"Fair-weather" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brazenly confess it—I 'm a fair-weather friend," he said, as he looked disconsolately forth from the window of his business-room, (a room, by the bye, whereof the chief article of furniture was a piano-a-queue). "Bring me sunshine and peaches, and I 'll be as sweet as bright Apollo's ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... determination to set straight the humble plight to which he had been made to bow against his will. [Sidenote: Hall's death] Hall, in the meantime, did not fear any danger, and thought that no one would dare to try to get even with him in his own country. So one fair-weather day it happened that Hall rowed out, and there were three of them together in the boat. The fish bit well through the day, and as they rowed home in the evening they were very merry. Thorolf kept spying about Hall's doings during the day, and is standing in the ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... Duke of Grafton. Walpole called him "a fair-weather pilot, that knew not what he had to do, when the first storm arose." Charles, second Duke of Grafton (1683-1757), was the grandfather of the third duke, so virulently attacked by Junius in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... As he had predicted, the price of wheat had advanced. May had been a fair-weather month with easy prices, the monthly Government report showing no loss in the condition of the crop. Wheat had gone up from sixty to sixty-six cents, and at a small profit Jadwin had sold some two hundred and fifty ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... any candidate for matrimony, there is one that we must look for seriously; if it is absent, turn away from an alliance that is almost certain to fail. That is pluck. Marriage, like life itself, puts upon persons demands that can be met only by courage. The fair-weather type of person is certain to be disappointing in the critical, character-revealing experiences that are bound to arise in marriage and in parenthood. It is difficult not to grow bitter if one finds himself or herself married to a mate who does ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... of her vanity, however, still waved distressing signals of the hurt, and she evaded it. But she felt strangely alone, notwithstanding; with an almost unconquerable self-pity she reflected on the fair-weather friends that had deserted her. A little sense of comfort trickled into her heart, though, when she thought of her boy. HE, at all events, had not been affected by the rumble of drums that had beaten her out ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... this to be the king's birthday, an event which was signalised aboard the Lightening by the death of the commander under singular circumstances. This officer, who was a real fair-weather Jack, hardly knowing the ship's keel from her ensign, had obtained his position through parliamentary interest, and used it with such tyranny and cruelty that he was universally execrated. So unpopular was he that when a plot was entered into by the whole crew to punish ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the terrors of the ocean. Our Italian neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; and the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more notion of peril than a fair-weather inland navigation would have done to those who had never seen the sea. Once, some months before, Trelawny had raised a warning voice as to the difference of our calm bay and the open sea beyond; ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... said Faith, with flashing eyes. "We went to Sunday School in spite of the rain—and no one came—not even Elder Abraham, for all his talk about fair-weather Christians." ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... been a bit of a storm since I got back. I came here to get out of it. I'm a fair-weather-lover, as ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... sentinels pace with dignity. What was it to the captain if, while he sternly inspected the muskets in the block-house, the lieutenant, with a detail of men, was hard at work strengthening its underpinning? None the less did he inspect. The sally-port, mended but imposing; the flag-staff with its fair-weather and storm flags; the frowning iron grating; the sidling white causeway, constantly falling down and as constantly repaired, which led up to the main entrance; the well-preserved old cannon,—all showed a strict ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... day came an end to all this junketing, and nothing remained to the young spend-thrift of all the wealth that his father had left him. Then the officers of the law came down upon him and seized all that was left of the fine things, and his fair-weather friends flew away from his troubles like flies from vinegar. Then the young man began to think of the Talisman of Wisdom. For it was with him as it is with so many of us: When folly has emptied the platter, wisdom is called ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... more, I fear, in the apprehension that their fair names may suffer if seen in connection with hers, than from any pure convictions, such as you suggest, of harm consequent on her fatal tenets. With these fair-weather friends I cannot bear to rank. And for her sin, is it not one of those which God and not ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... suspected complicity in his {99} murder. Of the second son, Charles, and his unhappy daughter Arabella, we cannot speak at length to-day. Arabella's coffin is next to that of Prince Henry, her cousin and fair-weather friend, but he made no effort to save her from the consequences of his royal father, James the First's wrath. The young Prince died three years before the distracted lady, who lost her reason and pined to death in the Tower. The body of their aunt, Mary Stuart, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... the worse. The fair-weather commander is no great matter; it is when things go wrong that the best officer shows himself in his true colors. Charles Cap will not be likely to quit the helm because the ship is in danger. Besides, Jasper Eau-douce, he says your ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... countries stood the late depression in trade? The shortfall of the revenue from the estimates in this country was last year less than two millions, in Germany it was eight millions, and in the United States over nineteen millions. Let the House see what fair-weather friends these protectionist duties are. In times of depression they shrink. In times of war they may fail utterly. When they are wanted, they dwindle, when they are wanted most urgently, they fade ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... shoulder. "There will be no loafing on your watch, I kin see. You're the clipper build I like. Them others ain't made to stand rough weather; but as I take it, you're a sort of Mother Carey chicken that's been nested in the storm. And I don't think you'll care to be boxed up below with them fair-weather chaps. Suppose, being second mate, you swing a hammock up on the deck ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... sounded like mockery. Sleep to me, always chary of her presence, was at best but a fair-weather friend, instantly deserting me when pain or exhaustion made me crave the more for rest and forgetfulness; but I had something to do in the interim—a little auto-da-fe to perform, by which, with that faith in ceremonial, so deep laid in human nature, I meant once for all to ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... because the first, love of her life, was her faithful ally and comforter. Indeed, her friendship grew warmer with Fanny's increasing misfortunes. As she said of herself a few years later, she was not a fair-weather friend. "I think," she wrote once in a letter to George Blood, "I love most people best when they are in adversity, for pity is one of my prevailing passions." She realized that she had made herself ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with a whole cigar, unlighted and intact, between his teeth. Orsino was well aware from this circumstance that something unusually fortunate had happened or was about to happen, and he rose from his books, as soon as he recognised the fair-weather signal. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Davenport slowly, a coldness coming upon his face. "I don't know what your experience may have been. We have only our own lights to go by; and mine have taught me to expect nothing from women. Fair-weather friends; creatures that must be amused, and are unscrupulous at whose cost or how great. One of their amusements is to be worshipped by a man; and to bring that about they will pretend love, with a pretence that ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... memory is more and more busy still, as I pace along its weary length solitary, alone—for, even my poor old dog had died during my absence; and what were those idle, fair-weather acquaintances, whom the world calls "friends," to me in my grief! I am better without their company: it makes ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and on mountains. Halo round the moon. Shadow of a church-steeple upon a mist. Dry mist, or want of transparency of the air, a sign of fair-weather 20 ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... straight over a level bit of high-lying country, with a few bridges over small streams. The distance, ninety-five miles, is comfortably covered in fourteen to eighteen hours in carriages drawn by three horses. The nature of the ground makes this road a good fair-weather one, and as the Russian company has rented it from the Persian concessionnaire, we may expect to hear of considerable improvements, so as to encourage an increase of the Persian waggon traffic which already exists on it. The completion of a system of quick communication ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... entirely passed, and the sun shone brightly. Great, white, billowy, fair-weather clouds rolled up in open order before the fresh west wind, and the shadows of them trailed across the face of the earth, moving swiftly, sharply defined, sweeping patches of shade against the green and gold of a clean-washed, ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... you mean that fair-weather spark that was here just now? Will he thrash my jacket? Let'n,—let'n. But an he comes near me, mayhap I may giv'n a salt eel for's supper, for all that. What does father mean to leave me alone as ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... fair-weather friends would desert her now. She had heard of Trouvelot, an exquisite who followed the fashions in everything, and Kora had succeeded in being the fashion for two seasons. She was just as pretty, no doubt—just ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... was immediately despatched to Mrs. Gauntlet, with an account of her daughter's marriage: a town-house was hired, and a handsome equipage set up, in which the new-married pair appeared at all public places, to the astonishment of our adventurer's fair-weather friends, and the admiration of all the world: for, in point of figure, such another couple was not to be found in the whole United Kingdom. Envy despaired, and detraction was struck dumb, when our hero's new accession of fortune was consigned ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... accounted her as one who would desert her immediately did misfortune come. The Sittmann sons, young men who owed their high position entirely to their aunt's power, not to their own merit or capability, were colourless, insipid youths. Sittmann himself, Schuetz and the rest, she knew to be fair-weather friends; evidently they descried the clouds gathering over their patroness's head, and they were quietly drawing back from her. Only Maria, the maid, remained faithful and admiring, and tended her adored mistress with unfailing patience and devotion. In the early ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Spindrift moved sedately across Eastern Bay, off the main Chesapeake Bay, toward the town of Claiborne. It was a lovely day with a blue sky dotted with occasional fair-weather clouds. The temperature was in the low eighties, the wind gentle, and the ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... openly oppose Germany in the deep and dangerous game of world politics. They wished to see if our understanding was a reality or a sham. Could they drive a wedge between us by showing that we were a fair-weather friend whom any stress would alienate? Twice they tried it, once in 1906 when they bullied France into a conference at Algeciras but found that Britain was firm at her side, and again in 1911 when in a time ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... have heard a little more than enough," said she. "I am assured, at least, that in you I have but a fair-weather ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... layers of friendships any more than the snake has successive layers of skins. One must adopt some system to guard against a congestion of the heart from plethora of loves. I go in for the much-abused fair-weather, skin-deep, April-shower friends,—the friends who will drop off, if let alone,—who must be kept awake to be kept at all,—who will talk and laugh with you as long as it suits your respective humors and you are prosperous and happy,—the blessed butterfly-race ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various |
