"Felicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms; and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... twelve books on the Trinity he compiled during his banishment in Phrygia, between the years 356 and 359, as is clear from his own express testimony, and that of St. Jerom. In the first book of this immortal monument of his admirable genius and piety, he beautifully shows that man's felicity is only to be found in God; and that the light of reason suffices to demonstrate this, which he illustrates by an account of his own conversion to the faith. After this he takes notice, that we can learn only by God's revelation, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... shapes of beauty made the prospect divine concealed from him the barren reality which lay hidden below them. From this dizzy point he was dashed at once as he unawares congratulated himself on his felicity. Fifteen months after their marriage I was born, and my mother died a few ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Smiles are as catching as tears; and periods men have termed happy, were periods when there existed some who knew of their happiness. Happiness rarely is absent; it is we that know not of its presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know not that we are happy; there is more joy in the smallest delight whereof we are conscious, than in the approach of the mightiest happiness that enters not into our soul. There are only too many who think ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the felicity of these anticipations, and contrasting this hour of ardent hope with others of whose dissatisfaction and gloom I was yet mindful, when a sudden shadow fell across the broad band of light issuing from the library window, and Sinclair ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... venerable successor of St. Peter has been outraged; the temples of the Lord have been profaned and destroyed; the Holy Gospel depreciated; in fine, the inestimable legacy which Jesus Christ gave in his last supper to secure our eternal felicity, the Sacred Host, has been trodden under foot. My soul shudders, and will not be able to return to tranquillity until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I offer to God holocausts of piety," etc. But for some specimens of Ferdinand's command of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... child enjoys the labour of building a house with toy bricks. Nor, one feels, could he be depressed. Even in his Crucifixions there is a certain underlying happiness, due to his knowledge that the Crucified was to rise again and ascend to Heaven and enjoy eternal felicity. Knowing this (as he did know it) how could he be wholly cast down? You see it again in the Flagellation of Christ, in the series of six scenes (No. 237). The scourging is almost a festival. But best of all I like the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... to reach Bristol, from whence he was to go to Swansea by water. At Bristol he found an embargo laid upon the shipping, so that he could not immediately obtain a passage, and being therefore obliged to stay there some time, he, with his usual felicity, ingratiated himself with many of the principal inhabitants, was invited to their houses, distinguished at their public feasts, and treated with a regard that gratified his vanity, and therefore ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... followed by neglect, and possession, by disgust. Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking. From the first hint that wakens the fancy, to the hour of actual execution, all is improvement and progress, triumph and felicity." 11. What is the fourth method of analysis? 12. How are the following sentences analyzed by this method? (1.) "Swift would say, 'The thing has not life enough in it to keep it sweet;' Johnson, 'The creature possesses not vitality sufficient to preserve it from putrefaction.'" ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... it." The old man smiled. "I have no desire for literary distinction," said he; "no ambition. My original wish was to pass my life in easy, quiet obscurity, with her whom I loved. I was disappointed in my wish; she was removed, who constituted my only felicity in this life; desolation came to my heart, and misery to my head. To escape from the latter I had recourse to Chinese. By degrees the misery left my head, but the desolation of the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... and gardening—tenacious of his seignorial rights, but indulgent to the last degree to his tenantry, by whom he was adored. Never was exemplified in a more remarkable manner the soothing influence of the recollections of a well-spent life on the felicity of its later years, or the fountains of happiness which may be opened in the breast itself from the calm serenity of conscious power and great achievement. He conversed much, with the farmers and peasants on his estate, whose houses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... abjuration. Mr. Disraeli, however, offered the chief opposition to the measure. He endeavoured to lead the house to postpone the consideration of the bill, but obviously for the object of gaining time to throw out the bill itself. Sir George Grey, in a speech of unusual felicity, exposed the dishonesty of Mr. Disraeli's pretences as to the necessity of delay in order to perfect measures which he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... awaits us below. Here, my countrymen, impelled by every motive that ought to influence an enlightened people, let us make a firm stand for our safety, our tranquillity, our dignity, our reputation. Let us at last break the fatal charm which has too long seduced us from the paths of felicity ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The King cast a wreath of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honoured presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the Gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his Kingdom the crops would probably ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... of my books in the Danish newspapers; and he had the double kindness to translate these into English and to leave out all but those that were likely to be agreeable to my vanity. Of these I remember but a single sentence, and that because it was expressed with felicity. The reviewer said of the fun in "The Hoosier School-Master:" "This is humor laughing to keep from ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... are inclined to question the felicity of M. Taine's method. It does not convey the impression of movement. The steps and changes in the conflict among the organs of the old society are not marked in their order and succession. The reader is not kept alive to the gradual progress of the break-up of old institutions and ideas. The sense ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... this, in spite of such expressions of the popular will as found vent in the President's meeting at Washington and Mr. Seward's meeting in New York,—in spite even of the resolutions of Keokuk and the address of the "James Page Library Company" of Philadelphia,—in spite, above all, of the perfect felicity in which, if we may believe the Secretary of State, the President's speech left the American people. The loyal men of the loyal States do not intend that the war they carried on for great ends shall pass into history as the bloodiest of all purposeless farces, beginning in an ecstasy of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... saddle over a horse's tail. There is another in the middle distance, all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar, at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and a Ducal Palace,—in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of modern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there is something, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite this ornamental design, there is an ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... himself a reputation which secures the strongest confidence in his ability to treat the momentous and difficult questions he undertook to discuss in these lectures; whilst the remarkable clearness of his views, his brilliant imagination, and an extraordinary affluence of language and felicity of expression, both enlighten the understanding and gratify the most cultivated taste. Professor Mitchell did more than any other man to popularize the science of Astronomy; and the use he has made of it in defence of Christianity seems a fitting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Professor), gave way to his angry spirit, and struck at the University itself, for its political jesuitism, being a place where men "were taught to distinguish between de facto and de jure," caustic was the retort. Lowth, by singular felicity of application, touched on Warburton's original designation, in a character he hit on in Clarendon. After remonstrating with spirit and dignity on this petulant attack, which was not merely personal, Lowth continues:—"Had ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... advantages gained by France through that treaty were mainly due. The whole period is remarkable for its antagonisms and cross-purposes, and these are brought to view by Hassall with much subtlety of insight and felicity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... have his talents been depreciated, his principles denounced; as publicly do I therefore, who have known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave recorded, that it is Southey's almost unexampled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and genius free from all their characteristic defects. To those who remember the state of our public schools and universities some twenty years past, it will appear no ordinary praise ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... desirous of great glory, and it was that more than ought else that brought him into his wars; he would have been right glad to be like to those ancient princes of whom there has been so much talk after their death; he was as bold a man as any that reigned in his day. . . . After the long felicity and great riches of this house of Burgundy, and after three great princes, good and wise, who had lasted six score years and more in good sense and virtue, God gave this people the Duke Charles, who kept ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening quietly as from a day's absence, and became ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself to one of the peculiar channels of man's nature. Sport was one of Slagg's weaknesses, though he had enjoyed very little of it, poor fellow, in the course of his life. To shoot a lion, a tiger, or an elephant, was, in Slagg's estimation, the highest possible summit of earthly felicity. He was young, you see, at that time, and moderately foolish! But although he had often dreamed of such bliss, he had never before expected to be within reach of it. His knowledge of sport, moreover, was entirely theoretic. He knew indeed how to ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... noblest specimen of the human race, the bepraised of songs and men, the good old English country gentleman. In fact, to be a good old country gentleman is to hold a position nearest the gods, and at the summit of earthly felicity. To have a large unencumbered rent-roll, and the rents regularly paid by adoring farmers, who bless their stars at having such a landlord as his honour; to have no tenant holding back with his money, excepting just one, perhaps, who does so in order ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the first of these, as he sat in the door of the tent one evening after supper, watching the rich glow of sunshine that flooded a wide stretch of beautiful country in front of him, "this would be perfect felicity if only we had freedom to move about at our own pleasure and hunt up the treasures in botany, entomology, etcetera, that are ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... feasted, and some had even returned "to fill up," as they said, some vacancies discovered. What appetites they had; and what unrestrained enjoyment! No foreboding fears of coming nightmare, or fits of indigestion, disturbed their felicity. Dyspepsia and its kindred ills, had, up to those times, never visited that healthy hunting people; and so, when such a feast of fat things as this was prepared, where they knew they were all welcome guests, ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the perfect felicity of this visit was, that the said Sandie did not appear. They could not wait for him; they went on the most charming of excursions, by sea and land, wishing for him; in which wish Dolly heartily shared. It had been ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... is the hour Alarcos should be here. Ah! happy hour, That custom only makes more strangely sweet! His brow has lost its cloud. The bar's removed To our felicity; time ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... aware of the fact that this fiddler only availed himself, in his vain exhibitions, of a part of the felis which was not necessary to its felicity after death, I determined to give a portion of my worldly goods toward the building of a light-house on the Norway coast, for which purpose, I heard it averred, this man's performances were given; and I went to the building where the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... class has ever been issued that contains so much valuable information, presented with such felicity and charm. The colored plates are true to nature. By their aid alone any bird illustrated may be readily identified. Sportsmen will especially relish the twenty-four color plates which show the more important birds in characteristic poses. They are probably the most valuable and artistic ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... dishonesty. For indeed and out of doubt he is in some respects the most richly-endowed of all our younger poets. Of wit and of imagination he has almost a plethora: they crowd this book, and all his books, from end to end. And his frequent felicity of phrase is hardly less remarkable. You may turn page after page, and with each page the truth of this will become more obvious. Let me add his quick eye for natural beauty, his penetrating instinct for the principles that lie beneath its phenomena, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the country, brought to a pass wherein no retrograde movement can take place, whatever may be the obstructions offered by the interested proprietors of borough influence, or by persons whose ideas of Government have been formed under the tuition of preceding Administrations. It is rare felicity for a nation to be governed by men having the liberality and justice which induce them to confer free institutions peacefully on the country; institutions which merit the gratitude of all who now exist, and will receive the unqualified applause of future ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... the abler. His public career closed early, but he had time to show he could be vigorous and finely eloquent. I remember him most vividly as I saw him presiding at a Commencement dinner, a function which he discharged with extraordinary felicity. He had an alertness, as he stood lithe and graceful, derived perhaps from his strain of Huguenot blood. His wit was excelling, his learning comprehensive and well in hand. He was no more weighed down ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... civility between the author's study and the good old curato across the lane. Cooper wrote of him: "The man has some excellent figs, and our cook, having discovered it, lays his trees under contribution." He continues: "One small, green-coated, fresh fig is the precise point of felicity. But the good curato, besides his figs, has a pair of uneasy bells in his church-tower that are exactly forty-three feet from my ears, which ring in pairs six or eight times daily. There are matins, noontide, vespers, to say nothing of christenings, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... malignant experiments with most hope of success. Her parents being high in rank and wealth, the marriage of their daughter was, of course, an object of anxious attention. There is no event on which our felicity and usefulness more materially depends, and with regard to which, therefore, the freedom of choice and the exercise of our own understanding ought to be less infringed; but this maxim is commonly disregarded ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... remembered that in the first of these murders, (that of the Marrs,) the same incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur, which the genius of Shakspeare has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspeare's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself to study ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the mad struggle for place and power he has no part; the roar of the strife reaches his ear like the distant murmur of the ocean. Happy, thrice happy man! I will approach him and bask in the sunshine of his humble felicity. Peasant, all hail!" ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... her husband more than ever; he was full of affection for her, and she was grateful for his love. The past had now no shadow, the future no cloud, and the birth of a daughter, drawing still closer the links which united them, seemed a new pledge of felicity. Alas! the horizon which appeared so bright and clear to the poor woman was doomed soon again ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... girl, My gold, my fortune, my felicity, Strength to my soul, death to mine enemy; Welcome the first beginner of my bliss! O Abigail, Abigail, that I had thee here too! Then my desires were fully satisfied: But I will practice thy enlargement thence: O girl! O gold! O beauty! O my ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... are one, the body should be reverenced and indulged. Pushti[624] or well-being is the special grace of God and the elect are called Pushti-jiva. They depend entirely on God's grace and are contrasted with Maryada-jivas, or those who submit to moral discipline. The highest felicity is not mukti or liberation but the eternal service of Krishna and eternal ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... gods, in which gods really dwell, and voices and oracles, and sensible visions of the gods, and such-like intercourse with them; the sun, too, and moon, and stars, are seen by them such as they really are, and their felicity in other respects is correspondent with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... a miserable end to her childish dream of felicity, for she was brave enough to admit to herself without the least hesitation what ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... individual happiness. They took it as a matter of course, and in the division of labor which the social conditions of the day involved, found too much to occupy them to worry over such unimportant abstractions as mere personal felicity. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... knew all about hens? The half was not told you, for I am wise about chickens too. I know their tribe from "egg to bird," as the country people say, when they wish to express the most radical, sweeping acquaintance with any subject,—a phrase, by the way, whose felicity is hardly to be comprehended till experience has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... with a harmless swagger, and the old with the generic limp which our Autocrat has already noted as attending advanced years in their race. They seem the natural human interest of a street so largely devoted to old clothes; and the thoughtful may see a felicity in their presence where the pawnbrokers' windows display the forfeited pledges of improvidence, and subtly remind us that we have yet to redeem a whole race, pawned in our needy and reckless national youth, and still held against us by the Uncle of Injustice, who is also ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... not see Such a look as here was shown Ere its womanhood had blown Past its first felicity? - That I did not know you young, ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... enjoyment of maturity. Then the acquired habit of "knowing how" must simplify the problem of execution and leave the artist free to think only of his purpose, as befits a real creator. Mr. Reinhart is at the enviable stage of knowing in perfection how; he has arrived at absolute facility and felicity. The machine goes of itself; it is no longer necessary to keep lifting the cover and pouring in the oil of fond encouragement: all the attention may go to the idea and the subject. It may, however, remain very interesting to others to know how the faculty was trained, the pipe was tuned. The early ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... with ease, deposited it with coolness, watched to see that no fraud was perpetrated, and then departed as noiselessly as they came. The deed was done. Woman's honor, woman's purity, woman's domestic felicity, woman's conjugal love, woman's fidelity to her home duties, all these and a thousand other of the finer qualities were destroyed. No more peace in families; no more quiet home evenings; no more refined domestic women; but wrangling and discords ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... As to the man who is exactly in the right mean, we call him the book-lover. His happiness consists not in reading, which is an active virtue, but in the contemplation of bindings, and illustrations, and title-pages. Thus his felicity partakes of the nature of the bliss we attribute to the gods, for that also is contemplative, and we call the book- lover 'happy,' and even 'blessed,' but within the limits of mortal happiness. But, just as in the matter of absence of fear there is a mean which we call courage, and a defect which ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... human magnetism. To love well is a quality in temperament, just as to preach well, or to conduct a siege well, or to tend the sick well, or, in fact, to do anything well, is a special distinction, a ruling motive in the great pursuit of absolute felicity—a pursuit which is the inalienable right of all human creatures, whether fixed mistakenly in this world, or wisely in the next. No calling can be obeyed without suffering, but as in the old legend each man's cross was found exquisitely ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what lengths ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... her old haunts and friends from such enthusiastic lips, delighted Albinia, and her felicity with her baby, with Mr. Kendal, with her brother and his little son, was one of the brightest things in all the world—the fresh young loving bloom of her matronhood was even sweeter and more beautiful ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... much happier might we all be! If we only would come down a peg or two in our notions, in accordance with our waning fortunes, happiness would be always within our reach. It is not what we have, or what we have not, which adds or subtracts from our felicity. It is the longing for more than we have, the envying of those who possess that more, and the wish to appear in the world of more consequence than we really are, which destroy our peace of mind, and eventually ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rejoice in the hero's victory over the Blatant Beast or Giant Despair. Conceding, however, that Donatello's act was murder, and not "justifiable homicide," we are still not sure that the author's conception of his nature and of the change caused in his nature by that act, are carried out with a felicity corresponding to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... babble of green fields and run after cowslips, at our age, unless one is in love,' said Georgina. 'If you were going to bring your Percy, perhaps we would not interfere with your sweet rural felicity, my dear.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conceptions of the old poet, together with the felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, and made it more celebrated than ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... life would with him be shortened, but rather an expectation of living to old age, judging from an expression in his Grace Abounding. when he enjoyed a good hope, and bright anticipation of heavenly felicity, 'I should often long and desire that the last days were come. O! thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that I might die quickly and be gone to rest.'[310] At that time he did not anticipate twelve years' imprisonment in a wretched jail, nor the consequent effects it must ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which Heywood was in his day and remains to the present day beyond all comparison the greatest and the most admirable master. It is not that the interest is either naturally greater, or greater by force and felicity of genius in the dramatist, than that of other and far inferior plays. It is not that the action is more artistically managed: it is not that curiosity or sympathy is aroused or sustained with any particular skill. Such a play as "Fatal Curiosity" is as truthfully lifelike and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... festival, an affecting, sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is performed as if according to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wonder men's eminence appears but in their own way. Virgil's felicity left him in prose, as Tully's forsook him in verse. Sallust's orations are read in the honour of story, yet the most eloquent. Plato's speech, which he made for Socrates, is neither worthy of the patron nor the person defended. Nay, in the same kind of oratory, and where the matter ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... and rules, Sancho, thy days will be long, thy fame eternal, thy reward abundant, thy felicity unutterable; thou wilt marry thy children as thou wouldst; they and thy grandchildren will bear titles; thou wilt live in peace and concord with all men; and, when life draws to a close, death will come to thee in calm and ripe old age, and the light and loving hands of thy great-grandchildren ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lain in this state of felicity it is impossible to say, for his slumbers were rudely interrupted by a slight lurch of the schooner, which caused the blocks and cordage attached to the sheet of the jib to sweep slowly, but with rasping asperity, across his face. Any ordinary ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... abstracted, incorruptible, his inward eye fixed on a wonderful revelation. He was as incapable of attacking as of serving the state; he despised or ignored everything for which the state exists, labour, wealth, power, felicity, splendour, and learning. With Christ the natural man in him had been crucified, and in Christ he had risen again a spiritual man, to walk the earth, as a messenger from heaven, for a few more years. His whole life was an experience of ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... we, then, felicity consists Not in exterior fortunes.... Sacred felicity doth ne'er extend Beyond itself.... The swelling of an outward fortune can Create a prosperous, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... felicity, not only to be born in a country of liberty, but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were banished from the world. Reason alone was cultivated, and mankind could only be ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Valentine! There is nothing now to prevent my building myself a little hut on my plantation, and residing not twenty yards from you. Only imagine what happiness that would afford me. I can scarcely contain myself at the bare idea. Such felicity seems above all price—as a thing impossible and unattainable. But would you believe that I purchase all this delight, joy, and happiness, for which I would cheerfully have surrendered ten years of my life, at the small cost of 500 francs per annum, paid quarterly? Henceforth we have ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... luster about them which cannot be counterfeited; they are like fire and flame that cannot be painted." But the sage who invented the Franklin stove had no disdain of small utilities; and in general the last word of his philosophy is well expressed in a passage of his Autobiography: "Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune, that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day; thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... productions in fiction, and it affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like the same adequacy and felicity."—Boston Beacon. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... probably been largely overlooked in previous years. It gives them substance of thought that will be of much service in the pursuit of other sciences. It has been found that it is not without rather notable service to young students as the basis of efforts in the art of literary presentation, a felicity to which teachers of this important art frequently give emphatic testimony. The secret seems to lie in the fact that physiography gives varied and vivid material susceptible of literary presentation, while the fixed qualities of the subject matter ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... ashamed of my fellows," says he: "for it appears their notion of felicity is to dwell eternally in a glorified brothel. I do not think that as a self-respecting young Prince I would care to inhabit any of these earthly paradises, for were there nothing else, I would always be looking for an invasion by ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Nature has presented us with pleasures suitable to our species, and we need only to follow her impulse, refined by taste, and exalted by a lively and agreeable imagination, in order to attain the most perfect felicity of which human nature is susceptible. Ambition, avarice, vanity, when enjoyed in the most exquisite perfection, can yield but trifling and tasteless pleasures, which will be too inconsiderable to affect a mind of ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... of Rose had some share in exciting Sir Hyacinth's sudden taste for rural felicity. It is certain he at first expressed more disappointment at hearing she would not go to the ball, than at being told her father and brothers could not vote for him. Farmer Gray, who was as independent in his principles as in his circumstances, honestly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... high a perfection, as our degenerate souls made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of. This, according to the inclination of the man, bred many formed impressions; for some that thought this felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be so high and heavenly as acquaintance with the stars, gave themselves to astronomy; others, persuading themselves to be demigods if they knew the causes of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers; some an ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... told that such people curse us, which we think is the effect of envy, the companion of felicity. The fox is cursed when ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... understanding. The universe is the creation of God. What is the design of the creation? I answer: the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition of their life and development; spiritual beings are made for felicity. The moving spring of infinite power is goodness: this is my thesis. If I succeed in establishing it, it will follow that we shall in imagination see issuing from the supreme unity of the Infinite Being three rays: the power which creates the being of things; the intelligence which orders ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... playing at all; for the sense of vacancy and craving which always, in such natures, succeeds the cessation of unhealthy excitement, is misery enough in itself. But to have left off with as much money in his pocket as he began with, would have been felicity, compared with the bitter consciousness of folly, the stinging vexation and regret, which ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... say is that the minds of these inspired invalids have not seemed to sustain so close a relation to their bodies as my mind does to my body. Their powers seem to have been more purely psychic. Look at Stevenson—almost bedridden all his life, yet behold the felicity of his work! How completely his mind must have been emancipated from the infirmities of his body! It is clearly not thus with me. My mind is like a flame that depends entirely upon the good combustion going on in the body. Hence, I can never write in the afternoon, because ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... me, I mar'l what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco! It's good for nothing but to choke a man and fill him full of smoke and embers. There were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight; one of them, they say, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... exaggerate the discontent; they persuade the discontented that the government is the sole cause of all the trouble, especially of the prevailing dearth, and assure men that the new system proposed by them will engender an age of felicity. These ideas germinate, propagating themselves by suggestion and contagion, and the moment arrives when ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... her, and the romantic and enthusiastic girl, seating herself upon a fragment of rock beside the path, sang the delicate and sweet verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of execution, which amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... his sleeping beneath the same roof with Georgy Lenox—of his enjoying that mystical, beautiful experience of coming down every morning to find her at table with her hair freshly curled, to enjoy the felicity of passing her eggs and toast, to carve a slice for her from the joint which the welcome addition of the young man's payment for board allowed Mrs. Lenox to provide for her dinner. Then, too, we felt with a pang that he would receive with his unequalled grace all sorts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... poetry as distinguished from rhetoric when working on ornate poetry. It is a serious impeachment of latter-day criticism that in very many cases, perhaps in most cases, the plaudits given to the last new “leading poet” of the hour are awarded to “felicitous lines,” every felicity of which is ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... comparison. But, betake yourself to mealy vegetables and fruits a few years, and live temperately on them, and then you will perceive the difference, especially in riding in a stage-coach. This, I confess, is rather a draw-back upon the felicity of vegetable-eaters; but it is some consolation to know what a mass of corruption we ourselves ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... thoughtful working-out. On the whole, however, he seems to be somewhat lacking in variety. The master showed in it his dexterity as a pianist to perfection, and conquered the greatest difficulties with felicity. A longer stay in Vienna might be to the advantage of his touch as well as of his ensemble playing with the orchestra. He received much applause, and was repeatedly called back....At the close Mr. Chopin played to-day the Variations on a theme of Mozart's, which he had already ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... officer, not too ready to give up his opinion to others, and not apt to be flattered by other people giving up theirs to him. He had been a great sufferer by the French; but his most singular qualities, and which chiefly recommended him to the command of this expedition, were a peculiar felicity in maintaining authority over his seamen, and a wonderful readiness in devising expedients ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... See Clarendon's description of England during this period, 'enjoying the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age for so long time ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... aisle on the arm of her sire, A delicate lady in bridal attire, Fair emblem of virgin simplicity: Half London was there, and, my word, there were few, Who stood by the altar, or hid in a pew, But envied Lord Nigel's felicity. ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... her "Recollections, Grave and Gay," "the portly sexton who transmitted invitations for the elect, protested to one of his patronesses that he really could not undertake to 'run society' beyond Fiftieth Street. To be married or buried within Grace Church's walls was considered the height of felicity. It was Brown who passed on worthiness in life or death. He arranged the parties, engineered the bridals, conducted the funerals. The Lenten season is a horribly dull season, but we manage to make our funerals as entertaining as possible"—Brown said, according to the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... felicity of all those who gained imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that the equally numerous class who were presented with real blanks have not less reason to consider themselves happy. Most of us have cause to be thankful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the ground that the work of women should not receive the same wages as that of men. Rev. Dr. McNamara and others spoke briefly and earnestly. Miss Lydia Bell, at the closing evening session, gave an address which, to use the words of the reporter, "for felicity of composition, strength of argument, and beauty of delivery, fully merited the special resolution of thanks ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... however, Ashe heard as at Mrs. Gore's the exchange of greetings and bits of news, the making of appointments for shopping or theatre-going, and all the trivial chat of daily life. He stood aside until the crowd should thin, and in the mean time had the felicity of being near Mrs. Fenton. He began to feel himself almost overcome by the delight of being so near her, of meeting her clear glance, frank and sympathetic, of hearing her voice, of noting the ripples of her hair, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... self-consciously making literature. He was tolerant of colloquial concessions that never lapsed into vulgarity; even his slips and slovenlinesses are those of the well-bred. To pass from him back to Richardson is to realize how stiffly correct is the latter. Thackeray has flexibility, music, vernacular felicity and a deceptive ease. He had, too, the flashing strokes, the inspirational sallies which characterize the style of writers like Lamb, Stevenson and Meredith. Fitness, balance, breeding and harmony are ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... ranks him first for facility. He did not direct his genius by a sound judgment, and has the unenviable fame of having been the first to depart from the canons of correct Greek taste.] the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and high spirit of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... irrespective altogether of character. Some people seem to think that God loves us so much, as they would say—so little, so ignobly, as I would say—as that He only desires us to be happy. They seem to think that the divine love is tarnished unless it provides for men's felicity, whether they are God-loving and God-like or no. Thus the solemn and majestic love of the Father in heaven is to be brought down to a weak good nature, which only desires that the child shall cease crying and be happy, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... meadows for arrow-heads with Thoreau, watch Powers thump the brown clay of the "Greek Slave," or listen to the voice of Charlotte Cushman, which could sway assembled thousands, modulate itself to tell stories to the urchin who leaned, rapt, against her knees. Were human felicity so omnipresent as a happy child imagines it, what a ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... his Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique organ by which God wills to communicate to man his own life, the supernatural life, the divine life—that is to say, his holiness, his power, his love, his felicity. To this end the Son works outwardly, the Holy ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... IV: 1. The goddess of youth is made an attendant at the banquets of the gods, to show that they enjoyed a perpetual youth, and endless felicity. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco; it's good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers: there were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight, one of them (they say) will ne'er escape ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... wives, and daughters have often, in the lonely hours of midnight, sat up with a scanty light and a dying fire awaiting the late return of a son, a husband, or a brother; with many a sigh they would trace the ruin of their domestic felicity and the wreck of their family to some lodge ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Prince, axiomatically, "contains in itself two principles—the one of progress and immortality, the other of disease and disorganization." No doubt; and as the one tends towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the manner in which ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that he was good, from seeing how lightly he walked over the herbs and the grass. Around them was a radiance of virtues and graces from the first hour of their meeting. Each interview had its special charm. It seemed to them as if their felicity in seeing each other ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... and champagne, the bride and bridegroom, followed by the land-steward and a chosen few, went to receive and return the same sort of speeches among the lesser people in the tent. Here the allusions to marital felicity were even more glaring, and Zara saw that each time Tristram heard them, an instantaneous gleam of bitter sarcasm would steal into his eyes. So, worn out at last with the heat in the tent and the emotions of the day, at about five, the bridegroom was allowed to conduct his bride ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... or if small, as viewed through a glass, would affect the retina exactly as the realities. But the desideratum still remained of being able to paint motion. Now this too has been recently accomplished, and in many cases with singular felicity, by making the picture transparent, and throwing lights and shadows upon it from behind. In the exhibitions of the diorama and cosmorama there have been represented with admirable truth and beauty such phenomena as—the sun-beams occasionally interrupted by passing clouds, and occasionally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... presented to the public by the fertile muse of our author. The general conception of the piece, as well as many of the individual scenes, are taken from Plautus, but adapted to French society with a degree of felicity belonging to Moliere alone. Omitting "Les Amants Magnifiques," called by Moliere a minor comedy, but which may be rather considered as a piece of framework for the introduction of scenic pageantry, and which is only distinguished ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... and order; there is Captain Donnithorne at the Hall, who does a poor girl a mortal wrong, but who is, after all, such a nice, good-looking fellow; there are Adam and Seth Bede, the carpenter's sons, the strongest, purest, most discreet of young rustics. The same broad felicity prevails in "The Mill on the Floss." Mr. Tulliver, indeed, fails in business; but his failure only serves as an offset to the general integrity and prosperity. His son is obstinate and wilful; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... associates of Pusey was John Keble (1792-1866), the poet, author of The Christian Year. The most eminent writer in this group of theologians was John Henry Newman (1801-1890), who won general admiration by the subtlety of his genius and its rare felicity of expression. He entered the Church of Rome, and was advanced to the rank of a cardinal. One of the principal literary undertakings of the recent period is the Revision of the Authorized Version of the Bible, by associated companies of English and American scholars. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... midst of felicity almost more than mortal, the thought has come that this letter is my first step towards leaving the paternal roof under which I have been so happy all my life, thanks to you. I should indeed be unworthy of all your goodness if this ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... married couple has a right to lay out its plan of happiness in its own way. If we had made taboo of irrelevant gossip between the acts of a serious play our evening would have been a failure. Theirs would have been, and, in fact, was a success. Connubial felicity they certainly achieved: and what else but an impertinence is a criticism of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... style which, based upon a loving study of the Elizabethan and seventeenth-century writers, was yet for the most part distinguished by concision and ease. He took from his models their richness of language without their prolixity, their felicity of expression without their tendency to the elaboration of conceits; he unconsciously employed their varied styles, to form an ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... men. The father, too, illustrated some of the best traits of human nature, being one of the men who make the strength of a country without asking much from the country in return. He used to say to his sons that the height of human felicity was "to be able to converse with the wise, to instruct the ignorant, to pity and despise the intriguing villain, and to assist the unfortunate." His son Myron enjoyed this felicity all ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... would have flung himself into his murderous task with twice the zest he had carried to it. And now he learnt that not only had she thwarted his schemes against Monmouth, but had deprived him of the ardently sought felicity of widowing her. He drew back his arm for the thrust; Diana huddled into her chair too horror-stricken to speak or move: Richard—immediately behind his sister—saw nothing of what was passing, and thought of nothing but ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the description; but, indeed, Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of the body. 'And your mother, too,' said I; 'she seems to feel this weather much. Do you not fear ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passage to the North, disappeared with the little they had saved. They were quite destitute now, but looked to the future with no foreboding, and huddled together in the straw, made a picture of domestic felicity that impressed me greatly with the docility, contentment, and unfailing good humor of their dusky tribe. The eyes of the children were large and lustrous, and they revealed the clear pearls beneath their lips as they clung bashfully ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... hunting after wealth and glory, and who perish themselves at the moment they reach the pinnacle of their ambitious desires. Whence I conclude, my dear children, that there are nothing but beginnings and endings of unhappiness in this world, and that true felicity is only to be hoped ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... miserable death. Never was there sounded a truer note of poetry than that which thrills in Othello's, "If it were now to die," or sobs in Juliet's "Too early seen unknown, and known too late." It was the exquisite felicity of Adelaide Neilson's acting of Juliet that she glided into harmony with that tragical undertone, and, with seemingly a perfect unconsciousness of it—whether prattling to the old nurse, or moving, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... of the novelist? Here was the veritable hero who did exist. "You see," says Boon, "how little human nature requires. It is in our own hearts, rather than in the things around us, that we are to seek felicity. A man may be happy in any state. It only asks a perfect resignation to the will of Providence." Commonplace moralities enough, in the mouth of a commonplace person. Illustrated by the life of Boon, how they tell upon us! They are the words of the steadfast, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Sakra and offered as sacrificial portions unto the gods. It is here that the thousand-rayed sun, arising, consumeth, out of ire, all those that are wicked and ungrateful among men and the Asuras. This is the gate of the three worlds. This is the path of heaven and felicity. This quarter is called Purva (east). We will go hither, if it pleaseth thee. I shall always do what is agreeable to him who is my friend. Tell me, O Galava, if any other quarter pleaseth thee, for we will then go there. Listen now to what I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and publick felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... replied, 'It is because of the loving-kindness of this our dynasty.' I ask what and whence is this loving-kindness of which he speaks? He answers me, 'It is the beneficent rule of their Majesties the Empresses- Dowager; it is the unspeakable felicity vouchsafed by Heaven to the Emperor; it is the loyalty and virtue of those in high places, of Tseng Kuo-fan, of Li Hung-chang, of Tso Tsung-t'ang.' These, however, are all provincial officials. Within the palace we have the Empresses-Dowager, and His Majesty the Emperor, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Virtues grant, that your Pleasures may meet with no Interruption; your Charms know no Decay; and may your Felicity be everlasting! ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... him with their beauty, and the sour Sharp voice of Care, that sounds far off and shrill, Moves him to gentle mirth that men can be So strangely foolish as to heed her call, Regardless of their true felicity.... Avoid the place, ye bores. Aroint ye all! Afflict not one to this dear haven fled, My private earthly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... this day, Didst make thy triumph over death and sin, And having harrowed hell, didst bring away Captivity thence captive, us to win: This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin; And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die, Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin, May live for ever in felicity! And that thy love we weighing worthily, May likewise love thee for the same again; And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy, With love may one another entertain. So let us love, dear love, like as we ought: Love is the lesson which the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot on the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton into her ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false Bohemia gradually ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... me honor, madam. It is the superlative felicity of my sublunary existence to congratulate you on this auspicious occasion," replied Mr. Sneed, as he gently pressed the gloved ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... their condition; for nothing is more pathetically true than that we "never know when we are well off." The boys in a public school are less aware of their happy state than are the girls; and of all the boys in his room, probably Penrod himself had the least appreciation of his felicity. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... there, a small Brandenburg the Second; for these procedures he is called Otto THE PIOUS in History. His Wife, withal, was a sister of Ottocar's; [Michaelis, i. 270; Hubner, t. 174.]—which, except in the way of domestic felicity, did not in the end amount to much for him; this Ottocar having flown too high, and melted his wings at the sun, in a sad way, as we shall ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... man Conservative by nature, a believer in authority in the nation and the family, and endowed with some faculties for making his conceptions prevail. He was an able man, capable in his language of a certain bitter felicity of phrase. He was rigidly upright and responsible, and he had a capacity for profound affection. But selfishness of the most perilous sort, an unconscious selfishness, was eating away his moral foundations, as it ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... fully appear, what were the precise expectations from an intercourse with this great personage, but it seems to have been thoroughly rooted in the minds of the Portuguese, that they would be raised to a matchless height of glory and felicity, if they could by any means arrive at his court. The principal instruction given to all officers employed in the African service, was, that in every quarter, and by every means, they should endeavour to effect this ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... experiment which hath partially failed elsewhere, and imparted sufficient measure of His spirit to chosen instruments to work out the problem of human happiness, and to conduct mankind to heights of felicity, beginning here and never ending?—the bare contemplation whereof causes my flesh to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... literary attainments were of a nature peculiar to himself; and, in point of classical erudition he was, perhaps, without an equal in the world. He had the very peculiar felicity of preserving his eminent superiority of talents to the end of a very long life; the whole of which was not only devoted to literature, but his studies were uniformly directed to the investigation of truth. The love ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... not have had the felicity of meeting you, Mademoiselle Roy, had I gone to Belmont," replied the Chevalier, not liking the question at all. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... family were wading the mouth of the creek. Freckles idly wondered whether the nerve-racking rasps they occasionally emitted indicated domestic felicity or a raging quarrel. He could not decide. A sheitpoke, with flaring crest, went stalking across a bare space close to the creek's mouth. A stately brown bittern waded into the clear-flowing water, lifting his feet high at every step, and setting them down carefully, as if he dreaded wetting ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... intercourse, to a daughter whom Providence has endowed with all the qualities that constitute domestic happiness. Though called far away from me, she will continue to be worthy of my most enduring affections only by contributing to the felicity of the husband whose throne she is to share, and to the happiness of his subjects. You will kindly receive the assurance of my sincere friendship, as well as of the high consideration with which I am, my brother, Your Imperial and Royal Majesty's ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Dreams. And consequently men had need to be very circumspect, and wary, in obeying the voice of man, that pretending himself to be a Prophet, requires us to obey God in that way, which he in Gods name telleth us to be the way to happinesse. For he that pretends to teach men the way of so great felicity, pretends to govern them; that is to say, to rule, and reign over them; which is a thing, that all men naturally desire, and is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and Imposture; and consequently, ought to be examined, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... in body and depressed in spirit. Why was I so sorry to leave Huxter's Cross? What subtle instinct of the brain or heart made me aware that the desert region amongst the hills held earth's highest felicity ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... their sheep, &c., to look after." This reflection is accompanied with a sigh when they reflect on their own hard lot. Now the fact of the matter is, these travellers know nothing about it. They may print as much as they like about the pastoral felicity of the simplicity of Mongol life; it is all humbug. Last night, two Mongols whom I know well, a petty chief named "Myriad Joy" and his scribe named "Mahabul" (I can't translate this last), came into my room, and we had a tea-spree there ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... what we wish we could have said ourselves, and can fancy ourselves saying under more favourable circumstances; and we like the man who says it for us. Certainly no man, not even Swift, ever put the plain man's view with {13} such exactness, felicity, and force as Johnson does a thousand times in the pages of Boswell. And not only in the pages of Boswell. One of the objects of this introductory chapter is to try to give a preliminary answer to the very natural question ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... justice, which are the safeguards of honor and the tokens of mutual respect between man and man. This last there must be if men are to go forward together, prosper in one another's company, find strength in the bonds of mutual service, and experience a common felicity in the relationship between the leader and ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... if I knew a certain beautiful young lady, and recounted his flirtations with her. Dukes, earls, and viscounts flowed from his nimble tongue—"When I was hunting with Lord this," or "When I was waltzing with Lady that." His regrets were after the Opera and Almack's, and his height of felicity seemed to be driving a four-in-hand drag. After expatiating to me in the most vociferous manner on the delights of titled society, he turned to Mrs. Forrest and said, "After the society in which we used to move, you may imagine how distasteful all this is to us"—barely ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... some men have felicity in replying to a question, others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question. In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the other, an answer which smites ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... good Horatio, what a wounded name. Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... where animated flowers smile at bewitched knights. There was a sumptuous serenity in it all, a thin, vibrating excitement, the perfect security, as of an invincible ignorance, that evoked within him a transcendent belief in felicity as the lot of all mankind, a recklessly picturesque desire to get promptly something for himself only, out of that splendour unmarred by any shadow of a thought. The girl walked by his side across an open space; no one was near, and suddenly ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... did not whisper; he spoke loudly, with animation, with a clear felicity of tone—as a bird sings. He saw life around him with extreme clearness, and he felt it as it is—thinner than air and more elusive than a flash of lightning. He hastened to offer it his compassion, his indignation, his wonder, his sympathy, without giving a moment of thought to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Tridentine decrees, ib.; keen insight into the political conditions of his time, 113; independent spirit, 115; treatment of his relatives, ib.; his brother's death helped him to the Papacy, ib.; the felicity of his life, 116; the religious condition of Northern Europe in his reign, 117; re-opening of the Council of Trent, 119; his management of the difficulties connected with the Council, 127 sqq.; use of cajoleries and menaces, 129; success of the Pope's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... sat at the table, even, it was agreed that Rupert and I should join the ship, as green hands, the very next morning, signing the articles as soon as we went on shore. This was done accordingly, and I had the felicity of writing Miles Wallingford to the roll d'equipage, to the tune of eighteen dollars per month—seamen then actually receiving thirty and thirty-five dollars per month—wages. Rupert was taken also, though Captain Robbins cut him down to thirteen dollars, saying, in a jesting way, that a ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the felicity of embracing his long-lost grandchild before he died. The child accepted him as her grandpapa, but begged that she might have as her dear papa besides, good old Zudar, who had ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... four-poster with its deeps of transparent white embroideries over white, all spoke of the beautiful woman who had spent so many hours here. On the dressing table, with its splendid length doubled in the mirror, was the great fan that her hand had idly wielded, only a few days ago, in an hour of domestic felicity and happiness. And the inanimate plumes, that Harriet picked up and idly unfurled, had played their little part in the drama that had ended that bright ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... to an American republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and to conquer, but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever increasing tyranny which devastates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace and the persecuted repose. She entreats us to cultivate a propitious soil where that generous ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... practicable by any human means, to liberate them, without producing the most dreadful and ruinous consequences? We ought to possess them in the manner we have inherited them from our ancestors, as their manumission is incompatible with the felicity of the country. But we ought to soften, as much as possible, the rigor of their unhappy fate. I know that in a variety of particular instances, the legislature, listening to complaints, have admitted their emancipation. Let me not dwell on this ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... others, they were thoughtful equally from regret and joy. Deerslayer and Judith felt most of the former sensation, though from very different causes, while Hetty for the moment was perfectly happy. The Delaware had also lively pictures of felicity in the prospect of so soon regaining his betrothed. Under such circumstances, and in this mood, all were taking ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... great treasure which she had left there, her hair-string: beseeching him for all their lives not to break or injure it in any way, but to most carefully untie every knot, for thus doing it would bring untold felicity on them all; and that they, the Weasels, would meantime build a beautiful bridal bower, or a wigwam, and that so furnished as he had never seen the like before,—in which verily ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... regiment was stationed and where he formed a strong attachment for the young daughter of Madame du Colombier, with whom, history records, he ate cherries before breakfast. This was his sole dissipation at that time, but his felicity was soon to be interrupted. His regiment was ordered to Lyons, and Bonaparte ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... because the regions where I have found my felicity are accessible to all, and that many, better trained and better gifted, will explore them to far better purpose than I, and to the greater glory and benefit of mankind, when once I have given them the clew. Before I can do this, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al |
