"Unpropitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most trying case, and body and brain were weary, his nerves all on edge, his patience nearly exhausted, and he had no time or inclination for unpleasant interruptions and unnecessary worries. Altogether there could not have been a much more unpropitious moment for any one to have gone to him than that ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... intended that his second inauguration (March 4, 1873) should be even more impressive than the first; but the skies were unpropitious, and the day will long be remembered, by those who witnessed the festivities, for the severity of the cold,—altogether exceptional in the climate of Washington. It destroyed the pleasure of an occasion which would otherwise have been given to unrestrained ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... "Wherefore {give} me," he retorted, "a beauty that is dumb, if I am surpassed in voice?" "By the will of the Fates," {said she}, "have your respective qualities been assigned; beauty to you, strength to the Eagle, melody to the Nightingale, to the Raven presages, unpropitious omens to the Crow; all of {these} are contented ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... not till matters had grown desperate that he decided to do this. Wayland was not in the habit of getting into debt, and an insistent tailor and florist made his life miserable. With masculine obtuseness he chose the most unpropitious moment. Miss Sarah, after a hard day, had dropped into an easy-chair for a little rest after dinner. Wayland had forgotten the absence of the cook, and in the lamplight his aunt looked ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... St. Peter. Certainly Captain Baudin, in order to render this hydrographical survey complete, should have followed out his instructions, and penetrated beyond St. Peter and St. Francis Islands. The weather, however, was too unpropitious, and this exploration was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the Mgussa's familiar motioned the Kamraviona and several officers to draw around him, when, in a very low tone, he gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations seemed unpropitious, for we immediately repaired to our boats and returned to our quarters. Here we no sooner arrived than a host of Wakungu, lately returned from the Unyoro war, came to pay their respects to the king: they had returned ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... ten of these letters is dictated either by honest sympathy, the warm, uncritical recognition of youth (which I don't suppose any author would diminish, if he could), or the craving for encouragement, under unpropitious circumstances of growth. But how was I, in the beginning, to guess at the motives of the writers? They offered sugar-plums, which I swallowed without a suspicion of the drastic ingredients so many of them contained. Good Mrs. Sigourney kept a journal of her experiences in this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... she is living at ease in a large house, but day by day her riches wane and her house contracts. She explains to her visitor that her condition at any given hour affects the whole lives of all children born at that time, and that he had come into the world at a most unpropitious moment; and she advises him to take his niece Militsa (who had been born at a lucky time) to live in his house, and to call all he might acquire her property. This advice he follows, and all goes well with him. One day, as he is gazing at a splendid field of corn, a stranger asks him ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... on one condition only," said the woman, in reply to the nonsense I poured into her ear, carried away by the fervor of an improvised passion, to which everything was unpropitious. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he took the opportunity of renewing his addresses to Agnes. He could hardly have chosen a more unpropitious time for pleading his cause with her. The gaieties of Paris (quite incomprehensibly to herself as well as to everyone about her) had a depressing effect on her spirits. She had no illness to complain of; she shared willingly in the ever-varying succession of amusements offered to strangers ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... not to be moved from his purpose. He gave Yoshisada fair words indeed: "I profoundly praise your loyal services. My wish is to pacify the country by the assistance of your family, but heaven has not yet vouchsafed its aid. Our troops are worn out and the hour is unpropitious. Therefore, I make peace for the moment and bide my time. Do you repair to Echizen and use your best endeavours to promote the cause of the restoration. Lest you be called a rebel after my return to Kyoto, I order the Crown ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... dog-star's unpropitious ray, Smote every brain, and wither'd every bay; 10 Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bower, The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour: Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out order, and extinguish light, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... ship was brought into such a position as to command the site of the proposed camp, and as there was to be an eclipse of one of Jupiter's satellites, Cook and Green stayed ashore to get an observation, but the weather was unpropitious. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... heart was filled with such a passion for learning, no obstacle could prove insuperable. Yet for many a day the Fates seemed most unpropitious. Ill-health drove him to emigrate to Venezuela, but his ship was wrecked on the Dutch coast, and he became the errand-boy of a business house in Amsterdam. Here in his first year of service he managed, while going on his master's errands, to learn English in the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... dull day with the street-boys, whatever their business may be. The boot-blacks lose least, but if the day be unpropitious their earnings are small. On such a day the Newsboys Lodge is a great resource. It supplies all that a boy actually needs—lodging and two meals—for the small sum of eighteen cents, and in cases of need will ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... A more unpropitious moment for paying a visit could not have been chosen. It was plain to see that the Throckmortons were not aware of the honor conferred upon them. The guest chamber having been converted into a convalescent hospital, Miss Ann must share room and bed with the reluctant ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... especially Zurich, less restrictive. This conflict of opinion had contributed not a little to the duration and violence of the old Zurich War, in the preceding century. Now it revived again, and that at a most unpropitious moment. In the Buergerrecht, stipulations were certainly made in regard to the Emperor and Empire, as well as the Confederates, so that the obligations under which the two cities had come toward them, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... his whip, but we didn't go. The horses were only accustomed to the saddle and knew nothing about pulling in harness. Sam was a condemned cavalry horse and Box was a native bronco, and being hitched to a wagon was a new experience to both. The start was unpropitious, but, acting on the old adage that "necessity is the mother of invention," which truth is nowhere better exemplified than on the frontier where conveniences are few and the most must be made of everything, after some delay and considerable ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... tide and tide. On thorns and scratches, till that moment Unnoticed, you begin to comment; You never felt such bitter brambles, Such heavy soil, in all your rambles! You never felt your fleas so vicious! Till, sick of life so unpropitious, You wish at last, to end the passage, That you were dead, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... her morning endearments graciously, but Phyllis was glad the toast wasn't cold. She recognized unpropitious portents. ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... so (for he had to cool his bearings, and this was truly an anxious moment for me), I gave her all steam, and stood for the north end of the island. As we approached it, the Fates, which had before seemed unpropitious to us, began to smile, and the rain-squall, which had come up quite unexpectedly, began to envelope us in its friendly folds, shutting in our dense clouds of black smoke, which were really the worst tell-tales we had to dread. The first half-hour's run was a very anxious one for us; but as we began ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... electric lamps which throw toward us long, shimmering lances of light, in which the mighty stream, gray, mysterious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging onward with majestic sweep. Upon its bosom we are to be borne for a thousand miles. Our introduction has been unpropitious; it is to be hoped that on further acquaintance we may be better ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... or stirred, but in that time the steady blue eyes of the countryman took in the details of the scene—the luxurious furnishings, the condition of the two men—with the rapidity and minuteness of a sensitized plate. Ironic chance had chosen an unpropitious night for his call. Intoxication surrounding a bar, under the stimulus of numbers, and preceding or following some exciting event, he could understand, could, perhaps, condone; but this solitary dissipation, drunkenness for its own sake, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... that the extraordinary alternations of climate we had experienced for two months, was a circumstance quite unheard-of before in Pau, and we looked on ourselves as singularly unlucky in having, by chance, chosen a season so unpropitious. A few simple persons, who ventured to remark that the winter of last year was very similar, were told that they must have been mistaken; and some who recollected high winds were considered romancers. We looked at the strong contre-vents placed outside the windows of our dwelling, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... way of Hazebrouck and Cassel, we entered the area immediately behind the Salient and took up our quarters near the village of Arneke, for we were not yet due for our spell of duty in the line. At this time the weather was most unpropitious, and rendered training in any shape or form out of the question. The ground was covered with snow to the depth of several inches, and the roads were, for the most part, frost-bound. A Divisional Artillery Horse Show was organised, however, ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... a week after the calculations, in all the glory of the purple of Manor Cross, the new Popenjoy was born. For it was a Popenjoy. The Fates, who had for some time past been unpropitious to the house of Brotherton, now smiled; and Fortune, who had been good to the Dean throughout, remained true to him also in this. The family had a new heir, a real Popenjoy; and the old Marchioness when the baby ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... great day. I agreed to make my entrance to Montreal, for the purpose of being inaugurated. The morning was unpropitious. There had been a tremendous storm during the night, and the snow had drifted so much that it seemed doubtful whether a sleigh could go from hence to town (about four miles). I said that I had no notion of being deterred by weather. Accordingly, I got into a one-horse sleigh, with very small ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... difficult to account for the motive that could have induced any mariner to land upon so unpropitious a spot, hemmed in as it was on every side, and apparently affording no outlet but that by which they had entered—the trackless and illimitable ocean. Without a moment's deliberation, however, the steersman, who had guided his boat into the creek, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... him wore the grace of youthful sincerity), whether any statesman—the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy—could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... to a house, they settle down near the gate, and the owner has to support them as long as the whim takes them to stay there. To use force against a dervish would be looked upon as an exceedingly unpropitious affair to the true believer. Then, too, I have little doubt but that they are capable of making good use of their steel bodkins. Why my dervish wished to give up his easy-going profession and take over the charge of my horses I never fully determined, but ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... of Theodoric's embassy at Constantinople was unpropitious, as the Emperor Zeno was already stricken by mortal illness. On the 9th of April, 491, he died, and was succeeded by the handsome but elderly life-guardsman, Anastasius, to whom Ariadne, widow of Zeno, gave her hand in marriage. The rights and duties which ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... I knew him, Ryecroft had reached his fortieth year; for twenty years he had lived by the pen. He was a struggling man, beset by poverty and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental work. Many forms of literature had he tried; in none had he been conspicuously successful; yet now and then he had managed to earn a little more money than his actual needs demanded, and thus was enabled to see something ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... would be sufficient to patronise a History of England." His valuable "History of the Duke of Ormond" had sufficiently announced the sort of man who solicited this necessary aid; nor was the moment unpropitious to his fondest hopes, for a Society for the Encouragement of Learning had been formed, and this impulse of public spirit, however weak, had, it would seem, roused into action some unexpected quarters. When Carte's project ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... his little band left Paris for the provinces. The times were unpropitious, for the wars of the Fronde at that time made the whole country a scene of confusion and danger. They had visited Bordeaux, and were protected by the governor of Guienne. While here, Moliere wrote and brought out a tragedy, which ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... strong, quite outnumbered the army of Gustavus, and the officers of Wallenstein unanimously advised to give battle. Wallenstein was a superstitious man and deeply devoted to astrological science. He consulted his astrologers, and they declared the stars to be unpropitious to Gustavus. This at once decided him. He resolved, however, to act on the defensive, and through the night employed the energies of his army in throwing up intrenchments. In the earliest dawn of the morning mass was celebrated throughout the whole ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... He recollected their unpropitious journey—the exposure to cold and rain—that he had hurried on the invalids, till he had accomplished his own purposes. One had already gone; the other was fast following. Speculators have consciences and affections, and ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... is proposed to cultivate, is remarkably barren and unpropitious; of course a plentiful harvest must not be soon expected. The persons to be employed in this work of faith and labour of love, must not only be men of prudence and discretion, but men of information, and possessing clear and cool heads, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... in flocks, And rich Thyestes left it to be borne By Agamemnon, symbol of his right To empire over Argos and her isles) 130 On that he lean'd, and rapid, thus began.[7] Friends, Grecian Heroes, ministers of Mars! Ye see me here entangled in the snares Of unpropitious Jove. He promised once, And with a nod confirm'd it, that with spoils 135 Of Ilium laden, we should hence return; But now, devising ill, he sends me shamed, And with diminished numbers, home to Greece. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... give law to the princes of the kingdom. These barbarians have nothing to do with our Great Flowery land. Such vassals may not interfere with our covenant. Weapons are out of place at such a meeting. As before the spirits, such conduct is unpropitious. In point of virtue, it is contrary to right. As between man and man, it is not polite.' The duke of Ch'i ordered the disturbers off, but Confucius withdrew, carrying the duke of Lu with him. The business proceeded, notwithstanding, and when the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... particular companion, with whom she must be associated for life. "Matches are made," say some, "in Heaven." Prudence has no concern with this matter. A young woman fixes her affections on some individual, and believes that it is decreed she should love and should marry him. If circumstances appear unpropitious to their intimacy, she is perfectly wretched. And this, not simply because she loves him so ardently, but because she believes a decree of Heaven will be violated, if their union fail of consummation. "Our presentiments," it is said "often work their own fulfilment." ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... all countries exhibits, in a greater or less degree, a prevalence of barbarism. The planting of colonies, or the formation of establishments in new countries, is ever attended with circumstances unpropitious to refinement. The force with which these circumstances act, will be increased or diminished in proportion to the remoteness or proximity of those new establishments, to older societies, in which ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... from this chance of a row? He was naive enough to expect anything; but he had given himself away for nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself—let alone with me—in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... or four idle louts, a couple of children, and a farm-laborer were running by the swollen margin of the mill-stream, yelling forlornly, pointing at an object that showed itself now and again in the swirling center of the current. Plainly, somebody had chosen this most unpropitious season for an accidental bath, and his companions were sympathetically watching him drown, while not daring, not dreaming of, any foolhardy ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... disappeared. I stood, at the bottom of the steps, confounded at such strange and unexpected treatment. I could not withdraw till my purpose was accomplished. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door, and pulled the bell. A negro came, of a very unpropitious aspect, and, opening the door, looked at me in silence. To my question, Was Mrs. Maurice to be seen? he made some answer, in a jargon which I could not understand; but his words were immediately followed by an unseen person ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... have given Mr. Slick's account of the English climate, and his opinion of the dulness of a country house, as nearly as possible in his own words. It struck me at the time that they were exaggerated views; but if the weather were unpropitious, and the company not well selected, I can easily conceive, that the impression on his mind would be as strong and as unfavourable, as he has described it to ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... The end of the mast squeezed my shoulder; the edge of a cask of beef well-nigh stove in my ribs; the corner of a box bored a hole in the nape of my neck—yet I went off like one of the famed seven sleepers, and my friend, although stretched out beside me in similarly unpropitious circumstances, began to snore in less than five ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... quite possible that these particular salmon when on their way to the purlieus of marine fashion were somewhat discouraged at the jar and shock incident to their transit over the Falls. They may have concluded that the locality was unpropitious for the return trip, and then, consulting with salmon whose lines had been cast in more pleasant places, they may have ascended rivers of more conspicuous natural attractions and more agreeable to fish of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... that curled the waters of the river, the blue sky and fair sunlight, the bright and beautiful of the scene around them, those two saw and tasted; with hopeful though very grave hearts. The other poor lady saw nothing but a dirty steamboat and a very unpropitious company. Among these however were Eleanor's fellow-voyagers, Mr. Amos and his wife; and she was introduced to them now for the first time. Various circumstances had prevented their meeting ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... have actually been used in war. They were first introduced to this new field of action at Valenciennes in 1793, and the result of the experiment was a failure; not, however, owing to the fault of man, but to the unpropitious nature of the winds. The garrison, being hard pressed by the English and their allies, attached a letter, addressed to the National Assembly, to a small balloon, or parachute, and committed it to a breeze which blew in the direction of Paris. Towards evening the wind changed, and the faithless ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... It was an unpropitious moment for any one to address Royal; therefore, when he heard himself spoken to, he whirled with a scowl upon his face. A tall French-Canadian, just back from the ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... years in the service of the Company, and the greatest part of that time in employments of the highest trust. My conscience allows me boldly to claim the merit of zeal and integrity; nor has fortune been unpropitious to their exertions. To these qualities I bound my pretensions. I shall not repine, if you shall deem otherwise of my services; nor ought your decision, however it may disappoint my hope of a retreat adequate to the consequence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... impressively strikes the mind. As that was the time out of which all that is great and good in England and America has proceeded, in letters and in arms, in religion and in politics, we can easily understand how vast must have been the change, had not the winds of the North been so unpropitious to the purposes of the King ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... clad in black calico, and wore grey felt slippers. Her head was lowered, her closed lips quivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordon directly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental, dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and, discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up and departed for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... The result of that unpropitious interview was that Eustacia, instead of passing the afternoon with her grandfather, hastily returned home to Clym, where she arrived three hours earlier than she had ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... benevolence," said the chief attendant obsequiously; "for since he sent for you an unpropitious planet has cast its influence upon our master, so that ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and, turning round, he perceived close to his elbow a man in no very respectable attire, so far as the obscurity would allow him to judge, but half muffled up in a cloak, and armed with a stout bludgeon. Much as he had just now been wishing for some guide, he yet could not congratulate himself on so unpropitious a rencontre. The stranger's dress and unceremonious greeting were not more suspicious than the abruptness of his appearance: for Bertram felt convinced that he must have way-laid him. Assuming however as much composure as he could, he demanded in a ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... recognized him before? Had her thick veil, and his position, and the general slight flurry of the misadventure, intercepted recognition until she heard his voice when he addressed Charley. Or had she known her lover at once, and rapidly decided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meeting after absence, and that she would pass on to Kings Port unrevealed, but then had found this plan become impossible through the collision between Charley and John? It was not until certain incidents of the days following ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... fingers, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. Adj. ill-timed, mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) 133; too late for; premature &c. (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, twenty- twenty hindsight. Adv. inopportunely &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... imposed upon the elegant Mr. Chatterly the task of expressing the desire of the company to see the unknown artist, in a neat occasional copy of verses. The poor gentleman's muse, however, proved unpropitious; for he was able to proceed no farther than two lines in half an hour, which, coupled with its variations, we insert from the blotted manuscript, as Dr. Johnson has printed the alterations in Pope's ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne—who did not notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace girl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment implied therein if she had—got on her feet, and moved dizzily out to the front. She was so pale that ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... very full and the weather has been so unpropitious that I have not been able to make use of my Horses above twice since my arrival. I hope your everlasting negotiation with the Father of your Intended is near a conclusion in some manner; if you do not hurry a little, you will be verging into the "Vale of Years," and, though you may be ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... of many years. But him the Goddess answer'd azure-eyed, Telemachus! Thou wilt, in part, thyself Fit speech devise, and heav'n will give the rest; For thou wast neither born, nor hast been train'd To manhood, under unpropitious Pow'rs. So saying, Minerva led him thence, whom he With nimble steps attending, soon arrived Among the multitude. There Nestor sat, And Nestor's sons, while, busily the feast 40 Tending, his num'rous followers roasted, some, The viands, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the presage was favorable. So it was if the chain of lightning seen in the sky appeared to pass from cloud to cloud above, instead of descending to the ground. On the other hand, thunder sounding as if it came from the southward, and lightning striking down to the earth, were both unpropitious omens. As to birds, some were of good omen, as vultures, eagles and woodpeckers. Others were evil, as ravens and owls. Various inferences were drawn too from the manner in which the birds that appeared in the air, were seen to fly, and from ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of all patience, and vexed to the soul at the society of the parrot. Bewailing his misfortune, he was railing at the revolutions of the skies; and, wringing the hands of chagrin, was lamenting his condition, and saying: "What an unpropitious fate is this; what ill-luck, and untoward fortune! Could they any way suit the dignity of me, who would in my day strut with my fellow-crows along the wall of a garden:—It were durance sufficient for a good and holy man that he should be ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the matter, my fair coz?" asked Gerald, who was standing near and heard the sigh. "Are the Fates very unpropitious?" ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... has yielded half her rich domain: Shall we to Denmark's slaves our hopes disclose, And court with frantic haste Oppression's rushing woes?— Oft have our sires the work of war delay'd, 'Till signs aerial promised heavenly aid; Oft pitch'd their idle lances in the plain, While south-winds held their unpropitious reign. Remember too the word disclosed from high, The sacred word of ancient prophecy,— "When gather'd mists from Denmark's sky shall crowd, And blot the North with one continued cloud, Then shall a second sun to Sweden rise, And with unchanging glory gild her skies." Reflect on this, and let ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... enthusiasm prevailed. When the Rebu horde descended upon Egypt, Meneptah had sent his generals out to meet the invader, but he, himself, had remained under cover in Memphis because he said the stars were unpropitious. And this was the son of Rameses II, than whom, if the historians and the singer Pentaur say true, there was never a more puissant monarch! But when the marauder was overthrown and routed, and his generals turned toward Memphis ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... using the proper means they might become —a powerful party capable of taking the government of the country, or at least of dictating the terms on which they should share it with the Whigs. This attempt was from the first chimerical: partly because the time was unpropitious, the Reform fervour being in its period of ebb, and the Tory influences powerfully rallying; but still more, because, as Austin so truly said, "the country did not contain the men." Among the Radicals in Parliament there were several qualified to be useful members ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... There was some comfort in finding no cross carved above the word, but this was all the comfort the unhappy father and grandfather could find. He of course hastened back to the fleet, determined instantly to go to Croatan, but a combination of unpropitious events defeated his anxious wishes; storms and a deficiency of food forced the vessels to run for the West Indies for the purpose of refitting, wintering and returning; but even in this plan White was disappointed and found himself reluctantly compelled to run for the western ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach, now once more preaching; I know well that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute; This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offer'd To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities: And human sacrifices bled ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... whole day he waited a favourable opportunity to carry out his purpose, and in vain. The two sisters seemed to be inseparable in this time of trouble, and try as he might he could not get the interview for which he so ardently longed. The fates were unpropitious, and one after another his artifices were defeated until at last he was obliged to fall back upon the assistance of his friend, and ask him, as a last resource, to help him out of ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... And so recently as April of this critical year 1823, Adams had taken alarm at the appearance of a British naval force off the coast of Cuba and had warned the Government at Madrid that "the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of the United States." At the same time Adams stated his conviction that within half a century the annexation of Cuba to the United States would be "indispensable to the continuance of the Union itself." Coupled with this prophecy was the equally frank assurance ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... on the wings of earnest prayer ascending, It rises, and is registered above. O, such is love-all other is fictitious; All other's vanquished by disease and pain; But this, which lives when fate is unpropitious, Shall rise to heaven, and there an ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... He chose an unpropitious day for a tentative declaration of his intentions. It was very cold. White mufflers protected his outstanding ears, a gray woolen scarf was wound about his long neck and almost covered his tight little mouth. He wore ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... of porphyry and granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own volcanic fires, might seem equally unpropitious to the labors of the husbandman. And all communication between the parts of the long- extended territory might be thought to be precluded by the savage character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and impassable quebradas,—those hideous rents ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and fuller got the Diary—Mr. Brown graphically recounting the doings and disasters of "December 28th, Friday.—Unpropitious, fatal, Friday! I never knew it lucky save once, and then it was—I let the Albert. 'Christmas comes but once a year,' with a train of nasty bills, not to be bilk'd; and sorry consolation is it thinking you 'paid at the time,' when the receipt is not to be found. Miss-Fortune, that never came ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... way at the rate of from ten to twenty daily, the fracture in the shaft is extending, and so, partially maimed, the old ship drags her 320 feet of length slowly along. The captain is continually in the engine-room, and we know when things are looking more unpropitious than usual by his coming up puffing his cigar with unusual strength of determination. It has been so far a very pleasant voyage. The moral, mental, and social qualities of my fellow-passengers are of a high order, and since the hurricane we have ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... delighted, all Italy was swept by the golden torrent of Tasso's impassioned verses, that were intended to urge the Catholic princes of Europe to the inauguration of a new Crusade. Nor were the times unpropitious for such an event. Tunis, that hot-bed of infidelity, piracy and iniquity, was in the hands of the Christians; and the fleets of the Soldan had been well-nigh annihilated by Don John of Austria at the glorious battle of Lepanto:—to convince a doubting ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... which I have sometimes known, by great accident, last three months, I can tell you that without great attention, infinite politeness, and engaging air and manners, the omens will be sinister, and the goddess unpropitious. Pray tell me what are the amusements of those assemblies? Are they little commercial play, are they music, are they 'la belle conversation', or are they all three? 'Y file-t-on le parfait amour? Y debite-t-on ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... derives from the happiness of others, had imposed on some who should have known better. Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after Fenelon's pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age,—an age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure. Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and without mercy, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in years. He had entered upon the winter of life, that sprinkles the head with snow that never melts, but he was still hale, ruddy, and active. Nature had, indeed, moulded him in an unpropitious hour for personal comeliness, but in compensation had seated a great heart and a graceful mind in a body low of stature, and marked by a slight deformity. His piercing eyes, luminous with intelligence and full of sympathy for everything noble ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... have always been regarded as attendants upon witches; and witches themselves have been said to borrow their shapes when on their mysterious expeditions. I was once told, that Lord Cochrane was accompanied by a favourite black cat in a cruise through the northern seas. The weather had been most unpropitious; no day had passed without some untoward circumstance, and the sailors were not slow in attributing the whole to the influence of the black cat on board. This came to Lord Cochrane's ears, and knowing ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... when a careful rummage left no hopes; for the fates had evidently decreed at candy was not to prosper on this unpropitious night. ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... the greater part of the afternoon and evening with us, hearing sister M. read from the books which have already been written in their language. We, however, soon found that we had arrived in a most unpropitious time; for almost every man in the vicinity was in ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... was a stretch of lawn, dotted with shrubs and cedars and shaded by two big silver-leaf poplars. It was on this lawn that, provided the night was fair, the strawberry festival was to be held. If the weather should be unpropitious the festival was to ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for ordinary purposes by ordinary people. Capitalists treated it exactly as they treated the Atlantic Cable project when Cyrus Field visited Boston in 1862. They admired and marvelled; but not a man subscribed a dollar. Also, Sanders very soon learned that it was a most unpropitious time for the setting afloat of a new enterprise. It was a period of turmoil and suspicion. What with the Jay Cooke failure, the Hayes-Tilden deadlock, and the bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the news of the day ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... and is one of the most important features of the Park. It is worthy to rank as a feat of engineering skill with, any of the great works of modern times. The Commissioners decided to put its powers to the test yesterday afternoon, but owing to the unpropitious weather of the forenoon the trial was postponed. Nevertheless, Commissioners Stranahan, Fiske, and Haynes, with Mr. Martin, engineer in charge, and Mr. John Y. Culyer, his assistant, were at the well. During the last summer some difficulties were encountered in the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... friendly, and having no apparent connection with the movements of Black Hawk, although they are subject to an unpropitious influence from the Hudson's Bay Company, the agents of which allure them to carry their trade into that province. The American traders complain of this with great reason. Many of the Chippewas visit the British posts in Canada, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... unpropitious circumstances the impetuous Gauls were met on the banks of the river Allia, ten miles from Rome, on the very day on which the Fabii had been destroyed by the Etruscans the century before (July 16, 390). The result was that terror took possession of the soldiers, and the Gauls ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... splendid work he's doin'. You know as well as I do that he used to be a thoroughly insufficient, uncapacious man (though I wouldn't let anybody else say it!), putterin' over a mess of pictures that wouldn't sell for a nickel. An' that he used to run from anything an' everything that was unpropitious an' disagreeable, like he was bein' chased. Well, then you was took blind. An' ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... carried the leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes. And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a fete at once of farewell and in honour of his daughter's betrothal to the Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious a season was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he might mark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the new rule which it ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... you,' said Bertie, dropping his companion's arm, and standing before her on the path. In their walk they had come exactly to the spot where Eleanor had been provoked into slapping Mr Slope's face. Could it be possible that the place was peculiarly unpropitious to her comfort? Could it be possible that she should her have to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... severed at the first blow, the goddess is favourable; if not, she is unpropitious: all their labour is thrown away, and the ceremony must be repeated upon some more fitting occasion. But if the sign be favourable, the axe is tied carefully in a white cloth and turned towards the west, all the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... natives, which brought us in a short time to a good supply of drinkable, though very brackish water. The sandstone hills before us and to the northward, were covered with low shrubs and the broad-leaved tea-tree, with wiry and stiff grasses, and looked very unpropitious. The rock was composed of quartz pebbles of different colours, imbedded ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... to have received no other education than that of a mechanic, and his outset in life was unpropitious. Young Hogarth was bound apprentice to a silversmith (whose name was Gamble) of some eminence; by whom he was confined to that branch of the trade, which consists in engraving arms and cyphers upon the plate. While thus employed, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the Southern States wholly and the General Government partially into the hands of negroes is proposed at a time peculiarly unpropitious. The foundations of society have been broken up by civil war. Industry must be reorganized, justice reestablished, public credit maintained, and order brought out of confusion. To accomplish these ends would require all the wisdom and virtue of the great ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... the Himalayas The Head of Affairs An Unpropitious Moment Kismut Crossing the Sutlej A Halting-place in Cashmere Latticed Window, Sirinugger Sacred Tank, Islamabad Painting VERSUS Poetry Love-lighted Eyes Vernagh Cashmerian Temple Sculpture Patrun Roadside Monument, Thibet Road to ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... his excellent sermons more extensively, and encreasing his reputation, by publishing a collection of them. He transmitted the manuscript to Mr. Strahan, the printer, who after keeping it for some time, wrote a letter to him, discouraging the publication[285]. Such at first was the unpropitious state of one of the most successful theological books that has ever appeared. Mr. Strahan, however, had sent one of the sermons to Dr. Johnson for his opinion; and after his unfavourable letter to Dr. Blair had been sent off, he ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... his work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile circumstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder and more ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the view of determining the comparative merits of the two instruments, whose patentees were competitors for the forthcoming medal prizes. At that time Mr. Hussey, the American inventor of the machine called after his name, had not arrived in the country. The weather, too, was very unpropitious for the trial, notwithstanding which a very large number of gentlemen were present. The machines were tried upon a field of wheat, and the result was such as to convince all present of the superiority, in every point of view, of McCormick's machine—a conviction which was subsequently confirmed ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... managed to find someone to assume the duty for him; but one day everyone seemed engaged on some pursuit or other, so with every anticipation of a dull evening he went down to hall. He began to read Shelley but the surroundings were unpropitious. All about him sat huddled fragments of humanity scratching half-baked ideas with crossed nibs into dog-eared notebooks. There was a general air of unrest. Gordon tried Sinister Street; some of the episodes in Lepard Street were ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... was unpropitious, heavy fogs lay on the water, dissipated occasionally by fierce outbursts of wind. The Saxon fleet kept the sea. It was well that for a time the Danish fleet did not appear in sight, for the Saxons, save the sailors, were unaccustomed to the water, and many suffered greatly from the rough ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... with these commands [143] and set out against Amalek, to conquer whom required not only skillful strategy, but also adeptness in the art of magic. For Amalek was a great magician and knew that propitious and the unpropitious hour of each individual, and in this way regulated his attacks against Israel; he attacked that one at night, whose death had been predicted for a night, and him whose death had been preordained for a day did he attack ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... He might have been a bedizened citizen's wife craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the rain. But the hour was not unpropitious for the indulgence of some discreditable whim. Earlier, he might have been detected; later, he might find himself cut out. Tempted by a glance which is encouraging without being inviting, to have followed a young and pretty woman for an hour, or perhaps ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... says Shelley, "can say, 'I will compose poetry.'" If he cannot say this of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly; whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air." But the ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett |
