"Infelicitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these rambling remarks to a close, and in doing so I must once again quote that other Suffolk worthy to whom many of us are very much attached, I mean Edward FitzGerald. When Sir Leslie Stephen wrote what is to my mind a singularly infelicitous essay on Crabbe in the Cornhill, he quoted the remark, which seemed to be new to FitzGerald, as to Crabbe being a "pope in worsted stockings"—a remark made by Horace Smith of Rejected Addresses, although ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... giving us some very bad news which had been concealed up till this day, but which the Russians and Austrians had learned of from English sources. The Franco-Spanish fleet had been defeated by Lord Nelson on October 20th not far from Cadiz, at Cape Trafalgar. Villeneuve, our infelicitous admiral, who had failed to carry out the precise orders of Napoleon at a time when the appearance of a combined fleet in the Channel could have secured a safe passage for the troops assembled at Boulogne, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... carried it down to the town quay and mounted it. A number of children at once gathered round, in the belief that the stranger intended a tumbling performance. The missionary eyed them and began, "Ah, if I can once get hold of you tender little ones—" an infelicitous opening, which scattered them yelling, convinced that the Bogey-man had come for them at last. Upon this he changed his tone and called "O Gomorrah!" aloud several times in a rich baritone voice, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to conceive an appeal more singularly infelicitous than that which our modern positivists make to Buddhism. It is the appeal of optimists to inveterate pessimists, and of exact thinkers to inveterate mystics. If the consideration of it tells us anything of importance, it tells us this—that by far the largest mass ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... as if ROBERT INGERSOLL wished to imply, Don't be taken in and accept W.W. at his own poetic valuation as a poet, simply because he is wrinkled, old, white-haired, and wears a venerable look, which, after all, may be only a hypocritical mask? Mr. INGERSOLL couldn't have been more infelicitous if he had "come to bury 'WHITMAN,' not to praise him." Then he went on, "Neither does WHITMAN accept everything new." This clearly excepted the testimonial, which, we may suppose, was brand new, or at all events, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... of counsel for those who were out at sea,—that they should not waste any energy in asking how they looked from the shore; and the suggestion is not an infelicitous one in its general application to life. It is quite enough for one to keep his feet, as best he may, set on the upward and onward way, without concerning himself too much as to the effect of his figure in the landscape. The energy that goes towards attitudinizing is always wasted, while ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... recognize that this second movement is a production of things, a practical fact, or a fact of will. It is customary to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems here to be infelicitous, for the work of art (the aesthetic work) is always internal; and that which is called external is no longer a work of art. Others distinguish between aesthetic fact and artistic fact, meaning by the second the external or practical ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... about who was the more capable of sacrifice—man or woman? Marya Dmitrievna immediately became agitated, began to assert that woman is the more capable, declared that she would prove it in two words, got entangled, and wound up by a decidedly infelicitous comparison. Varvara Pavlovna picked up a music-book, half-concealed herself with it, and leaning over in the direction of Panshin, nibbling at a biscuit, with a calm smile on her lips and in her glance, she remarked, in an undertone: "Elle n'a pas invente la poudre, la bonne dame." Panshin ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... his lady may be clearly discerned, that he congratulated himself on having made, at least, a prudent choice. There is little, however, of that rapturous extasy which issues from many a finally most infelicitous husband, some days, weeks, or even months, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... succulent Touraine. There is something anomalous in this fact, though, if one thinks about it a little, one may discover certain correspondences between his character and that of his native province. Strenuous, laborious, constantly infelicitous in spite of his great successes, he suggests at times a very different set of influences. But he had his jovial, full-feeding side—the side that comes out in the "Contes Drolatiques," which are the romantic and epicurean ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... essential to the student of the American provincial novel, as it is also to the student of our more generalized types of story-writing, and that he has never in his long career written an insincere, a slovenly, or an infelicitous page. "My Literary Friends and Acquaintance" gives the most charming picture ever drawn of the elder Cambridge, Concord, and Boston men who ruled over our literature when young Howells came out of the West, and "My Mark Twain" is his memorable portrait of another type of sovereign, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... a most infelicitous speech, and Miss Kavanagh might have resented it, but for the strange fact that Beauclerk, on hearing it, laughs heartily. Well, if he doesn't mind, it can't matter, but how silly Dicky can be! Mr. Beauclerk continues to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... she said, "I—I quite understand now. I was importunate and at an infelicitous time. I recognize that I brought it upon myself. Well, people will forget about it presently—a new sensation will ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner |
