosive violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... sentence of the honourable high court as follows:—That she should once more be questioned in kindness touching the articles contained in the indictment; and if she then continued stubborn she should be subjected to the peine forte et dure, for that the defensio she had set up did not suffice, and that there were indicia legitima, praegnantia et sufficientia ad torturam ipsam; to wit—1. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... auguriis patrum et prisca formidine sacram, omnes ejusdem sanguinis populi legationibus coeunt, caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda primordia. Est et alia luco reverentia. Nemo nisi vinculo ligatus ingreditur, ut minor et potestatem numinis prae se ferens, Si forte prolapsus est, attolli et insurgere haud licitum: per humum evolvuntur: eoque omnis superstitio respicit, tanquam inde initia gentis, ibi regnator omnium deus, cetera subjecta atque parentia. Adjicit auctoritatem fortuna Semnonum: ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... great square edifices of a grand and gloomy aspect, built of dark blue stones (pietra forte) measuring from 3 to 4feet. The bases, to the height of from 20 to 30 feet, consist of coarsely chiselled rubble work, which lessens the baldness, and contributes character and effect to the from 200 to 300 feet of plain wall. At intervals are strong bronze banner-rings and torch-sockets, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... lose the travelling season, and come in for the droughts and famines. The tide, however, turned in my favour a little; for I obtained, by permission of the Admiralty, a passage in the British screw steam-frigate Forte, under orders to convey Admiral Sir H. Keppel to his command at the Cape; and Sir Charles Wood most obligingly made a request that I should be forwarded thence to Zanzibar in one of our slaver-hunting cruisers ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... "Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, Dixerat, ecquis adest? et, adest, responderat echo, Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes; Voce, veni, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... anything that needs a veil. In alluding to the agencies of Punch, it would be doing him great injustice to leave the impression that they are all of a mirthful character. Often is he tearfully, if at the same time smilingly, pathetic. Seriousness, certainly, is not his forte, and he is not given to homilies and moral essays. Usually he gilds homoeopathic pills of wisdom with a thick coating of humor. Yet, now and then, his vein is an earnest vein, and he speaks from the abundance of a tender and deeply-moved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Brown treads a circle of mysterious power but mean circumference: Washington Irving is admirable at a sketch, one of the liveliest and most graceful of essayists, and quite equal to the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... Sancto, Direct. Mystic. tr. iii. disp. 5, section I, n. 315: "Visio corporea est infima, visio imaginaria est media, visio intellectualis est suprema." N. 322: "Apparitio visibilis, cum sit omnium infima, est magis exposita illusioni diaboli, nisi forte huic visioni corporali visio intellectualis adjungatur, ut in apparitione S. ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get piano-forte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published. By the time he had quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... turned they beheld a youth, extremely pleasing in appearance, who was coming their way in a wild gallop. As he reached them, he flung himself from his horse and addressed Roque, who then perceived that it was not a lad but a maiden. She said she was the daughter of his friend Simon Forte, and named Claudia Jeronima, and that she, unbeknown to her father, had fallen in love with and become engaged to the son of her father's arch enemy, Clauquel Torrellas, whose son was named Vicente. Yesterday, she went on, she ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Quod ita Latine sonat:—'Salve rex Albanorum Alexander, filii Alexandri ... filii Mane, filii Fergusii, primi Scotorum regis in Albania'. Qui quoque Fergusius fuit filius Feredach, quamvis a quibusdam dicitur filius Ferechere, parum tamen discrepant in sono. Haec discrepantia forte scriptoris constat vitio propter difficultatem loquelae. Deinde dictam genealogiam dictus Scotus ab homine in hominem continuando perlegit donec ad primum Scotum, videlicet, Iber ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is, of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man of genius he hopes one day to shine. He is almost the only man to whom Bludyer is ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was done for, I covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... coupler stop, sometimes called Harmonique, controls an arrangement whereby, when a key is depressed, its octave is made to sound also. "Forte" stops lift the mufflers or swells, and as these are controlled by the right knee-swell, the Forte stop may be considered of little value. The left knee-swell, called the Full Organ swell, as its name implies, opens up the full power of all sets of reeds and ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... it impossible to get in the sweet-pea, and the convolvulus, and lost and bewildered herself among the multitude of leaves that formed the cup of the rose, Mr. Gummage snatched the pencil from her hand, rubbed out the whole, and then drew it himself. It must be confessed that his forte lay in flowers, and he was extremely clever at them, "but," as he expressed it, "his scholars ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... the duties of my sex: that I should be a good economist, a good mistress, as well as a good mother of a family. I wish my Eudora to be able to accompany her voice agreeably on the harp. I wish that she may play agreeably on the piano-forte; that she may know enough of drawing, to feel pleasure from the sight and from the examination of the finest pictures of the great painters; that she may be able to draw a flower that happens to please her; and that she may unite in her dress elegance and simplicity. I should wish that ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... me devint subitement plus forte et, n'hsitant davantage Monsieur, dis-je, ou Madame, j'implore vritablement votre pardon; mais le fait est que je somnolais et vous vntes si doucement frapper, et si faiblement vous vntes heurter, heurter la porte de ma chambre, que j'tais ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... the Deacon's forte, but it seemed proper for some one to break the ice that seemed suddenly to be very thick in the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... iustitia bonitas omnipotentia substantia inmutabilitas uirtus sapientia et quicquid huiusmodi excogitari potest substantialiter de diuinitate dicuntur. Haec si se recte et ex fide habent, ut me instruas peto; aut si aliqua re forte diuersus es, diligentius intuere quae dicta sunt et ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... when the last Venetian Count had gone, but there are later additions. At this time the Castel S. Lorenzo was built, displacing an oratory built on the site of a nunnery established before the eleventh century. Forte Molo, by the harbour (formerly Fort S. Giovanni, and now much altered) and the tower of S. Luca still remain of the earlier fortifications. As the town spread it was fortified by the addition of the Torre Menze (built in 1464 by Michelozzo and George of Sebenico, but altered ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the most singular form you can imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... on ... once, ter please her, but I reckon hit didn't make much of a showin' under this." He ran his fingers reflectively through his heavy beard for a moment; then, with his voice still a forte whisper, he added, "Say, stranger, I've got a leetle drap o' white liquor hid out in the woodshed whar Smiles kaint find hit, an' ef yo'd delight ter wet yo'r throat afore she comes back, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... me," said Jerry, now arousing himself and sauntering to the fire; "I hardly ever feel well,"—complaining was Jerry's especial forte, an excuse for all his laziness; yet his appetite never failed; and when, as was sometimes the case, one of the neighbours sent a small piece of meat, or any little article of food to his wife, under the plea of ill health ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... and crossing her legs, "I've found my forte at last. For three years, nearly, I've been employed by the Secret Service Department ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... Scott was not likely often to undertake the reviewing of books that did not, in one way or another interest him or move his admiration; and he would lay as much stress as possible on their good points. Gifford told him that "fun and feeling" were his forte.[243] In his early days he was probably somewhat influenced by Jeffrey's method, and his articles on Todd's Spenser and Godwin's Life of Chaucer indicate that he could occasionally adopt something of the tone of the Edinburgh Review. Years afterwards ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... which they carried to their northern homes. It was both directly and indirectly through one of these officers that the claims of Nice as a sanatorium came to be put so plainly before Smollett. [Losing its prestige as a ville forte, Nice was henceforth rapidly to gain the new character of a ville de plaisir. In 1763, says one of the city's historians, Smollett, the famous historian and novelist, visited Nice. "Arriving here shattered in health and depressed ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... dear," said he, placing an arm about her shoulders, "now that you have seen many of the wonder-spots of Europe, and know more about antiques and art than any of us, I suppose you are quite decided that business is not your forte, eh? The next thing I'll hear from you, you'll have dropped your ambitions and be sailing down a love-stream ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... The Entertainment is written; and the rehearsals are in steady progress. All difficulties are provided for, but the one eternal difficulty of money. Miss Vanstone's resources stretch easily enough to the limits of our personal wants; including piano-forte hire for practice, and the purchase and making of the necessary dresses. But the expenses of starting the Entertainment are beyond the reach of any means we possess. A theatrical friend of mine here, whom I had hoped to interest in our undertaking, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... never been Roland's forte. He sat and stared at the white paper and chewed the pencil which should have been marring its whiteness with stinging paragraphs. No sort of ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... never seen till now so round and shapely an arm, hands so small and white, tipped with pink filbert nails. He did not learn the game so quickly as might be. He, like Maurice, was pondering over the unusual position in which he found himself; but analysis of any sort was not his forte; so he soon forgot all save the delicate curve of Madame's chin and throat, the soft ripple of her laughter, the abysmal gray ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... sweet and sour, that were served, according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces. The chickens, which had ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... obsecro vostram fidem, ubi ego perii? ubi immutatus sum? ubi ego formam perdidi? an egomet me illic reliqui, si forte oblitus fui? nam hic quidem omnem imaginem meam, quae ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... with terrible slaughter. "But the stout heart of the American nation quickly rallied, and inspired by the loyal determination of Abraham Lincoln the United States turned once more to their apparently hopeless task" (Colonel G. F. R. Henderson). McClellan's forte was organisation, and although at first slow in the field, he had assembled and trained a magnificent fighting force, with which he was "feeling his way to victory." He suffered defeat indeed at Gaines's Mill (June 27, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... in Pentecoste resedit rex Londoniae in Turri, episcopo tantum modo Sagiensi praesente: ceteri vel fastidierunt vel timuerunt venire. Aliquanto post, mediante legato, colloquium indictum est inter imperatricem et regem. si forte Deo inspirante pax reformari posset."—Malmesbury, Hist. Nov. (Rolls ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... stick, and threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except on business," confronted her. Should she go on? Did the sign refer ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... that the prominent taste of his wife, which is for music, is the only one denied to him. He afforded an amusing instance of this fact last night, when Mrs. Hare, having performed several airs on the piano-forte, he asked her, "Why she played the same tune so often, for the monotony was tiresome?"—an observation that ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... broad-shouldered, with a commanding presence and amiable countenance. He was bold, earnest, energetic, persevering; artless, and honest as the day. He said exactly what he meant. His mental vision was clear, strong, and accurate. Imagination was never active; oratory was not his forte. Demonstrative evidence suited him best. In his religious character he was conscientious, devout, and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... richer civilizations can do well—that Anatole France and occasional essayists of Punch or The Spectator can do well and most of us do indifferently. We are a humorous people, but not a playful one. Light irony is not our forte. Strength and humorous exaggeration come more readily to our pens than grace. We are better inspired by the follies of the crowd, or the errors of humanity, than by the whims of culture or aspects of pleasant leisure. And when we try to put on style in the manner of Lamb or Hazlitt, Stevenson ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... It cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit; Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... preliminaries in order to do justice to his subject. He had that day returned from a pilgrimage to one of the pictures, and was able to inform the artists who were present with regard to the smallest accessory. We fancied, had painting, and not penning, been his forte, he could have reproduced the picture for us on the spot, could we, at the same time, have transformed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... and magnificent adjectives; and now a little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... commodatam accepit, ad ipsam restituendam tenetur, vel ejus precium, si forte incendio, ruins, naufragio, ant latronum, vel hostium incursu, consumpta fuerit vel deperdita, substracts, vel ablata." Fol. 99 a, b. This has been thought a corrupt text (Guterbock, Bracton, by Coxe, p. 175; ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... offered me his arm, which I gladly accepted, happy to be relieved from the impertinence of my female companion. We returned to tea; after which the ladies sung, and played by turns on the piano forte; while some of the gentlemen accompanied with the flute, the clarinet, and the violin, forming in the whole a very decent concert. An elegant supper, and half an hour's conversation after it, closed the evening; when we ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... think twice before they carried things with too high a hand. Not having a half-penny at command, she was helpless. Without money and without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the correspondence was going on. She supported herself by playing the piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the means of making her acquainted with a countrywoman of his, whose name is unpronounceable by English ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... sound Janet leant and kissed the maid's pink-palmed hands as they lay upon the coverlet, and taking them within her own fondled them, saying,—"And thou wilt surprise my lord and his friends by thy rare playing of the clavichord, and 'tis possible so great and wealthy a man will own a piano-forte of which we have heard so much; and mayhap thou will be presented at Court, and in great London town thou mayest see many musicians from France, for 'tis not improbable they are brought over the channel at the instance of his Majesty. Is it not grand ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... her arrival, having finished her piano-forte practice, touched her harp twice, and arpeggioed the Spanish Fandango on her guitar, Miss Betty read two paragraphs of "Gilbert" (for she was profoundly determined to pursue her tasks with diligence), but the open windows disclosing a world ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... with heraldic devices, seen at the house of Mr. Tomkisson, the famous piano-forte-maker, is said to have first inspired the boy Turner with a love for art. He commenced to imitate the drawing of a certain rampant lion that especially took his fancy. Very soon after this the father announced that his son William ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Aeneas;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;—'tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Rostrum forte, subarcuatum, subcultratum, mandibulis utrisque apice emarginatis; naribus basalibus, lateralibus, subovalibus, membrano ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... wheel. That noble fellow, true as steel, had perceived the accident as soon as any of us, and he sprang to the very part of the vessel where he was most needed. He had a seaman's faculties in perfection, though ratiocination was certainly not his forte. A motion of my hand ordered him to put the helm hard up, and the answering sign let me know that I was obeyed. We could do no more just then, but the result ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... whoever should dare to condemn it. The two great families of Este and Medici interested themselves in the poet's favour. Without that protection it is probable that the one line on the donation of Rome by Constantine to Silvester, where the poet speaks 'puzza forte' would have sufficed to put the whole poem under ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Miss Fanshaw was about sixteen, her prudent mother began to think that it was time to take her from school, and to introduce her into the world. Miss Fanshaw had learned to speak French passably, to read a little Italian, to draw a little, to play tolerably well upon the piano-forte, and to dance as well as many other young ladies. She had been sedulously taught a sovereign contempt of whatever was called vulgar at the school where she was educated; but, as she was profoundly ignorant of every ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... example, the letter given by Wadding: Annals, ii., p. 16 (Rome, 1732). Tanta me amaritudo cordis, abundantia lacrymarum et immanitas doloris invasit, quod nisi ad pedes Jesu, consolationem solitae pietatis invenirem, spiritus meus forte deficeret et penitus anima liquefieret. Wadding's text should be corrected by that of the Riccardi MS., 279. f^o 80a and b. Cf. Mark of Lisbon, t. i., p. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the strings of the piano now in use is claimed by several nations, but the credit is probably due to Italy, although the first pianos are said to have been made in Germany, probably in the city of Freyburg. The piano was first called the hammer-harpsichord, afterward by the Italian name forte-piano, as it could give both loud and soft tones, while the harpsichord produced only loud ones. The name was changed later to piano-forte. Pianos are first mentioned as being in use about the middle of the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... proved himself capable of violent fits of work, but of "few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number of hexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers would tolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, and power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... conduct negotiations of the very highest importance, but she was surprised, in view of her earnest request, that he had even mentioned this particular matter to anybody. She reminded him that insurance was his forte, and that their understanding had been that she was to take exclusive charge of their oil business. While she was talking, Tom realized with a disagreeable shock that of late there had been no insurance ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... encouraging him by these words: Iddio maravigliosamente fece sonar tuo nome nella terra. Le Indie que sono pa te del mondo cosi ricca, te le ha date per tue; tu le hai repartite dove ti e piaciuto, e ti dette potenzia per farlo. Delli ligamenti del mare Oceano che erano serrati con catene cosi forte, ti dono le chiave, etc. [God marvellously makes thy name resound throughout the world. The Indies, which are so rich a portion of the world, he gives to thee for thyself; thou mayest distribute them in the way thou pleasest, and God gives thee power ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... veracious—and of which, I am proud to say, the distinguished subject of this memoir had the honor once of being chosen semi-monthly secretary, after a sharp and close canvass. In the transactions of this society the principal forte of Daniel was debating; albeit the character of his elocution was not the most brilliant, and it was not often until after the ayes and noes were called, that it could be determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether he himself understood the proposition—unless, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... for you gladly, Miss Travers, but waltz-music is not my forte. Let me see what else there is here." And he began turning over ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... years younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attempt to utilise him in the green-grocer's shop when Tom at twenty-one married Jessica—who was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But it was not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when he was given a basket of stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavy it was nor where ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... rinforzando, E in ogni parte apparisce la morte: E mentre in qua e in la, combatte Orlando, Un tratto a caso trovo Bujaforte, E in su la testa gli dette col brando: E perche l'elmo e temperato e forte, O forse incantato era, al colpo ha retto: Ma de la testa gli balzo ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... exige? Le jour du repos n'appartient-il pas a tous les hommes, et plus particulierement a ceux qui sont employes aux penibles travaux de la campagne? Ce sont des questions qui n'en seroient pas, si l'avarice, plus forte que l'humanite, ne dominoit presque tous les hommes, mais sur-tout les habitans des colonies. Que resulte-t-il cependant de cette avarice mal entendue? les Negres mal nourris et trop fatigues s'epuisent et ne peuplent pas; de l'epuisement nait la foiblesse, de la foiblesse le decouragement, la ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Astolpho found it in the moon, among the things that were lost upon earth, (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv. 80.) Di vari fiore ad un grand monte passa, Ch'ebbe gia buono odore, or puzza forte: Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece) Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece. Yet this incomparable poem has been approved by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Question preparatoire; question prealable, sometimes called q. definitive. Desmaze, Supplices, 177. Desjardins, p. xx. Howard, passim. The English have long boasted that torture is not allowed by their law; and although the peine forte et dure was undoubted torture, the boast is in general not unfounded. Torture was abolished in several parts of Germany in the eighteenth century, but lingered in other parts until the nineteenth. It was ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Warren was speedily on the look-out, off the coast of Cape Breton, and in the course of events fell in with, and captured, the "Vigilant," seventy-four, commanded by Captain Stronghouse, or, as his title runs, "the Marquis de la Maison Forte." The "Vigilant" was a store-ship, filled with munitions of war for the French town. Here was a glorious opportunity. If the saints could only intimate to Duchambon, the Governor of Louisburgh, that his supplies had been cut off, Duchambon might think of capitulation. But unfortunately the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... "is hardly our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... still speaking, somebody in the next room has begun to play the finale of Beethoven's Sonata in D-minor (Op. 31, No. 3). The allegretto is first played piano, then more forte, and at last passionately, violently, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... them had not until quite recently been printed. He composed fifty-three works for the church, a hundred and eighteen for orchestra, twenty-six operas and cantatas, a hundred and fifty-four songs, forty-nine concertos, sixty-two piano-forte pieces, and seventeen ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... and applied for an engagement. The manager, after scrutinizing the various qualifications of the youthful candidate, inquired, "and pray sir, to what particular parts have your studies been directed? What is your forte?" "Why, sir, (replied the youth in a modest tone) I rather think that I excel in your line." "My line! (exclaimed the manager with peculiar complacency) what is that? What do you mean?" "To confess the truth, (rejoined the tyro) I flatter myself that I am most at home ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... is the most funny, the second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that we are strongest in humour—others, that our power is in pathos. The judicious declare that our forte lies in both—in the two united, or alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Moffletus. Mofletus Panis delicatioris species, qui diatim distribui solet Canonicis praebendariis; Tolosatibus Pain Moufflet, quasi Pain molet dictus; forte quod ejusmodi panes singulis diebus coquantur, atque recentes et teneri ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... qui tant as dure et qui as este si large, si ferme et si forte, en manche de clere yvoire: duquel la croix est faicte d'or et la supface doree decoree et embellye du pommeau faiet de pierres de beril; escript et engrave du grand no de Dieu singulier, Alpha et OO. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, Rouget, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... was established in 1860 in the house, not far from the ancient "Cat-Hole," of one Mrs. O'Toole, "a pretty good all-round cook, whose forte was apple dumplings" served daily. The steward was Charles Kendall Adams, '61, while other members were Walter W. Perry and Byron M. Cutcheon of the class of 1861 and Martin L. D'Ooge ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... confisticated great buzz-fly knocking about, and I can't kill him. I told you in my last letter I would give you some idea of what Ottawa was like, but now the time has arrove for the ordeal, I don't like it; descriptions of scenery are not my forte, and they're always uninteresting both to write and to read. By-the-bye, before I begin, how's old Frank's ear, poor old chap, I suppose he growled away by himself, till it was found out by accident by some of you. I hope it will soon be all right again, and that he will be ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... anything that she really could play on the piano, her forte lay in those very Scottish airs, which she certainly rendered with exquisite feeling and with skill enough for the moderate demands of that class of music. And on this occasion she felt bound to exert herself, to repay the obligation of Crawford's coming out to hear ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... covering inventions of great ingenuity and value, which are now being perfected and will shortly be brought into operation. The apparatus consists of an instrument, operated by keys similar to those of a piano-forte, for punching characters, composed of dots and lines, upon a narrow strip of paper. The paper, when thus prepared, is passed rapidly through an instrument attached to a telegraph-wire, at the other end of which is a similar instrument which runs in unison. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... votum, cognatio, crimen, Cultus disparitas, vis, ordo, ligamen, honestas, Si sis affinis, si forte coeire nequibis, Si parochi, et duplicis desit praesentia testis, Raptave si mulier, parti nec reddita tutae; Haec facienda vetant connubia, facta retractant.'"—From Essay on Scripture Doctrines of Adultery and Divorce, by H. V. Tabbs, 8vo.: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... delectable boudoirs" facing the Marble Court, above the private apartments of the King. Everywhere appeared the initial L linked with the torches of Love. One of the objects most admired in the drawing-room was an English piano-forte, with a case adorned with rosewood medallions, blue and white mosaics and gilded metal. In this room there were chests of drawers of antique lacquer and ebony, statues of marble, and garnishings of sculptured bronze. At night ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the threshold ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... gravures l'eau-forte, par Rveil, d'aprs les dessins de A. Colin. Paris. Audot, diteur du ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... still your life from day to day Nae "lente largo" in the play, But "allegretto forte" gay Harmonious flow: A sweeping, kindling, bauld ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... bewailings were not a natural resource with Polly, whose forte was action. Her first thought in the morning was: what should she do about it? Something must be done, of course, and she was the only one to do it. What it was she had not the faintest idea, but then ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... had won, by O'Hara's recommendation, an entree into the Palace as servant to a gentleman-usher-daily-waiter: and now he made bright the knife of the assassin, tending its edge as a gardener the tender sprout, the knife being his metier and forte, he despising the noisy, mediate, uncertain pistol, nor could use it, his instincts belonging to the Stone Age. But the days passed, and he could by no means get ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
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