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More "Forte" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... world wisdom, savoir faire[Fr]; tact; mother wit &c. (sagacity) 498; discretion &c. *(caution) 864; finesse; craftiness &c. (cunning) 702; management &c. (conduct) 692; self-help. cleverness, talent, ability, ingenuity, capacity, parts, talents, faculty, endowment, forte, turn, gift, genius; intelligence &c. 498; sharpness, readiness &c. (activity) 682; invention &c. 515; aptness, aptitude; turn for, capacity for, genius for; felicity, capability, curiosa felicitas[Lat], qualification, habilitation. proficient ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... replied Eleanor emphatically. "You ought to know from past experiences that disagreeable scenes are my forte." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... probably due to Italy, although the first pianos are said to have been made in Germany, probably in the city of Freyburg. The piano was first called the hammer-harpsichord, afterward by the Italian name forte-piano, as it could give both loud and soft tones, while the harpsichord produced only loud ones. The name was changed later to piano-forte. Pianos are first mentioned as being in use about the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... formidine sacram, omnes ejusdem sanguinis populi legationibus coeunt, caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda primordia. Est et alia luco reverentia. Nemo nisi vinculo ligatus ingreditur, ut minor et potestatem numinis prae se ferens, Si forte prolapsus est, attolli et insurgere haud licitum: per humum evolvuntur: eoque omnis superstitio respicit, tanquam inde initia gentis, ibi regnator omnium deus, cetera subjecta atque parentia. Adjicit auctoritatem fortuna Semnonum: centum pagis habitantur; magnoque corpore efficitur, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... affair. There was no make-belief, that's a sure thing. Whatever the British Officer may be his forte has never lain in his acting. So, by 2.30, I made my last salute to the last of the old lot and boarded the Triad. A baddish wrench parting from de Robeck and Keyes with whom I have been close friends for so ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... me," said Jerry, now arousing himself and sauntering to the fire; "I hardly ever feel well,"—complaining was Jerry's especial forte, an excuse for all his laziness; yet his appetite never failed; and when, as was sometimes the case, one of the neighbours sent a small piece of meat, or any little article of food to his wife, under ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... of Freedom in the Northern States, excited great alarm at the South, lest the "peculiar institution" should itself be brought into peril. Fear of a "general insurrection of the slaves" was talked about and perhaps felt. The mails were opened in search of "incendiary publications;" a piano-forte sent from Boston to Virginia, was returned because the purchaser found an old copy of the "Emancipator" in the case which contained it. Public meetings for the promotion of American Slavery were held. There was one ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... from the book-shelves and see, Henry," replied Captain Hardy. "Look through the list of towns, rivers, lakes, etc. And you, Willie, study the map a while. That seems to be your forte. You may find something to suggest ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... Sous-Prefet de Pontoise.—J'ai ordonne qu'on vous fasse prisonnier, parceque, ayant envoye une requisition a Pontoise pour des vivres, vous avez repondu que vous ne les donneriez pas, sans qu'on envoie une force militaire assez forte ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... only wish I could. But it's not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... belles-lettric literature is not much superior to newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate sex excesses: it renders homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and superstitions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order of society, all its shortcomings notwithstanding, which are conceded in trifles, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... and Latin all forgot, Non idoneus is Willis, minus et sufficiens, He may have a sanum corpus, but he lacks a sana mens.'" "Nay," says Willis, "such an answer is but trifling with the court, I have preached a Latin sermon, and the classics are my forte, You must name the books I failed in, you must give me every chance Of a fresh examination at the hands of Lord Penzance." Lord Penzance supported Willis: "Bishop, you must file," said he, "Some more tangible objection, some less vague and general plea. ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... brilliant at agriculture. Neither was it the Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it was the Southern Cross. Take the cross as a symbol inclusive of more than Christian symbolism. Take it as a symbol signifying peine forte et dure. Is it not peculiarly characteristic of Africa to deal with us as she is doing? Does she not truly follow her star in banishing you, and shifting you, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... and to the Minister who is not at its head: all the resources of Russian influence and of Russian corruption are lavished to render his people rebellious and his administration unsuccessful. From this peine forte et dure we believe that Europe will now be relieved; and if the people or the sovereigns of the Continent, particularly those of Germany and Italy, make a tolerable use of the freedom from foreign dictation which the weakness of Russia will give to them, we look forward to an indefinite course ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... forte, and his nervousness made him sputter. His speech was vibrant, trenchant, like hammerstrokes, and he said things to which there was no answer. He had a horror of discussion: ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... "Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis; Accurrit quidam notus mihi ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... at the unexpected strength of Fareham's fence, attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method. Joining his opponent's blade near the point, from a wide circular parry, he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire length of Fareham's blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp; and then, in the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch, he lunged at his enemy's breast, aiming at the vital region of the heart; a thrust that must have proved fatal had not Fareham sprung ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the lamps, he would rub his eyes for a moment, and then consciousness and extraordinary humour returned to him together, and his acting suffered in no way from the excesses which had overwhelmed him. Eccentricity was his forte, and it was usually found necessary to have characters expressly written for him; but there can be no doubt that he was very highly esteemed by the playgoers of his time, who viewed his loss to ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,—"You see, that ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... perhaps, may try.' 'What I? dear Sir,' the Doctor interposes 15 'What plant my thistle, Sir, among his roses! No, no; I've other contests to maintain; To-night I head our troops at Warwick Lane: Go, ask your manager.' 'Who, me? Your pardon; Those things are not our forte at Covent Garden.' 20 Our Author's friends, thus plac'd at happy distance, Give him good words indeed, but no assistance. As some unhappy wight, at some new play, At the Pit door stands elbowing a way, While oft, with many a smile, and many a shrug, 25 He ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... positively frightened. "But now that we know it, we shall take it with expression. As much expression as you can put into it. Think of the words, girls. Use your imaginations. 'Fast! Ah, too Fast,'" cried Miss Meadows. "That ought to break out—a loud, strong forte—a lament. And then in the second line, 'Winter Drear,' make that 'Drear' sound as if a cold wind were blowing through it. 'Dre-ear!'" said she so awfully that Mary Beazley, on the music stool, wriggled her spine. "The third line should be one crescendo. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... meus est mos, Flumineas propter salices et murmura Cami, Multa movens mecum, fumo inspirante, iacebam. Illic forte mihi senis occurrebat imago Squalida, torva tuens, longos incompta capillos; Ipse manu cymbam prensans se littore in udo Deposuit; Camique humeros agnoscere latos Immanesque artus atque ora hirsuta ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... more interesting than loud talkers. I resolved to try my utmost to be quiet and interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are not, or ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... cifris, cu{m} remeabis Occ{ur}rant si forte cifre; dum demps{er}is vnum Postea p{ro}cedas reliquas ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... been a little sharper, she would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the prim sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and melody were well marked, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... tu cui feo la sorte Dono infelice di bellezza, ond'hai Funesta dote d'infiniti guai Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte: Deh fossi tu men bella, o almen piu forte, Onde assai piu ti paventasse, o assai T'amasse men, chi del tuo bello ai rai Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte, Che or giu dall' Alpi non vedrei torrenti Scender d'armati, ne di sangue tinta Bever l'onda del Po gallici armenti; Ne te vedrei, del non tuo ferro cinta, Pugnar col braccio ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... have known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat,—and, dearest of all, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... under the influence of petty irritation ever wrote anything like the passage where that expression occurs. Criticism is not your forte, Collins. The writer I'm speaking of sees a landscape photographed in those two words. Pardon me for saying that your talent seems to run more in the line of low-comedy acting. I don't like referring to it again, but d—n it all, my interest in you personally makes me feel very strongly over your ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... sheepskin. And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a tender mother can address to an amiable truant, "Jasper, you have great abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that. I have been fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which you will be liberally remunerated. A friend of mine wishes to submit these books to a regular accountant: he suspects that a clerk has ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... welfare of his family: thanks which chiefly referred to the royal marriage act. The supplies voted for this year were L7,860,250; and the national debt amounted to L127,500,000. In the course of the session, it may be remarked, that the ancient and barbarous custom of peine forte et dure, by which felons refusing to plead, were stretched on their backs and pressed to death by heavy weights, was abolished by an act, which declared that all who acted thus contumaciously were to be adjudged guilty of the crimes laid to their charge. At the close of the session ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... terris, 55 qui pastum famulo daret probato, raptim desilit obsequente mundo. Cernit forte procul dapes inemptas, quas messoribus Abbacuc propheta agresti ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... or easy thing; the political and ecclesiastical offenders enjoyed it still less, while the small criminal class found their punishment quite sufficiently severe. To this man the life must be a slow peine forte et dure, breaking his body with toil, crushing his soul with a hopeless degradation. The thought of escape must be ever present with him. But escape in the conventional manner, through pathless forests ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it. . . . He has two requisites of a debater, a melodious voice and clear, sharply defined enunciation. His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the point. With the most offhand assured airs in the world, and a certain appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, he proceeds to set up ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... covering inventions of great ingenuity and value, which are now being perfected and will shortly be brought into operation. The apparatus consists of an instrument, operated by keys similar to those of a piano-forte, for punching characters, composed of dots and lines, upon a narrow strip of paper. The paper, when thus prepared, is passed rapidly through an instrument attached to a telegraph-wire, at the other end of which is a similar instrument which runs in unison. The first instrument is provided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... so round and shapely an arm, hands so small and white, tipped with pink filbert nails. He did not learn the game so quickly as might be. He, like Maurice, was pondering over the unusual position in which he found himself; but analysis of any sort was not his forte; so he soon forgot all save the delicate curve of Madame's chin and throat, the soft ripple of her laughter, the abysmal gray ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside like a ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... Moffletus. Mofletus Panis delicatioris species, qui diatim distribui solet Canonicis praebendariis; Tolosatibus Pain Moufflet, quasi Pain molet dictus; forte quod ejusmodi panes singulis diebus coquantur, atque recentes et teneri ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... we didn't mean what she meant, so we departed. Going down I became perhaps a little too excited over the coming event and went to some length to inform the assembled skirts that when it came to cutting ice I, not seeking to boast, but I was there, forte, and such pastimes as writing names or doing Dutch rolls I considered rudimentary in the skating number and only ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... le fiamme, di passar concesso; Ch' egli l'Eroe pi forte, Cui Scelse amor fra tanti Per' quiui vnir, ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... to do so; desired him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more culminated in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... nervous, and it will never do. Away with all that has passed since he became Duke of Sassovivo! Su, Rubiera, whom I knew a soldier years ago, who bade me sing, and laid your drawn sword across the keys of my piano-forte for a motive, —Rubiera, who came across a chasm to me as I stood clinging to the broken wall, and smiled courage into my sinking heart. Su, Rubiera, who divided the olive-twig with me, promising to challenge me when we met again with Fuori il verde! It was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... about two years before this time.—After receiving this intelligence, Godfrey heard little more of the conversation that passed till he reached Clermont-park.—A number of young people were assembled in the music-room practising for a concert.—Miss Hauton was at the piano-forte when he entered the room: she was sitting with her back to the door, surrounded by a crowd of amateurs; she did not see him—he stood behind listening to her singing. Her voice was delightful; but he was surprised, and not pleased, by the choice ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... But that which turned most to their profite, in time, was an entrance into the trade of Wampampeake; for they now bought aboute 50^li. worth of it of them; and they tould them how vendable it was at their forte Orania; and did perswade them they would find it so at Kenebeck; and so it came to pass in time, though at first it stuck, & it was 2. years before they could put of this small quantity, till y^e inland people knew of it; and afterwards they could scarce ever gett enough for them, for ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... doings, but cool and easy, not having turned a hair; Aubrey, panting, done up, railing at him as first cousin to Hercules, all as a delicate boast to me of his friend's recovered strength. Aubrey's forte is certainly veneration. His first class of human beings is a large one, though quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For instance, he teases Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than the victim can bear, and then relieves his feelings in my room by asseverations that the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were not a natural resource with Polly, whose forte was action. Her first thought in the morning was: what should she do about it? Something must be done, of course, and she was the only one to do it. What it was she had not the faintest idea, but then it was her business to find out. Here was she, eighteen years old, ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... incarnate—that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, both in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... tres forts, molto forte!" he observed, mixing French with Italian to show his linguistic accomplishments, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... indagaverit Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. CI[C]I[C]CCCXXII AEtatis vero ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, at totus in illis: Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum; Arreptaque manu, Quid agis, dulcissime rerum? Suaviter, ut nunc est, inquam: & cupio omnia quae vis. Cum affectaretur, Num quid vis? occupo. At ille, Noris nos, inquit; docti ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... above the age of fifteen.' They lived in tents near the large towns, and seem only to have worked as much as was requisite to keep body and soul together. But, he adds, 'they possess a natural facility and quickness in acquiring the knowledge of the arts,' and musical performance was their forte. They were also employed as slaves in the households of the boyards, especially in the kitchens, which they made 'not less disgusting than the receptacles of swine.' They were bastinadoed, often in the presence of the master or ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... not his forte, and his attempt in this direction in the weeks that followed would have been humorous were they not so pathetic. How I did my part I cannot tell. Those weeks are to me now like the memory of an ugly nightmare. The ghostly old man moving ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... adjectives; and now a little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, adaptable, and full of the past; Toombs was inexhaustible, original, inflexible, and full of the now. It was Hill's special forte to close a campaign; Stephens' to manage it; Toombs' to originate it. In politics as in war, he sought, with the suddenness of an electric flash, to combat, vanquish, and slay. Hill's eloquence exceeded his judgment; Stephens' judgment ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... courtesy of Mr. Allison, the piano-forte manufacturer in Dean Street, the residence of Sir James Thornhill, whose daughter Hogarth married: the proprietor bestows most praiseworthy care on the house, which was formerly one of considerable extent and importance. Mr. Allison says there can be little doubt that the grounds ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... l'ignore. Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, Rouget, tu ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... uber ihrer Zeit Standen und von ihren Gegensatzen nicht beruhrt wurden.—BACHMANN. Hengstenberg, i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, aut solos non insanio; tertium enim non est, nisi (quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes.—HOBBES, quoted by DE MORGAN, 3rd June 1858: Life of Sir ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... do into other narrow souls before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the wind among the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Josephine, on hearing him play, was so pleased that she granted him a pension of twelve hundred francs. He became one of the first violins at the Opera, but his special forte was as leader of orchestras, and he held that post at the Conservatoire, on account of his efficiency, until 1815, when the advent of the allied armies caused it ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... partis dimiserat et diem edixerat. Multi ex omnibus urbibus Graeciae ad ludos convenerunt. Ipse Perseus inter alios certamen discorum iniit. At dum discum conicit, avum suum casu occidit; Acrisius enim inter spectatores eius certaminis forte stabat. ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... as "King Pippin" (a prodigy of learning) may be considered as tiny commentaries upon the years when Johnson reigned supreme in the realm of learning. These and many others emphasized not the effects of piety,—Cotton Mather's forte,—but the benefits of learning; and hence the good boy was also one who at the age of five spelt "apple-pye" correctly and therefore eventually ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... like Sir Jarvy to hear that, my man of books," cried the fourth, who had satisfied himself that a book was not his own forte—"I fancy your instinct, doctor, will prevent you from whispering this in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a me desideres, libentissime tibi communicabo: hoc vicissim amanter a tua humanitate petens, vt quae ex vtriusque nauigationis cursu obseruata nancisci poteris, mihi communices, penes me pro tuo arbitrio manebunt omnia, et quaecunque inde collegero, fideliter ad te perscribam, si forte ad pulcherrimum, vtilissimumque orbi Christiano hoc nauigationis institutum aliquid opis et consilij adferre possint. Bene vale, vir doctissime. Duisburgi in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... enemy was at hand. The artillery with which our rear was to be protected was at this moment on the little square of Droue. It consisted of a mountain battery under Sub-Lieutenant Gouesse of the artillery, and three Gatlings under Sub-Lieutenant De la Forte of the navy, with naval lieutenant Rodellec du Porzic in chief command. Whilst it was being brought into position, Colonel Bernard, Gougeard's chief of staff, galloped off to stop the retreat of the other part of our column. ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... distance, and argue the point with my mother pro and con. But the fact is, the thing was distasteful, and wouldn't bear thinking about, much less arguing. I was too lazy to go and explain the matter, and writing was not my forte. Besides, I didn't want to thwart my mother in her plans, or hurt her feelings; and so the long and the short of it is, I solved the difficulty and cut the knot by crossing quietly over to Norway. I wrote a short note to my mother, making no allusion to her project, and since then I've been ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Shakespeare's forte lay in characterization, and that endlessly diversified. But when he sketched each several character it seems that he was never content till he had either found or fabricated the aptest words possible for representing its form and pressure most true to life. No two characters being identical in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... particular athletic forte, and now when my very life depended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on the occasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head the rooter's raucous and reproachful cries of "Ice ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and arrivals too numerous to particularise: papas and mammas, and aunts and uncles, the owners and guardians of the different pupils; the singing-master, Signor Lobskini, in a black wig; the piano-forte player and the violins; the harp, in a state of intoxication; and some twenty young men, who stood near the door, and talked to one another, occasionally bursting into a giggle. A general hum of conversation. Coffee handed round, and plentifully partaken of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... si forte non molestumst, Demostres, ubi sint tuae tenebrae. Te campo quaesivimus minore, Te in circo, te in omnibus libellis, Te in templo summi Iovis sacrato. 5 In Magni simul ambulatione Femellas omnes, amice, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line. His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the girls into the house; but she could never endure them, because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could think of nobody ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... avail ourselves of your professional services to do a little in the domestic and appalling murder line; but our forte is ballet or pantomime; perhaps, as you have your own silk tights, the latter department might suit you best. Our artist is considered very great, and shall convert our "Jim Along Josey" wood-cuts into your portrait. We will also pledge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... suited to the circumstances of a man advancing in years, than that of adapting music to such vain and trivial words as the musical drama generally consists of.' The truth was, he had discovered his forte. But the tide of fashionable feeling ran so strongly against him, that even the performance of the oratorios of Saul and Israel in Egypt scarcely paid expenses. Unwilling to submit his forthcoming Messiah also to the caprices of fashion, and the malignity of party, he wisely embraced ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... falsa legat, taceat vel forte repente, Ante pios fratres, lector in Ecclesia. Est opus egregium sacros jam scribete libros, Nec mercede sua ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... Egyptian locusts;' and, in another article, accuses them of 'having undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of being champions of politeness.' The other papers summarized are the Free Briton, a violent opponent of the Craftsman, the British Journal, and the Universal Spectator, the forte of the last two lying ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... them. A German opera appeared on the bill. Carmina turned to the music-seller in despair. "Is there no music, sir, but German music to be heard in London?" she asked. The hospitable shopkeeper produced a concert programmed for that afternoon—the modest enterprise of an obscure piano-forte teacher, who could only venture to address pupils, patrons, and friends. What did he promise? Among other things, music from "Lucia," music from "Norma," music from "Ernani." Teresa made another approving mark with her thumb-nail; and ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... deve maturare i Frutti della nostra vecchiezza, e confortare con quell i desiderii dei populi nostri divoti, e propogare il seme di quella pianta che deve proteggerli, habbiamo Stabilito d'accompagnarci con una virgine eccelsa ed amorosa allattata alia mammella della leonessa forte e dell' Agnella mansueta. Percio essendo ci stato figurato sempre il vostro populo Europeo Romano par paese di donne invitte, i forte, e caste; allongiamo la nostra mano potente, a stringere una di loro, e questa sara una vostra nipote, o nipote di qualche altro gran Sacerdote Latino, che ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple, l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... his passion seemed to grow in the absence of the beloved object. His only plan of winning her was to win his spurs first; but as what? Clearly his forte, it seemed, was in writing. If he could be a successful writer of romances, of songs, of plays, surely she would not refuse him. And so he began another romantic story, "Velasquez, the Novice," opening with ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Sorbonnists. He must be praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in use beyond ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in that forte and habitation thereof four brasse pieces each weighing about 150 lbs. weight, another piece of brasse ordinance weighing eighty lbs. weight, five iron boxes of shot, for the five brasse pieces of ordinance; two small iron pieces of ordinances weighing each eight cwt. six murderers ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... chite qui Miekes[29] fut clamee Fu grande la bataille, et fiere la mellee, Enchois car on eust nulle tente levee, Commencha li debas a chelle matinee. Li cinc frere paien i mainent grant huee, Il keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit l'espee, Et une forte targe a son col acolee. Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demoree, Un gentil crestien de France l'onneree— Armeire n'i vault une pomme pelee; Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamee, Le branc li embati ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Miss Pat. You'll find your own work all in good time. It mayn't be what you'd like it to, but it'll be something that you can do better than any one else," said Miss Jinny with kind wisdom. "Look at me. I'm sure that books and catalogues is my forte, but the Lord knows better. He's given me the sense to see it, too, and so mama is comfortable and happy and someone else who hasn't a dear mother depending on her does the ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she must ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... must be forte, Go wash my neck and sleeves, because this shirt is dirty Mon charmant, prenez guarda, Mind what your signior begs, Ven you wash, don't scrub so harda, You may rub my shirt to rags. Vile you make the water hotter— Uno solo I compose. Put in the pot the nice sheep's trotter, And ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... and nothing to lose, and happy in the knowledge that no amount of bruises could do him any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer. Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action. Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... grace and activity, and selected for his partner the Gouvernante, a fine, fat bouncing woman of twenty-five. He likewise, at my request, sang a Russian romance, which he accompanied on the piano-forte: his voice was a very plaintive, but weak barytone. The kindness of the Russian nobles to these unfortunate beings does infinite honour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... Oh, no; it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... Douai and of the region of the second army corps, its military centre being at Amiens, where also is its court of appeal. Laon is the capital, and Soissons the seat of a bishopric of the province of Reims. Other important places are Chateau-Thierry, St Quentin and Coucy-le-Chateau. La Forte-Milon has remains of an imposing chateau of the 14th and 15th centuries with interesting fortifications. The ruined church at Longpont (13th century) is the relic of an important Cistercian abbey; Urcel and Mont-Notre-Dame have ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the same height as his brother, two years younger, slender in form, and gentle in disposition, but active, too, when occasion required it. His forte was drawing and painting. Fred was generally quiet and grave. Both ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... meditation that Byron excelled. "Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte." His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled; rapid, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy, the strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth we cannot but think that the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the void came a sharp click as of a well-oiled gun-lock. It was followed by the first notes of a piano-forte accompaniment. A soprano voice began singing Schubert's "Fischermadchen." What a delicious timbre! The clear resonance of a ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 148: "Vostre Majeste seit les humeurs des Angloys et leur voluntez estre forte discordantes, desireux de nouvellete, de mutation, et vindicatifz, soit pour estre insulaires, ou pour tenir ce natural de la marine."—Renard to Mary: Granvelle Papers, vol. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... his adventures at length to this casual acquaintance. This communicative gentleman is, of course, Clitophon; but before we proceed to the narrative of his loves and woes, we shall give a specimen of the author's powers in the line which appears to be his forte, by quoting his description of the painting above referred to:—"On entering the temple, my attention was attracted by a picture representing the story of Europa, in which sea and land were blended—the Phoenician ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... for us but to try to pass the Surgeons as desperately sick, and we expended our energies in simulating this condition. Rheumatism was our forte, and I flatter myself we got up two cases that were apparently bad enough to serve as illustrations for a patent medicine advertisement. But it would not do. Bad as we made our condition appear, there were so many more who were infinitely worse, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... England proclaimed her to be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... crime veritable est d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... silk of various colors; the inside doors—five in number—with wild flowers; and in front are rich specimens of raised embroidery, extending to the inside, and protected with plate glass. Miss Kingsbury is a young lady of Taunton, who has made this kind of work her peculiar forte. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... "Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, Dixerat, ecquis adest? et, adest, responderat echo, Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes; Voce, veni, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... heard. The lame and lisping boy from Maine had ripened, under the Southern sun, into a master orator. The original, ever-varying, and beautiful imagery with which he illustrated and enforced his arguments impressed Webster, Clay, Everett, and even John Quincy Adams. But his forte lay in arraigning his political opponents, when his oratory was "terrible as an army with banners;" nothing could stand against the energy of his look, gesture, and impassioned logic, when once he was fairly under way, in denouncing ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... "is that of the keys of a piano forte. They want the short keys, which mark the semi-tones, of a different color from the others, so that the eye will catch them as quick as possible. So in a chess-board. They sometimes make chess-boards with alternate squares of ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... that were served, according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... notwithstanding all his prejudices about the army, has given him sincere pleasure. I believe, between ourselves, that your college career, of which he has heard something, convinced him that your forte did not lie in the classics; you know I said so always, but nobody minded me. Your new prospects are all that your best friends could wish for you: you begin early; your corps is a crack one; you are ordered for service. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of the twentieth century, two new voices have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, and they continue crescendo,—the voice of the teacher and the voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore with impunity ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... with the Indians (not to friend), had the last winter destroyed and kild up all our hoggs, insomuch as of five or six hundred (as it is supposed), there was not above one sow, that we can heare of, left alive; not a henn nor a chick in the forte (and our horses and mares they had eaten ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... the corn meal; Mr. Cobbett says, "it is not a word to squall out over a piano-forte," "but it is a very good word, and a real English word." It seems to mean something which is half pudding, half porridge. Homany is the shape in which the corn meal is generally used in the southern states of America, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... receive "beaux" and addicted to the piano-forte accomplishment, was at that time practicing across the hall an instrumental composition, entitled, "La Reve." Under the title, printed in very small letters, was the English translation; but I never thought to look at it. An elocutionist had shortly ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... capitol; the assembled Roman poets recited her praises; Prince Castel Forte, the most honoured of Roman noblemen, uttered a eulogy of her; and, ere she received the destined bays, she took up her lyre and in accordance with custom gave a poetic improvisation. The subject of her passionate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... accounts, made all the applause in his power, standing in the main threshold, and the little auditory became a ringing arena, where we fought without flinching, standing foot to foot and drawing fire for fire. The man in the monkey-jacket broke his word: silence was not his forte; he hurled denials and counter-charges vociferously; he was full of gall and bitterness, and when I closed the last page and resumed my chair, he sprang from his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Melpomenen et Euterpen simul veneratus. Musicae miracula quis dignius cecinit? Pictoris Florentini sine fraude vitam quasi inter crepuscula vesperascentem coloribus quam vividis depinxit. Vesperi quotiens, dum foco adsidemus, hoc iubente resurgit Italia. Vesperi nuper, dum huius idyllia forte meditabar, Cami inter arundines mihi videbar vocem magnam audire clamantis, Pa o' me/gas ou' te/qnhken. Vivit adhuc Pan ipse, cum Marathonis memoria et Pheidippidis velocitate ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... date from 1380, when the last Venetian Count had gone, but there are later additions. At this time the Castel S. Lorenzo was built, displacing an oratory built on the site of a nunnery established before the eleventh century. Forte Molo, by the harbour (formerly Fort S. Giovanni, and now much altered) and the tower of S. Luca still remain of the earlier fortifications. As the town spread it was fortified by the addition of the Torre Menze (built ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Without Straw" been written as a "Sunday special" by a horse-editor of any daily paper in Texas, the managing editor would have chucked it into the waste- basket and advised the young man that journalism was not his forte. It is a rambling fragmentary piece of mental hodge-podge, in which scraps of school book Egyptology, garbled Bible stories, false political economy and fragments of misapplied history tumble over each other like specters in a delirium. It ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... give a bigger jump at that; and the Hen says on to him, sort of explaining matters: "You need not fear that I shall not sustain my end of the adventure. As any of the boys here will tell you, I can handle a forty-five or a Winchester about as well as anybody—and big-game hunting really is my forte. Indeed, I may say—using one of our homely but expressive colloquialisms—that when it comes to lion-hunting I ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... or anything of the sort," resumed Camilla, "I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—" Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the formation ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... was a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. His special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... him; had he abandoned the expedition? Oliver could not understand indecision; perhaps he did not see so many sides to the question, his mind was always quickly made up. Action was his forte, not thought. The night came, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... shattered state of health, I am trying to do things that will bring in money soon; and I could not, if I were not mad, step out of my way to work at what might perhaps bring me in more but months ahead. Journalism, you know well, is not my forte; yet if I could only get a roving commission from a paper, I should leap at it and send them goodish (no more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insieme i Colli Euganei ed Arqua; scrivemmo i nostri nomi nel libro che si presenta a quelli che fanno quel pellegrinaggio. Ma sopra tali rimembranze di felicita non posso fermarmi, caro Signr. Moore; l'opposizione col presente e troppo forte, e se un anima benedetta nel pieno godimento di tutte le felicita celesti fosse mandata quaggiu e condannata a sopportare tutte le miserie della nostra terra non potrebbe sentire piu terribile contrasto fra il passato ed il presente di ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... has desired me to write to you by this day's post. Your appointment to the 14th, notwithstanding all his prejudices about the army, has given him sincere pleasure. I believe, between ourselves, that your college career, of which he has heard something, convinced him that your forte did not lie in the classics; you know I said so always, but nobody minded me. Your new prospects are all that your best friends could wish for you: you begin early; your corps is a crack one; you are ordered for service. What could you ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Jack returned a short, sailor-like reply, in which he insisted that he had only done for Avatea what he would have done for any woman under the sun. But Jack's forte did not lie in speech-making, so he terminated rather abruptly by seizing the chief's hand and shaking it violently, after which he ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... of doubt on our expectations of peaceful sleep that night, anyway. Then a man with a sweet tenor sang OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT, and the fog-horn showed us just how oft, namely, every thirty seconds. But the queerest effect of all was when a girl had to play a piano-forte solo. It was something of Chopin's, full of runs and trills and little silvery notes. She started all right; but when she was half-way down the first page, BOO went the fog-horn, a longer blast than usual. We saw her fingers flying, and the turning of the page, but not a note ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... time they left the settled districts of Western Australia, they had only spent about 330 pounds. He did not know that he could say anything more. He had spoken several times on his journey down, and it seemed to him that he had said the same thing over and over again. His forte was not in public speaking, but he hoped they would take the will for the deed. They never could forget the very kind and hearty reception they had received in every place they had visited ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... Carlingford," cried the troubled woman, growing nervous at sight of the unresponsive quiet around her. Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... klare, froste. La plena luno hele allumigis cxiujn objektojn sur la korto, kie nun estis senvivo, funebro.—CXe la fenestro de rugxa cxambro, apoginte sin al la kadro, staris tiatempe silente, senmove la juna virina figuro. La vizajxon forte alpremigita je la vitro, sxi rigardadis eksteren. Jam longe sxi staris tiel enprofundigxinta en pensoj. SXiaj rigardoj estis dirigitaj al unu punkto sur la korto. Rigide eltendita kusxis tie antaux sia logxejo Oje, la mortinta rusa cxashundo. Akre, klare ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 4 • Various
... Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his eyebrows ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... texendis Mirus artifex Neminem habuit parem. Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta, Quam nullo illi labore constiterint, Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici; Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat, Apte varie copioseque alluderet, Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior, An ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of July, 1629, the English flag floated, for the first time, over the fortress of Quebec. "There was not in the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this examinate's knowledge, any victuals, save only one tubb of bitter roots"—such is the evidence of one of Kirke's captains. This, in brief, is the story of the first of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... say nothing; and the "care" Maurice denied, dogged all his busy interest in his dinner—for which he had made the plans, as Eleanor, until the term ended, was obliged to go out to Medfield to give her music lessons; besides, "planning" was not her forte! But in the thrill of excitement about the dinner and in the mounting adventure of being happy, she was able to forget her fear that Mr. Houghton might be "horrid" to Maurice. If the Houghtons didn't like an elopement, it would mean that they had no romance in them! She ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... autumn of 1873. He was the father and teacher of the celebrated pianist, Clara Wieck, now Fr. Dr. Clara Schumann, widow of the renowned composer Robert Schumann, who was also a pupil of Wieck. His second daughter, Fraeulein Marie Wieck, is well known in Germany as an artistic performer on the piano-forte. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... blunders into which we are thrown by seeing others thrown into greater and almost inextricable ones.— This play (among other considerations) leads us not to feel much regret that Shakespeare was not what is called a classical scholar. We do not think his forte would ever have lain in imitating or improving on what others invented, so much as in inventing for himself, and perfecting what he invented,—not perhaps by the omission of faults, but by the addition of the highest excellences. His own genius ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... in a foot-note (320) "Foeminae sese per totam paene vitam prostituunt. Apud plurimas tribus juventutem utriusque sexus sine discrimine concumbere in usu est. Si juvenis forte indigenorum coetum quendam in castris manentem adveniat ubi quaevis sit puella innupta, mos est nocte veniente et cubantibus omnibus, illam ex loco exsurgere et juvenem accedentem cum illo per noctem manere unde in sedem propriam ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... this aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, as it were, compelling his heart into his eyes, made it an organ for discerning truth. His head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Corpus—whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean's niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling to come downstairs. He drew his father in all postures—asleep, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, "A wenomous one!" and "A wiralent wiper!" to the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... similarly perplexed. I do not think her mind was specially adapted to the didactic style, nor was it much to her taste. When writing in that style her pen did not seem to be entirely at ease, or to move quite at its own sweet will. Careful statement and nice theological distinctions were not her forte. And yet her mental grasp of Christian doctrine in its vital substance was very firm, and her power of observing, as well as depicting, the most delicate and varying phenomena of the spiritual life was like an instinct. A purer or more whole-hearted love of "the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... as having privately taken refuge from her anonymous correspondent at Swanhaven Lodge—was, musically speaking, far from being an efficient substitute for Mrs. Delamayn. Julius possessed, in his wife, one of the few players on the piano-forte under whose subtle touch that shallow and soulless instrument becomes inspired with expression not its own, and produces music instead of noise. The fine organization which can work this miracle had not been bestowed on Mrs. Glenarm. She had been carefully taught; and she was to be trusted to play ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... ejusdem Provinciae Episcopis jurgium terminetur: nec alicui liceat, [4] Romanae Ecclesiae, cujus in omnibus causis debet reverentia custodiri, relictis his sacerdotibus, qui in eadem Provincia Dei Ecclesiam nutu Divino gubernant, ad alias convolare Provincias. Quod siquis forte praesumpserit; & ab officio Clericatus summotus, & injuriarum reus judicetur. Si autem majores causae in medium fuerint devolutae, ad Sedem Apostolicam sicut Synodus statuit, & beata consuetudo exigit, post judicium Episcopale referantur. By these Letters it seems to me that Gallia ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... but is unable to deny that he has paid attentions; to threaten an action for breach of promise of marriage; to pretend that your daughter is a musician when she has with the greatest difficulty been coached into playing three piano-forte pieces which she loathes; to use your own mature charms to attract men to the house when your daughters have no aptitude for that department of sport; to coach them, when they have, in the arts by which ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... feminam quam forte vargorum, hoc enim nomine indigenas latrunculos nuncupant," as though the common name by which those who lived a freebooter life were designated, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... long time imitate snatches of a tune. The present professor of music in the university of Oxford contrived for himself, I believe at three years old, a way for playing on an instrument, the piano forte, unprompted by any of the persons about him. This is ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... more calmness than might have been expected. Instead of twisting his own neck, as he had hinted he might, if unsuccessful, the young author quietly remarked that tragedies were not his forte and that he intended ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... dilettantish comment that older nations writing of more settled, richer civilizations can do well—that Anatole France and occasional essayists of Punch or The Spectator can do well and most of us do indifferently. We are a humorous people, but not a playful one. Light irony is not our forte. Strength and humorous exaggeration come more readily to our pens than grace. We are better inspired by the follies of the crowd, or the errors of humanity, than by the whims of culture or aspects of pleasant leisure. And when we try to put ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... almost out of sight when I remembered about there being bears on that mountain; so I rose and undertook to forge ahead too. I was not a great success at it however. I know now that if ever I should turn to a life of crime forgery would not be my forte. I do not forge readily. Eventually, though, I reached the summit, he being already there. We had come up for the view, but I seemed to have lost my interest in views; so, while he looked at the view, I reclined in a prostrate position and resumed panting. That ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... no; it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... a sweet glance at Sir Robert, who immediately led her to the piano-forte, followed by the Scottish merchant of the Baltic, whither the noble symphony of "The Douglas," "hound and horn," soon gathered the rest of the company. The remainder of the evening passed away delightfully in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... did exist, in the popular mind; and fire, in an insurance sense, as distinct from explosion, was accurately defined by Justice McIlvaine, of the Supreme Court of Ohio (1872), in the case of the Union Insurance Company vs. Forte, i.e., an explosion was a remote cause of loss and not the proximate cause, when the fire was a burning of a gas jet which did not destroy, though the explosion caused by the burning gas-jet did destroy. Earlier than this decision, however (in 1852), Justice Cushing, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... entrusted with a part. The piece chosen was Iphigenie en Aulide. Mademoiselle de Sabran and her brother, as well as a young Strogonoff, were, it is said, perfect actors. Armand de Polignac had a little part. Tragedy was not my forte. But in the second piece I achieved a little success, which the Chevalier de Boufflers was kind enough to celebrate in a very bright couplet, sung at the close. He gave me the name of the Little White Mouse. After that the Queen called me her little white mouse, and showed ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... personalities, and natural aptitude for popular oratory. Lincoln frankly admitted his formidable qualifications. But the Republican managers had a shrewd appreciation of both opponents; they saw that Lincoln's forte lay in hitting out straight, direct, and hard; and they felt that blows of the kind he delivered should not go out into the air, but should alight upon a concrete object,—upon Douglas. They conceived a wise plan. On July 24, 1858, Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... comprising the sanctum, 'during hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the 'English and mathematical.' Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... palms upon his trousers legs, squares his shoulders, and plunges into the program that he has played at all weddings for fifteen years past. It begins with Mendelssohn's Spring Song, pianissimo. Then comes Rubinstein's Melody in F, with a touch of forte toward the close, and then Nevin's "Oh, That We Two Were Maying" and then the Chopin waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, and then the Spring Song again, and then a free fantasia upon "The Rosary" and then a Moszkowski mazurka, and then the Dvorak Humoresque (with its heart-rending cry ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Casa Guidi, Kate Field wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861: "They who have been so favored can never forget the square ante-room, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour; the little dining room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat; and, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... gentleman. Still, sir, a Papist is not—curse it, this isn't handsome of me, Willy. I beg your pardon. Confound all religions if it goes to that. Still at the same time I'm bound to say as a loyal man that Protestantism is my forte, Mr. Reilly—there's where I'm strong, a touch of Hercules about me there, Mr. Reilly—Willy, I mean. Well, you are a thorough good fellow, Papist and all, though you—ahem!—never mind though, you shall see my daughter, and you shall hear my daughter; ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... flushed Dannie's cheeks. Mary never before had spoken like that. He had to say something for Jimmy quickly, and quickness was not his forte. His lips opened, but nothing came; for as Jimmy had boasted, Dannie never lied, except for him, and at those times he had careful preparation before he faced Mary. Now, he was overtaken unawares. He looked so boyish in his confusion, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... would have abandoned all idea of a meeting, but, as it was advertised, she felt bound to make it a fact. This decision may seem the more remarkable in view of other facts, that Miss Anthony had but little experience as a speaker, and was fully aware of her deficiencies in that line; her forte lay in planning conventions, raising money, marshalling the forces, and smoothing the paths for others to go forward, make the speeches, and get the glory. Having listened in St. Nicholas Hall for several days to some of the finest orators in the country, it was with great trepidation that she resolved ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... purity incarnate—that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Je l'ignore. Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... have a fair wind from S.S.W. and shall soon be out of sight of land. We have fourteen very agreeable passengers, an experienced and remarkably pleasant captain, and a strong, large, fast-sailing ship. We expect from twenty-five to thirty days' passage.... We have a piano-forte on board and two gentlemen who play elegantly, so we shall have fine times. I am in good spirits, though I feel rather singularly to see my native shores disappearing so fast and for ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... grand piano. After unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind the door in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of this little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... hez some forte—like huntin' an' such, But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much; Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me; Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!" When I tickled the back ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... alacrity into the persons of her honoured guests, and had little occasion to exercise, with respect to any of the company saving Claverhouse himself, the compulsory urgency of pressing to eat, to which, as to the peine forte et dure, the ladies of that period were in the custom of subjecting ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... who has been adopted by a Berlin family and in whom, in spite of careful education, the evil disposition of his father comes to the surface. In this artificial treatment of the theory of heredity Clara Viebig's art does not appear to the best advantage; her forte is rather unbiased objectivity and penetrating observation of every-day life. The other novels having their scene in Berlin are distinguished for a keen sense for realities, as, for example, The Daily Bread (1900), a treatment of the servant question which in the technique of Zola gives ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... "Don't get forte," Cooney replies cheerfully. "If you'd try to follow both those cornets instead of rambling along by ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... quite long, which surprised me, for writing essays is not Annetta's forte, and hers are generally as brief as St. Clair's. Annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behavior, but there isn't a shadow of orginality in her. Here ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Patteson's forte. Though his pen flowed so freely in letters, and he could pour out his heart extemporaneously with great depth, fervour and simplicity, his sermons were laboured and metaphysical, as if he had taken too ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... broad-shouldered, with a commanding presence and amiable countenance. He was bold, earnest, energetic, persevering; artless, and honest as the day. He said exactly what he meant. His mental vision was clear, strong, and accurate. Imagination was never active; oratory was not his forte. Demonstrative evidence suited him best. In his religious character he was conscientious, devout, and reverent, never excited ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... of the simbols of the ancient World, up to the real discoveries of the present time proceeded the solution of the relation of the Eternal time, motion, and distance. Which set forte the discovery of the generational cosmological Parents of this planet, are discovered that these can be ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... was not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred; nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... believed that the romance of his life was over, and he eventually joined his regiment with some reckless hopes of "stopping a bullet" as he phrased it. Gloomy cynicism, however, was not his forte; and when, before the year was out, he was again promoted, he found that life was anything but a burden, although he was ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Spake in his owne linqua[62] to thiss Efect, "Gent men, I know you are men come to seeke a fortune, if You want money or Plate goe alonge with me, I will shew you wheir their is more then you all can carry away." wee gave no credit to him, butt was minded to fall on uppon the forte to take their greate gunns for the shipp, haveing none on board. Our Party being so tired, and cutt off, wee weare feigne to leave the greate gunns, money, all the Rest of the rich traide which was in that small towne. three of our Doctors being in the Hospitall ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... pernoctabat in oratione,[1202] quam forte reperiens solam homo barbarus, accensus libidine et sui minime compos, irruit rabiosus in eam. Conuersa illa et tremefacta, suspiciens aduertit hominem plenum diabolico spiritu. "Heu," inquit, "miser, quid agis? Considera ubi es, reuerere haec ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... with a view to send him off, which, however, I could not accomplish. I finished a criticism on Defoe's Writings.[514] His great forte is his power of vraisemblance. This I have instanced in the story of Mrs. Veal's Ghost. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and as grim ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... I could. But it's not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it if he were older. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Oxford, a masterpiece of Art. All that he knows he knows profoundly, nor does it require an Artesian bore to bring that knowledge bubbling to the surface. His mastery over his intellect is as great as that of Liszt over the piano-forte,—it is a slave to do his bidding. He is the result of a thousand years of culture. A "Double-First" never gives way to enthusiasms; his heart never gets into his head. Impulse is snubbed as though it were a poor relation; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Dejecta flammis, nil Rhodopes jugum, Quassaeve peccavere Cautes Aemathiae, risi forte dirum Inominatis marmora partubus Fudere monstrum: rumpite, rumpite Monteisque, facundasque ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... He reported to me promptly, 'Greek and Latin all forgot, Non idoneus is Willis, minus et sufficiens, He may have a sanum corpus, but he lacks a sana mens.'" "Nay," says Willis, "such an answer is but trifling with the court, I have preached a Latin sermon, and the classics are my forte, You must name the books I failed in, you must give me every chance Of a fresh examination at the hands of Lord Penzance." Lord Penzance supported Willis: "Bishop, you must file," said he, "Some more tangible objection, some less vague and general ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... mile in width. On our right appeared Fort Amsterdam, mounting no less than sixty guns in two tiers, capable, it seemed, of blowing us all out of the water, while there was a chain of forts on the opposite side, and at the bottom of the harbour the fortress, said to be impregnable, of Forte Republique enfilading the whole, and almost within grape-shot distance. Athwart the harbour was moored a Dutch thirty-six gun frigate and a twenty-gun corvette. The commodore had been ordered to diplomatise, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the work I did in the country, and see if I cannot get orders for more of the same kind. My great hope is that I can work at home. I wish I knew enough to be a teacher, but like all the rest I know a little of everything, and not much of anything. Fancy work will be my forte, if I can only sell it. I do hope I shan't meet any one I know," and heavily veiled she took her way with her dainty fabrics toward the region of fashionable shops. Those, however, who were willing to buy offered her so little that she was discouraged, and she finally left ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in use beyond ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Spring after what forage he could find. Then from a sense of duty went back to her cousin. Rose was looking out of the window again when she came in, and kept silence for a little space; but silence was never Rose's forte. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... was established in 1860 in the house, not far from the ancient "Cat-Hole," of one Mrs. O'Toole, "a pretty good all-round cook, whose forte was apple dumplings" served daily. The steward was Charles Kendall Adams, '61, while other members were Walter W. Perry and Byron M. Cutcheon of the class of 1861 and Martin L. D'Ooge ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... you think so? (He says "Yes" with his eyes, bows, and moves up C. The piano is now forte. BELINDA accompanies him up a little, then stops. He turns in entrance up C., and they exchange glances. TREMAYNE exits to R., behind yew hedge. BELINDA stays looking after him, then moves down to back of table and picking up the book of poems, gives that happy ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... or two other houses on the Green, after which the rest of the day was devoted to his favourite exercises. The evenings he usually passed with the same family, among whom he began his morning, either in conversation, or in hearing Miss Pigot play upon the piano-forte, and singing over with her a certain set of songs which he admired,[59]—among which the "Maid of Lodi," (with the words, "My heart with love is beating,") and "When Time who steals our years away," were, it seems, his particular favourites. He appears, indeed, to have, even thus early, shown a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... seit les humeurs des Angloys et leur voluntez estre forte discordantes, desireux de nouvellete, de mutation, et vindicatifz, soit pour estre insulaires, ou pour tenir ce natural de la marine."—Renard to Mary: Granvelle ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Jarvy to hear that, my man of books," cried the fourth, who had satisfied himself that a book was not his own forte—"I fancy your instinct, doctor, will prevent you from whispering this in the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that Mr. Bullet-head was a wise man; and if collateral proof of the matter be needed, here we have it—Mr. B. was an editor. Irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. It was his strong point—his virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a Brownson to convince him that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... doubt that this system of "revelation" was an idea of Rigdon. Smith was not, at that time, an inventor; his forte was making use of ideas conveyed to him. Thus, he did not originate the idea of using a "peek-stone," but used one freely as soon as he heard of it. He did not conceive the idea of receiving a Bible ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "Selah," which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the staff on ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the wind among ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... rule, the common people treat the priests respectfully, but once I heard several attacking one warmly on the score of eternal punishment. "Sara," said one, "per cento anni, per cinque cento, per mille o forse per dieci mille anni, ma non sara eterna; perche il Dio e un uomo forte—grande, generoso, di buon cuore." {16} An Italian told me once that if ever I came upon a priest whom I wanted to tease, I was to ask him if he knew a place called La Torre Pellice. I have never yet had the chance of doing this; for, though ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... farewell address, brings us to 1692, when nineteen persons were legally hanged, charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts, and when in that State Giles Cory perished under the awful torture, judicially applied, known as the "peine forte et dure." ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Arnold's best lyric verses and most beautiful nature pictures; but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot, such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles, the principal character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold's dramas show that his forte was not in character-drawing nor ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... versatile: books and book-making are indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous departments of science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical discovery, music as above, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... reality, however, she would obviously become a bore. In any case there was nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully. Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness of life. His forte—emptiness. Not love but a hunger ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... young and inexperienced man, and I gather from your letter that you are in trouble of some nature, and, also, that you are building hopes, if not actually depending, upon the crude labors of your pen. Let me tell you frankly at once that literature is not your forte. It you have sent literary work to other parties like that inclosed to me you will never hear from it again. In the first place, you do not write correctly; in the second, you have nothing to say. We cannot afford to print words merely—much less pay for them. What is ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no scientific authority ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his sage resolve, Mr. Joe tried the "moral dodge," as he elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... on ... once, ter please her, but I reckon hit didn't make much of a showin' under this." He ran his fingers reflectively through his heavy beard for a moment; then, with his voice still a forte whisper, he added, "Say, stranger, I've got a leetle drap o' white liquor hid out in the woodshed whar Smiles kaint find hit, an' ef yo'd delight ter wet yo'r throat afore she comes back, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line. His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... departure of the troops, Commodore Warren sent a small vessel to Boston with two French prisoners. One of them was Monsieur Bouladrie, who had been commander of a battery outside the walls of Louisburg. The other was the Marquis de la Maison Forte, captain of a French frigate which had been taken by Commodore Warren's fleet. These prisoners assured Governor Shirley that the fortifications of Louisburg were far too strong ever to be ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in glass cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried them; they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in perfect time. Thereat he wondered. But the truth is, it was a house wherein precision reigned: a tuner and a clockmaker ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the "Last Judgment," which occupied him eight years; in 1542 he was appointed architect of St. Peter's, and he planned and built the dome; sculpture was his great forte, but his genius was equal to any task imposed on him, and he has left poems to show what he might have done in the domain of letters as he has done in those of arts, with which his fame is ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... SIGMA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA} aut canon, ac proindedirigit quidem ut canon agentem voluntarie: non autem necessitate cogit, ut lex etiam involuntarium quod si forte ante accedit coactio, ea non est de natura canonis sed altunde pervenit. An ecclesiastical canon, saith Tilen,(103) ducit volentem, non trahit nolentem: quod si accedat coactio, ea ecclesiastici canonis natura est prorsus aliena, Calvin's judgment is,(104) that an ecclesiastical ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... effeuille, sur les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter dans ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... to the Minister who is not at its head: all the resources of Russian influence and of Russian corruption are lavished to render his people rebellious and his administration unsuccessful. From this peine forte et dure we believe that Europe will now be relieved; and if the people or the sovereigns of the Continent, particularly those of Germany and Italy, make a tolerable use of the freedom from foreign dictation which the weakness of Russia will give ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... carried things with too high a hand. Not having a half-penny at command, she was helpless. Without money and without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the correspondence was going on. She supported herself by playing the piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the means of making her acquainted with a countrywoman of his, whose ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Pillory about an hour when it so happened that the Reverend John Jones, the chaplain of the jail, came into the yard. Seeing a group of warders at the mouth of the labor-cell, he walked up to them, and there was Josephs in peine forte et dure. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... appeared, absolutely fearless and determined. R. C. hooked him. The first leap showed the Marlin to be the smallest of the day so far. But what he lacked in weight he made up in activity. He was a great performer, and his forte appeared to be turning upside down in the air. He leaped clear twenty-two times. Then he settled down and tried to plug out to sea. Alas! that human steam-winch at the rod drew him right up to the boat, where he looked to weigh about one hundred and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... man, but to a life of action, and that it was fate, rather than inclination, which made him express himself in words instead of deeds. A writer's books are generally his best biography: the "strong, quiet man," whose forte was to do much and say nothing; who, like Marcos Sarrion, loved the free and plain life of the field and the open, was a natural hero for Merriman, "as finding there unconsciously ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... thing, and of course spoilt many things. Leave him alone in the room for a moment, and he would open all the letters, peep into every drawer, smell at every unknown substance, displace your china, spoil your musical-box, climb up the piano-forte, and pull over the vases of flowers. If you did not hear a crash this time, do not flatter yourself. Some secret, but equally important mischief has been accomplished, though it may not be apparent for days. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and beauty of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... by surprise is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of his sons with his novel mode of instilling the rudiments of the Latin tongue, although he knew not a word of the language; and the obedient mistresses of his daughters with his short road to attaining a perfection in playing the piano-forte, without knowing a note of the gamut: but what could they say; why, nothing more or less than they were 'astonished;' which was vague enough to be as ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... collected, to have been a very eccentric and benevolent character. One circumstance we learnt, which our old friend at the cottage thought proper not to disclose. He had a most beautiful daughter, with whom the lord was often seen walking on the sea-shore, and he had bought her a piano-forte, and taught her himself the ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... for that theer whisperin' and shout-in' in the course of a piece of music," said Sennacherib. "Pianner is pianner, and forte is forte, but theer's no call to strain a man's ears to listen to the one, nor to drive him deaf with t'other. Same time, if the young gentleman 'ud like to come an' gi'e us a lesson now and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... his forte, and his nervousness made him sputter. His speech was vibrant, trenchant, like hammerstrokes, and he said things to which there was no answer. He had a horror of discussion: he was ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. CI[C]I[C]CCCXXII ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... the marriage was happily arranged for the following week. Lady Moseley, when she retired to the drawing-room after dinner, commenced a recital of the ceremony and company to be invited on the occasion. Etiquette and the decencies of life were not only the forte, but the fault of this lady; and she had gone on to the enumeration of about the fortieth personage in the ceremonials, before Clara found courage to say, that "Mr. Ives and myself both wish to be married at the altar, and to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... to be disturbed; also, that Mag had gone down to the village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she must ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... est, in Sumatra nempe ac forte in Java aliam quoque esse plantam repentem gatta gambir akar dictam, qum forte unae eaedemque erunt plantae; ac verbum akar Malaiensibus denotat non tantum radicem, sed repentem quoque ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of anything but that very thing ever since I found that they had hidden it, and I can't yet see any good way of getting it. My forte is direct action and that fails in this case, since no amount of force or torture could make Crane reveal the hiding-place of the solution. It's probably in the safest safe-deposit vault in the country. He wouldn't carry the key on him, probably wouldn't ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... hope left for us but to try to pass the Surgeons as desperately sick, and we expended our energies in simulating this condition. Rheumatism was our forte, and I flatter myself we got up two cases that were apparently bad enough to serve as illustrations for a patent medicine advertisement. But it would not do. Bad as we made our condition appear, there were so many more who were infinitely worse, that we ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... acquaintance with the two sailors, and tried to obtain from them some description of the passengers on board the Falcon. But description was not their forte. He gained nothing but a clumsy mass of separate facts concerning passengers and crew, which assisted him little in forming an opinion as to whether Brian Luttrell had, or had not, been on board. He was inclined ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... si, me signore per frate Vento Et per aere et nubilo et sereno et omne tempo * * * * * Laudato, si, mi signore, per sor acqua La quale e multo utile et humele et pretiosa et casta; Laudato si, mi signore, per frate focu Per lo quale ennallumini la nocte Et ello e bello et jocundo e robustioso e forte. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... possede dans la seule ville de Jerusalem plus de trente mosquees, ainsi que le fameux temple de Salomon que les premiers califes conquerants ont rebati, s'assujettiraient difficilement a un Gouvernement Chretien quelconque, qui ne disposerait pas de beaucoup de ressources et d'une forte garnison, pour en imposer aux hordes des Bedouins et pour reduire par les armes tout ce qui s'opposerait au nouvel ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... to ascend the scale, and he now kept a shop in the small seaport town of Overton, where he repaired damaged articles of science—a watch one day, a quadrant or a compass another; but his chief employment and his chief forte lay in telescopes; and accordingly, a large board, with "Nicholas Forster, Optician," surmounted the small shop window, at which he was invariably to be seen at his employment. He was an eccentric person, one of those who had narrowly escaped ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... et Sol redditus orbi: Assistunt Domino turmae, gelidamq. resurgens Linquit humum Saulus: sed non redit ossibus ardor, Non oculis lumen; subitis exterrita monstris Haud aliter juveni stupuerunt pectora, quam cum Fulmina si flammis straverunt forte bisulcis Coniferam pinum, aut surgentem in sidera quercum, Agricola exsurgit conterritus, et pede lustrat Exustum nemus, et pallentes sulphure campos. Explorat late noctem, caecosq. volutat Hinc atq. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... all rather silent. Grace and her brother and the Captain talked in a desultory sort of way during dinner; but Kate never spoke, except when directly addressed, and silence was Eeny's forte. She sat down to the piano after dinner, according to her invariable custom, but not to sing. She had never sung since that day. How could she? There was not a song in all her collection that did not bring the anguish of some recollection of him, so she only played brilliant new, soulless fantasias, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... was paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is, of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man of genius he hopes one day to shine. He is almost the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... troublesome and difficult to interfere; for when correct tempi and proper modifications of these were taken the defects of style which the flood had carried along or concealed became painfully apparent. The orchestra generally played mezzoforte; no real forte, no real piano was attained. Of course, in important cases I took care to enforce the reading I thought the true one, and to insist upon the right tempo. The excellent musicians did not object to this; on the contrary, they showed themselves sincerely glad of it; the ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... their hands; also a gentleman in a cocked hat, gold-lace, and breeches, who, no doubt, had something to do with the ceremonial of the Sessions. I saw, too, a procession of a good many old cabs and other carriages, filled with people, and a banner flaunting above each vehicle. These were the piano-forte makers of York, who were going out of town to have a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be proud to avail ourselves of your professional services to do a little in the domestic and appalling murder line; but our forte is ballet or pantomime; perhaps, as you have your own silk tights, the latter department might suit you best. Our artist is considered very great, and shall convert our "Jim Along Josey" wood-cuts into your portrait. We will also pledge ourselves to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... chair and crossing her legs, "I've found my forte at last. For three years, nearly, I've been employed by the Secret Service Department ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... which I was entrusted with a part. The piece chosen was Iphigenie en Aulide. Mademoiselle de Sabran and her brother, as well as a young Strogonoff, were, it is said, perfect actors. Armand de Polignac had a little part. Tragedy was not my forte. But in the second piece I achieved a little success, which the Chevalier de Boufflers was kind enough to celebrate in a very bright couplet, sung at the close. He gave me the name of the Little White Mouse. After that the Queen called me her little white mouse, and showed me a thousand ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... exierant flammae, et Sol redditus orbi: Assistunt Domino turmae, gelidamq. resurgens Linquit humum Saulus: sed non redit ossibus ardor, Non oculis lumen; subitis exterrita monstris Haud aliter juveni stupuerunt pectora, quam cum Fulmina si flammis straverunt forte bisulcis Coniferam pinum, aut surgentem in sidera quercum, Agricola exsurgit conterritus, et pede lustrat Exustum nemus, et pallentes sulphure campos. Explorat late noctem, caecosq. volutat Hinc atq. hinc oculos, et ab ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... accepit, ad ipsam restituendam tenetur, vel ejus precium, si forte incendio, ruins, naufragio, ant latronum, vel hostium incursu, consumpta fuerit vel deperdita, substracts, vel ablata." Fol. 99 a, b. This has been thought a corrupt text (Guterbock, Bracton, by Coxe, p. 175; 2 Twiss, Bract. Int. xxviii.), but agrees ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... of 'having undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of being champions of politeness.' The other papers summarized are the Free Briton, a violent opponent of the Craftsman, the British Journal, and the Universal Spectator, the forte of the last two lying in essays ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... crow; he has no brains, No,—not enough to go in when it rains. He is not gamy,—fighting's not his forte, A Haycock fight is just no sort of sport. Down in the meadow all day long he'll bide, (That is a little ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... has he logic or grasp with his reasoning powers, though of this, also, he is ambitious. Observation is his forte. To see, and to tell with grace, often with dignity and pathos, what he sees, is his proper vocation. Yet, where he fails, he has too much tact and modesty to be despised; and we cannot enough admire the absence of faults in a man whose ambition soared so much beyond his powers, and in an age ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of Alberti's or Galuppi's, I forget which. His voice went like the wind, and his fingers leapt over the imaginary keys. The various passions succeeded one another on his face; you observed on it tenderness, anger, pleasure, sorrow; you felt the piano notes, the forte notes, and I am sure that a more skilful musician than myself would have recognised the piece by the movement and the character, by his gestures, and by a few notes of airs which escaped from him now and again. But the absurd thing was to see him from time to time hesitate and take himself ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... sticking out behind them on the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case, a lady was in the very act of being run over, immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know; but he was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence or compunction. On every picture ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... example the aria of 'Orpheus,' 'Che faro senza Euridice' Change its expression by the smallest discrepancy of time or modulation, and you transform it into a tune for a puppet-show. In music of this description a misplaced piano or forte, an ill-judged fioriture, an error of movement, either one, will alter the effect of the whole scene. The opera must, therefore, be rehearsed under my own direction, for the composer is the soul of his opera, and his presence is as necessary to its success ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... I said quietly. "You have invited me into this carriage simply to lie to me. But you are an indifferent liar—it is not your forte. My dear child, do you imagine that I cannot see through your poor little plan? Mrs. Sullivan Smith has been talking to you, and it has occurred to you that if you cast me off, the anger of that—that thing may be appeased, ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Lindsay,—I never imitate. Originality is, if I may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the critics allow as much as that. See ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every room ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... classics and mathematics. A "Double-First" is the incarnation of Oxford, a masterpiece of Art. All that he knows he knows profoundly, nor does it require an Artesian bore to bring that knowledge bubbling to the surface. His mastery over his intellect is as great as that of Liszt over the piano-forte,—it is a slave to do his bidding. He is the result of a thousand years of culture. A "Double-First" never gives way to enthusiasms; his heart never gets into his head. Impulse is snubbed as though it were a poor relation; and argument is carried on by clear, acute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... find other methods than those of military force to settle the problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more and more that of ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... am," replied Eleanor emphatically. "You ought to know from past experiences that disagreeable scenes are my forte." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... and white, tipped with pink filbert nails. He did not learn the game so quickly as might be. He, like Maurice, was pondering over the unusual position in which he found himself; but analysis of any sort was not his forte; so he soon forgot all save the delicate curve of Madame's chin and throat, the soft ripple of her laughter, the abysmal gray ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... professor, she was cradled in literature, and has made it in a certain way the work of her life. There is nothing, however, of the pedantic about her. She is the embodiment of a woman's wit and humour; but her forte is a certain crisp and lively condensation of persons and qualities which carry a large amount of information under a captivating cloak of vivacious and confidential talk with her audience, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... climate of Nice, the fame of which they carried to their northern homes. It was both directly and indirectly through one of these officers that the claims of Nice as a sanatorium came to be put so plainly before Smollett. [Losing its prestige as a ville forte, Nice was henceforth rapidly to gain the new character of a ville de plaisir. In 1763, says one of the city's historians, Smollett, the famous historian and novelist, visited Nice. "Arriving here shattered in health and depressed ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... je la pli alta finigxo, la unua, cxiam forte tenante per la du manoj la tenilon, metis sian sxovilon sur la lignan superajxon, kie trovigxas la drapa mureto: La dua malrapide komencas malfermi la sakon. ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... colors; and its texture was so fine and thick that it yielded like moss to the footstep. Crimson velvet curtains, lined with white satin and fringed with gold, draped the windows and excluded every breath of the wintry blast. Many costly pictures, rare works of art, covered the walls. A grand piano-forte, a fine harp, a guitar, and a lute were at hand. Rich inlaid tables were covered with the best new books, magazines, and journals. Indian cabinets were filled with antique shells, minerals, ossifications, and other curiosities, Marble stands supported vases, statuettes, and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... sarebbe male, ma distuona come il diavolo. Ruggiero, un ricco principe innamorato di Bradamante, e un musico; canta un poco Manzuolisch [Footnote: Manzuoli was a celebrated soprano, from whom Mozart had lessons in singing when in London.] ed ha una bellissima voce forte ed e gia vecchio; ha 55 anni, ed ha una [Footnote: "She has a tolerable voice, and her appearance is in her favor, but she sings out of tune like a devil Ruggiero, a rich Prince enamored of Bradamante, is a musico, and sings ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... done for, I covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the Devil of the Albanians is minus horns, hoof and tail! This gives the fifth hero time to erect his impregnable tower before the fiend returns from the end of the world. When he comes to the tower he finds all his skill is naught, so he has recourse to artifice, which indeed has always been his forte. He begs piteously to be allowed one last look of his beloved princess. They can't refuse him so slight a favour, and make a tiny hole in the tower wall, but, tiny as it is, the Devil is able to pull the princess through it and instantly mounts on high with her. Now ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... ibidem pernoctabat in oratione,[1202] quam forte reperiens solam homo barbarus, accensus libidine et sui minime compos, irruit rabiosus in eam. Conuersa illa et tremefacta, suspiciens aduertit hominem plenum diabolico spiritu. "Heu," inquit, "miser, quid agis? Considera ubi es, reuerere haec sancta, defer ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... well-proportioned, broad-shouldered, with a commanding presence and amiable countenance. He was bold, earnest, energetic, persevering; artless, and honest as the day. He said exactly what he meant. His mental vision was clear, strong, and accurate. Imagination was never active; oratory was not his forte. Demonstrative evidence suited him best. In his religious character he was conscientious, devout, and reverent, never excited ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... consideration of the advantages this system presented, for, in performances on a large scale, the following somewhat crude rule prevailed: all those passages marked piano were executed by a single set of instruments, while those marked forte were carried out by a duplicated set. As an instance of the way in which I took care to ensure an intelligible rendering by this means, I might point to a certain passage in the second movement of the symphony, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... is couched in terms of the concrete, he can succeed, but if that is replaced by the x, y, z elements, he is prone to fail. There is another type of child—the one who has the executive ability, the child of action. True, he thinks, too, but his forte is in control of people and of things. He is the one who manages the athletic team, runs the school paper, takes charge of the elections, and so on. For principles to be grasped he must be able to put them into practice. The fourth type is the feeling type, the child ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... ch'a null'amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che come vedi ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... But it did little enough to make up for the lack of national whole-heartedness by any efficiency of its own. Madison was less zealous about the war than most of his party. He was no Pitt or Lincoln to ride the storm, but a respectable lawyer-politician, whose forte was writing arguments, not wielding his country's sword. Nor had he in his Cabinet a single statesman with a genius for making war. His war secretary, William Eustis, never grasped the military situation at all, and had to be replaced by John Armstrong after the egregious failures of ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... the beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, and they continue crescendo,—the voice of the teacher and the voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who is expected ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... proclaimed her to be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Terram vero Landa Rolfoni quaesitam existimarem esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam nempe Americae e regione Gronlandiae, quae forte hodie Estotilandia," etc. Crymogoea, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and his sister going out to meet him at the sound of his well known voice, with her milk-white pail, he would find the one poring over Latin and Greek, and the other running her fingers over the chords of a harp or piano-forte." ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... began more firmly, "you take a pinch of sand from this box—so." Tee-making is not my forte, and I was painfully conscious that I worked under the critical gaze of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... casting a sweet glance at Sir Robert, who immediately led her to the piano-forte, followed by the Scottish merchant of the Baltic, whither the noble symphony of "The Douglas," "hound and horn," soon gathered the rest of the company. The remainder of the evening passed away delightfully in the awakened harmony. Mrs. Montresor joined Lady Albina in some touching ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. These journeys provided the material ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Heerden started in to do some tall cursing of me, my country, my decadent race and the like. Things have been strained all the afternoon. To-night they reached a climax. He wanted me to help him in a burglary—and burglary is not my forte." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... tibi communicabo: hoc vicissim amanter a tua humanitate petens, vt quae ex vtriusque nauigationis cursu obseruata nancisci poteris, mihi communices, penes me pro tuo arbitrio manebunt omnia, et quaecunque inde collegero, fideliter ad te perscribam, si forte ad pulcherrimum, vtilissimumque orbi Christiano hoc nauigationis institutum aliquid opis et consilij adferre possint. Bene vale, vir doctissime. Duisburgi in Cliuia. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... l'interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L'histoire racontee, dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent au Deuteronome. 8. Le Deuteronome (iv.45-xxviii.68) est ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus. Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spinet or cembalo kind; but how the tone was produced there is no statement, no word to base an inference upon. The name has not been met with again between the Estense document and Scipione Maffei's well-known description, written in 1711, of Cristofori's "gravecembalo col piano e forte." My view of Cristofori's invention allows me to think that the Estense "piano e forte" may have been a hammer cembalo, a very imperfect one, of course. But I admit that the opposite view of forte and piano, contrived by registers of spinet-jacks, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... between two foxes' tails, which served the purpose of bell pulls. At this moment, my topographical observations were disturbed by the arrival of the scout with candles, and two strange-looking fellows in smock frocks, bringing in, as I supposed, a piano forte, but which, upon being placed on the table, proved to be a mere case: the top being taken off, the sides and ends let down in opposite directions, and the cloth pulled out straight, displayed an elegant dinner, smoking hot, and arranged in as much form as if the college butler had superintended ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, "during hours," of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the "Dominic," we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the "classical" usher, one of the "English and mathematical." Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the 'English and mathematical.' Interspersed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... was his forte. There have been various rocks on which men have shattered their barks in their attempts to sail successfully into the harbours of parliamentary management. There is the great Senator who declares to himself that personally he will have neither friend nor foe. There ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... et visiva, per hoc purgetur, et cerebrum a sua superfluitate purgetur, etc. Etiam qui sternutat frequenter, dicitur habere forte cerebrum."—Aristotelis ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... Sultan came, as I said before, and eat, drank, and was merry. He is passionately fond of music, and the piano-forte was placed out under the trees, where Anna and Zuleika sat singing and playing Greek and Italian music to him, until he ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... think so? (He says "Yes" with his eyes, bows, and moves up C. The piano is now forte. BELINDA accompanies him up a little, then stops. He turns in entrance up C., and they exchange glances. TREMAYNE exits to R., behind yew hedge. BELINDA stays looking after him, then moves down to back of table and picking up the book of poems, gives that happy ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... What could a farmer know of military affairs? True, Arnold had been a merchant, but then he had studied at Yale and had made military subjects his special forte, and he had been complimented ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... up in a heap upon the nearest chair. Her laugh was very infectious; it began with a low, mirthful ripple, well down in the throat, and rose in rapid leaps of musical joy till it had traveled a whole octave of bubbling happy sounds, when it culminated in a peal of double forte shakes and trills, that made it a joy to hear, and finally it died out in an "Oh, dear me! What ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Mr. Bruder's forte, on which he specially prided himself. He was too much of a gentleman to ask questions, and was delighted to find the old zest returning in his pupil. They were soon constructing bergs, caves, and grottoes of cold blue ice. Evening after evening, while sufficient light lasted, they worked at this ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... to say, that this was an occupation 'better suited to the circumstances of a man advancing in years, than that of adapting music to such vain and trivial words as the musical drama generally consists of.' The truth was, he had discovered his forte. But the tide of fashionable feeling ran so strongly against him, that even the performance of the oratorios of Saul and Israel in Egypt scarcely paid expenses. Unwilling to submit his forthcoming Messiah also to the caprices of fashion, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... is good enough to say of me that "cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible." With your permission, I propose to cut up "A Devonshire Man"; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... passer-by, had he peeped through the blinds of No.—Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of the ancient World, up to the real discoveries of the present time proceeded the solution of the relation of the Eternal time, motion, and distance. Which set forte the discovery of the generational cosmological Parents of this planet, are discovered that these can be seen ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... Relation of the Discovery of Our River From James Forte into the Maine, Made by Captain Christopher ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the true path to excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf the noble ship ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... reserve, uniform, full and fatigue dress, armament, and tactics. He understood, without difficulty, the advantages of the percussion gun, but the attempt to explain rifled cannon to him was in vain. Artillery was not his forte; but he avowed, nevertheless, that Napoleon had owed more than one ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... course of the nerves, using gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... eloquent man, although a ready and frequent public speaker. His voice was not musical. His strong forte was invective. He was nearly always denouncing somebody. Apparently, he was never so happy as when making another miserable. Sometimes his personal allusions were very broad. He was accustomed in his speeches to refer to one of Missouri's ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred; nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... ire pedes, transibit statim nauigio Brachium Sancti Georgij quod satis est strictum, ibique ad Ruphinal quod est forte castrum, inde ad Puluereal, et hinc ad castrum Synopulum. Ex tunc intrat Cappadociam, terram latam sed plenam altis montibus, deinde Turciam ad portum Theueron, et ad Ciuitatem ita dictam, nunc munitam firmis turribus, ac muris, per quam transit fluuius Reglay. Postea ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... "is hardly our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made the most ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... lastly, that he was to be preserved with the coarsest bread that could be got, and water out of the next sink or puddle.' He was told that 'oftentimes men lived in that extremity eight or nine days.' People have sometimes endured the peine forte et dure, as it was called, because, unless they pleaded and were convicted, their estates were not forfeited; and they endured the death of protracted torture for the sake of their families. Weston's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... in my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Dukedome, a Shiere, a Lordship, or lesse, may be described distinctly. But marueilous pleasant, and profitable it is, in the exhibiting to our eye, and commensuration, the plat of a Citie, Towne, Forte, or Pallace, in true Symmetry: not approching to any of them: and out of Gunne shot. &c. Hereby, the Architect may furnishe him selfe, with store of what patterns he liketh: to his great instruction: euen in those thinges which outwardly are proportioned: either ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... large audience, without any apparent effort on his part. Besides, it was musical. The hearer went away with its expressive inflections and cadences still sounding in his ears. But his voice was not his only forte. He had a mind as full of sanctified wit and quick perception as an egg is full of food. A clear thinker, a cogent reasoner, and I may add, full of love and the Holy Ghost, it is not a matter of wonder that he excelled. What he might have achieved had he ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... for me. I happened to be the only reporter present at the scene—'sensation' was my forte—a 'beat' upon all the other dailies had come directly to my hand. It was late in the week, and I was also afforded the chance of cooking the thing up remuneratively for two or three weekly papers. But the whole thing stood before me like a picture which ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... rivers, in the various countries which it fertilizes by its waters. We reposed here for some hours, and to my astonishment the Doctor, laying aside his pipe, entertained us with his performance on a piano forte, which was in the room, and when his tea arrived his place was occupied ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... one sees no especial use in conventional beatings about the bush. One goes straight to the point, or else one keeps still entirely; and, at that phase of his existence, keeping still was not Scott Brenton's forte. Indeed, he was later than are the most of us in learning the lesson that the keenest social weapon lies ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was as natural as breathing. She was recalled again, and again, and again, and the uproar of approval only ceased when the next singer advanced with a roll of music in his hand. He was a pale, sentimental young man whose forte was despairing ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Mirus artifex Neminem habuit parem. Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta, Quam nullo illi labore constiterint, Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici; Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat, Apte varie copioseque alluderet, Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior, An in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in particular odes, are his forte; there are indeed few departments of learning in which he has not extensive knowledge, and he is also well read in the Greek and Roman authors. Everything he studies, he studies merely from the love he bears to the science itself, and ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... and naturally impetuous. There could be no greater mistake; or, if he is such by natural disposition, this is one of the points where his seminary training has taught him to control and master himself. The forte of his character is his unchanging equanimity. And yet there must have been in him a wondrous amount of nervous energy to enable him to survive very serious injuries to his frame in early life, and to endure ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... he is less courageous. Tiuj estis malplej akraj, those were least sharp. La vento blovis malpli forte, the wind blew less strongly. Li skribis malplej zorge, he wrote least carefully. Mi malpli timas ilin, I fear them less. Vi malplej bezonos helpon, you will ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... thought Hunt, would not be Maggie's forte if she developed her possibilities. With her looks, her boldness, her cleverness, she had the makings of a magnificent adventuress. As he painted, he wondered what she was going to do, and become; and he watched her not only with a painter's eye intent upon the present, but ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... that this arrangement is by no means peculiar to that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... years younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attempt to utilise him in the green-grocer's shop when Tom at twenty-one married Jessica—who was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But it was not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when he was given a basket of stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavy it was nor where he took it, so long as he did not ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... sulla sua sedia portatile sta scrivendo una lettera sopra un foglio a vignetta. L' Italiano continua ad ascendere ... e giunte alla vetta ... all' amplissima libera vista, il cuore dell' Italiano batte piu forte ... la mente s' esalta, e i piu energici pensieri vi bollono.... Ma gli occhi ritornano svegliati dei passi dei Cavalli, appie del ripiane s' affaccia una numerosa comitiva ... e un pique nique! Fuggi fuggi mal capitate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... fieret, et Dominus, et famuli, et ancillae, a domo properantes, forte obliti, infantem in cunis jacentem secum non auferent, Daemones incipiunt commessari et vociferari, prospicereque per fenestras formis ursorum, luporum, felium, et monstrare pocula vino repleta. Ah, inquit pater, ubi infans meus? Vix cum haec dixisset, unus ex Daemonibus ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a tutor—Cirindey of Corpus—whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean's niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... um rico piano forte do autor Erard, de 3 cordas, por 280$, garantido; na rua da Quitanda ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... yesterday's figures, generally, I should say; or else by unrolling a ball of red tape. Well-docketed papers and statistical facts are his forte." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... loud that I cannot be heard, and I will never stoop to noisy banging. How I hate these orchestral players! How they scratch and blow like pigs and boasters! When I did play with them they made fun of my red hair and delicate touch. The leader could not understand me, and kept on yelling "Forte, Forte." It was in the Fifth of Beethoven, and I became angry and called out in my poor German (ah! I hate German, it hurts my teeth): "Nein, so klopft das Schicksal nicht an die Pforte." ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... aberrations ought to warn us from trying to make too many genera out of these animals. Dr. Gray, whose particular forte—or shall I say weakness?—was minute subdivision, classed (in 1847) the Indian porcupines in three sub-families, Hystrix, Acanthion, and Atherura; and Acanthion he some years after (1866, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... follows, for there is hardly a finer effect in music than that of the soft voices singing the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," while the strings gently pulse; and the fortissimo C major chord on the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzo-forte minor chords, is as dazzling in its brilliancy to-day as when it was first sung. The number of unisons, throwing into relief the two minor chords on C and F, should be especially noted. The chorus in the next number is poor, matched with this, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... a word about your letters; except that Kate and I have come to a conclusion which makes me tremble in my shoes, for we decide that humorous narrative is your forte, and not statesmen of the commonwealth. I won't say a word about your news; for how could I in that case, while you want to hear what we are doing, resist the temptation of expending pages on those darling children? ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, Dixerat, ecquis adest ? et, adest, responderat echo. Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes; Voce, veni, clamat magna. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the fanciful, and the utterly ridiculous. He was a student of the whimsicalities of character and nature, and delighted in their portrayal by voice or pen. Strange to relate, however, his first thought of adopting the histrionic profession contemplated tragedy as his forte. He had inherited a wondrous voice, deep, sweet, and resonant, from his father, and had a face so plastic that it could be moulded at will to all the expressions of terror, malignity, and devotion, or anon into the most grotesque and mirth-provoking ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... June 15, 1806, Louis started from Saint Leu to go to his kingdom. He was accompanied by his wife and his two sons, the elder, Charles Napoleon, who died in Holland the 5th of the next May, and the other, Louis Napoleon, who died at Forte, in 1831, in the insurrection of the States of the Church against the Pope. His third son, later Napoleon III., was born in 1808. The new King entered The Hague June 23, 1806. He countermanded a body of French troops which the Emperor had designed for his escort at his entrance into the capital, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... [11] "Sed si forte placet veteres sopire querelas Anthemium concede mihi; sit partibus istis Augustus longumque Leo; mea jura gubernet Quem ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... Lancers. Two thirds of the young company, including Don and Dorry, attended the village dancing-school; and one and all "just doted on the Lancers," as Josie Manning said. Uncle George, knowing this, had surprised the D's by secretly engaging two players,—for piano-forte and violin,—and their well-marked time and spirited playing put added life into even the lithe young forms that flitted through the rooms. Charity looked on in rapt delight, the more so as kind Sailor Jack already had carried the sleepy and warmly bundled Isabel ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... about your letters; except that Kate and I have come to a conclusion which makes me tremble in my shoes, for we decide that humorous narrative is your forte, and not statesmen of the commonwealth. I won't say a word about your news; for how could I in that case, while you want to hear what we are doing, resist the temptation of expending pages on those darling ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... considering our estate (and how that sicknesse was encreased and hot amongst vs) one day went foorth of the Forte, and walking vpon the yce, hee saw a troupe of those Countreymen comming from Stadacona, among which was Domagaia, who not passing ten or twelue dayes afore, had bene very sicke with that disease, and had his knees swolne as bigge as a childe of two ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... has no intentions, but is unable to deny that he has paid attentions; to threaten an action for breach of promise of marriage; to pretend that your daughter is a musician when she has with the greatest difficulty been coached into playing three piano-forte pieces which she loathes; to use your own mature charms to attract men to the house when your daughters have no aptitude for that department of sport; to coach them, when they have, in the arts by which men can be led to compromize themselves; and to keep all the skeletons carefully locked ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... might not consider them at all; if she pledged her word, it might not always be profitable to keep it; but she liked to be on pleasant terms with everyone, and would be amiable to the last, no matter what happened. Comedy was her forte, rather than tragedy. If tragedy entered her life she would probably turn it into ridicule. Wholly without care, whimsical and generous to a degree, if it suited her mood, Louise Merrick possessed a nature capable of great things, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... possess the very soul of harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... the unexpected strength of Fareham's fence, attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method. Joining his opponent's blade near the point, from a wide circular parry, he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire length of Fareham's blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp; and then, in the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch, he lunged at his enemy's breast, aiming at the vital region of the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Das ist etwas neues! [His umbrella begins to beat time, moving more and more vigorously, till at last he is conducting elaborately, stretching out his left palm for pianissimo passages, and raising it vigorously for forte, with every now and then an exclamation.] Wunderschoen!... pianissimo!—now the flutes! Clarinets! Ach, ergoetzlich ... bassoons and drums!... Fortissimo!... Kolossal! Kolossal! [Conducting in a ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... ours. In vain my mother assured him she was quite satisfied; and if he would but lay by a little for the children, we should all have plenty, both for time present and to come: but saving was not my father's forte. He would not run in debt (at least, my mother took good care he should not), but while he had money he must spend it: he liked to see his house comfortable, and his wife and daughters well clothed, and well attended; ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the Muse's forte than argument, but her aside was an aside, and that of the jockey friend was not. "So you waited for us to give your part of the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... society, as its name imports, learned in all that is eloquent, logical and veracious—and of which, I am proud to say, the distinguished subject of this memoir had the honor once of being chosen semi-monthly secretary, after a sharp and close canvass. In the transactions of this society the principal forte of Daniel was debating; albeit the character of his elocution was not the most brilliant, and it was not often until after the ayes and noes were called, that it could be determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether he himself understood ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces. The chickens, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... would not be Maggie's forte if she developed her possibilities. With her looks, her boldness, her cleverness, she had the makings of a magnificent adventuress. As he painted, he wondered what she was going to do, and become; and he watched her not only with a painter's ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... troll; and then almost at once a greedy swordfish appeared, absolutely fearless and determined. R. C. hooked him. The first leap showed the Marlin to be the smallest of the day so far. But what he lacked in weight he made up in activity. He was a great performer, and his forte appeared to be turning upside down in the air. He leaped clear twenty-two times. Then he settled down and tried to plug out to sea. Alas! that human steam-winch at the rod drew him right up to the boat, where he looked to weigh about ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... granits feuilletes, des roches feuilletees, melangees de quartz et de mica; des fragmens meme de quartz pur; mais absolument aucun schiste purement argileux, ni aucune pierre calcaire, rien qui fit effervescence avec l'eau-forte, et la pate meme qui renferme ces cailloux n'en fait aucune. Leur forme varie; les uns sont arrondis et ont manifestement perdu leurs angles par le frottement; d'autres ont tous leurs angles vifs, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... that Mag had gone down to the village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she must ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... turns up is not precisely the one you want, you can still contrive to use it equally:—in vita est hominum quasi cum ludas tesseris; si illud quod maxime opus est jactu non cadit, illud quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas.[1] Or, to put the matter more shortly, life is a game of cards, when the cards are shuffled and dealt by fate. But for my present purpose, the most suitable simile would be that of a game of chess, where the plan we determined to follow is conditioned by the play of our ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... strange and uncouth characters, lay before the old general, and he cast the pen aside with a sigh. "It is abominable work to write letters," he said; "I cannot comprehend why you, Gneisenau, who are so good a soldier, at the same time know so well how to wield the pen. It is not my forte, although I had a notion once to be a savant, and really become a sort of writer. In those calamitous days, subsequent to 1807, despair and ennui sought for some relief to my mind, and made me write a book, and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... closed his school. He came to the conclusion that school teaching was not his forte, though the people were satisfied with his work. He longed to be out digging ditches. He liked it far better, and conjectured that in this world his mission was to make the physical deserts to blossom ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... in answer to the question she had put, "Bones has some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his forte." ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... making something of your method of quilling, though, as yet, the prospect is not favorable. I applaud much your perseverance in improving this instrument, and benefiting mankind almost in spite of their teeth. I mentioned to Piccini the improvement with which I am entrusted. He plays on the piano-forte, and therefore did not feel himself personally interested. I hope some better opportunity will yet fall in my way of doing it justice. I had almost decided, on his advice, to get a piano-forte for my daughter; but your last letter may pause ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... but get one of the girls into the house; but she could never endure them, because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my particular athletic forte, and now when my very life depended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on the occasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head the rooter's raucous and reproachful cries of "Ice Wagon," and ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fight for the mine; but after a few days' longer work in it Billy found that the vein panned out badly, and selling out his interest in it returned to his home once more, convinced that mining was not his forte, though he certainly had dug out enough of the yellow ore to prove to his mother that he had not ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... furent et estoient intoxiquez et empoisonnez de ladite heresie lutherienne et calvinienne, et qui pis est de la moytie, se trouva finallement des evesques qui estoient tous plains et couvers de ceste mauldite farinne. Et pour ce que le roy tenoit le main forte pour faire pugnir de la peine du feu les coulpables, y en avait mille a sa suitte et en la ville de Paris, lesquelz faisoient bonne mine et meschant jeu, feignoient d'estre vrays catholiques, et en leur secret ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... further construction of this machine; which might have required but thirteen movements, as shown in the above analysis, unless some variety of musical note was to be added to the vocality produced in the larynx; all of which movements might communicate with the keys of a harpsichord or forte piano, and perform the song as well as the accompaniment; or which if built in a gigantic form, might speak so loud as to command an army ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Dannie's cheeks. Mary never before had spoken like that. He had to say something for Jimmy quickly, and quickness was not his forte. His lips opened, but nothing came; for as Jimmy had boasted, Dannie never lied, except for him, and at those times he had careful preparation before he faced Mary. Now, he was overtaken unawares. He looked so boyish in his confusion, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... he repulsed Mr. Caryll by a vigorous counter attack. He saw an opening, feinted to enlarge it, and drove in quickly, throwing his last ounce of strength into the effort. This time it could not be said to have been parried. Something else happened. His blade, coming foible on forte against Mr. Caryll's, was suddenly enveloped. It was as if a tentacle had been thrust out to seize it. For the barest fraction of a second was it held so by Mr. Caryll's sword; then, easily but irresistibly, it was lifted out of Rotherby's hand, and dropped on the turf ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... added to that already lying on the breast of a strong man, bound on his back by the cords of his oppressors, until relief and destruction came together, and the man was crushed; such was the peine forte ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... against great anxieties and in a very shattered state of health, I am trying to do things that will bring in money soon; and I could not, if I were not mad, step out of my way to work at what might perhaps bring me in more but months ahead. Journalism, you know well, is not my forte; yet if I could only get a roving commission from a paper, I should leap at it and send them goodish (no more than that) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... near the large towns, and seem only to have worked as much as was requisite to keep body and soul together. But, he adds, 'they possess a natural facility and quickness in acquiring the knowledge of the arts,' and musical performance was their forte. They were also employed as slaves in the households of the boyards, especially in the kitchens, which they made 'not less disgusting than the receptacles of swine.' They were bastinadoed, often in the presence of the master or mistress, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... it must not be forgotten that "my first object was to soften down the public mind to its sober senses." That no living man was better qualified for the accomplishment of so praiseworthy a purpose will now appear: "It has been my opinion of my humble self, that whatever small forte I might possess was to conciliate and soften down a ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... business affairs, unless in the presence of a third party. Jones represented that if they went on as they were now doing, the property would soon be swallowed up by the lawyers. To this Mr. Brown, whose forte was not eloquence, tacitly ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... virtue. When dreadful deeds are done they are described not with that authentic and lurid vividness which throws light on the working of the human heart in Shakespeare or Webster but in tedious rhetoric. Resignation, not fortitude, is the authors' forte and they play upon it amazingly. The sterner tones of their predecessors melt into the long drawn broken accent of pathos and woe. This delight not in action or in emotion arising from action but in passivity of suffering is only one aspect of a certain mental flaccidity in grain. Shakespeare ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... his marriage, from the profits of his writings and his wife's dowry, he was master of nearly a thousand pounds and a well-stocked farm; and increasing annual gains by his writings, seemed to augur future independence. But the Shepherd, not perceiving that literature was his forte, resolved to embark further in farming speculations; he took in lease the extensive farm of Mount Benger, adjoining Altrive Lake, expending his entire capital in the stocking. The adventure proved ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a hand. Not having a half-penny at command, she was helpless. Without money and without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the correspondence was going on. She supported herself by playing the piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the means of making her acquainted with a ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in most ungorgeous pall, through many streets, in the dusty summer evening; gets itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace—towards its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... should go; and eternally plagued the obsequious tutors of his sons with his novel mode of instilling the rudiments of the Latin tongue, although he knew not a word of the language; and the obedient mistresses of his daughters with his short road to attaining a perfection in playing the piano-forte, without knowing a note of the gamut: but what could they say; why, nothing more or less than they were 'astonished;' which was vague enough to be as ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully. Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness of life. His forte—emptiness. Not love but a ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple, l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... having privately taken refuge from her anonymous correspondent at Swanhaven Lodge—was, musically speaking, far from being an efficient substitute for Mrs. Delamayn. Julius possessed, in his wife, one of the few players on the piano-forte under whose subtle touch that shallow and soulless instrument becomes inspired with expression not its own, and produces music instead of noise. The fine organization which can work this miracle had not been bestowed ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... several fine specimens. He was wont to say, that this was an occupation 'better suited to the circumstances of a man advancing in years, than that of adapting music to such vain and trivial words as the musical drama generally consists of.' The truth was, he had discovered his forte. But the tide of fashionable feeling ran so strongly against him, that even the performance of the oratorios of Saul and Israel in Egypt scarcely paid expenses. Unwilling to submit his forthcoming Messiah also ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... function of his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... stiffly' (old Geibel took his arm and walked him forward a few steps. He certainly did walk stiffly), 'but then, walking is not his forte. He is essentially a dancing man. I have only been able to teach him the waltz as yet, but at that he is faultless. Come, which of you ladies may I introduce him to as a partner. He keeps perfect time; he never gets tired; he won't ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... should intervene, and the marriage was happily arranged for the following week. Lady Moseley, when she retired to the drawing-room after dinner, commenced a recital of the ceremony and company to be invited on the occasion. Etiquette and the decencies of life were not only the forte, but the fault of this lady; and she had gone on to the enumeration of about the fortieth personage in the ceremonials, before Clara found courage to say, that "Mr. Ives and myself both wish to be married at the altar, and to proceed to Bolton ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... terminetur: nec alicui liceat, [4] Romanae Ecclesiae, cujus in omnibus causis debet reverentia custodiri, relictis his sacerdotibus, qui in eadem Provincia Dei Ecclesiam nutu Divino gubernant, ad alias convolare Provincias. Quod siquis forte praesumpserit; & ab officio Clericatus summotus, & injuriarum reus judicetur. Si autem majores causae in medium fuerint devolutae, ad Sedem Apostolicam sicut Synodus statuit, & beata consuetudo exigit, post ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... nuper cymba, sicut meus est mos, Flumineas propter salices et murmura Cami, Multa movens mecum, fumo inspirante, iacebam. Illic forte mihi senis occurrebat imago Squalida, torva tuens, longos incompta capillos; Ipse manu cymbam prensans se littore in udo Deposuit; Camique humeros agnoscere latos Immanesque artus atque ora hirsuta videbar: Mox lacrymas inter tales dedit ore querelas— "Nate," inquit, "tu semper enim ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... veniva rinforzando, E in ogni parte apparisce la morte: E mentre in qua e in la, combatte Orlando, Un tratto a caso trovo Bujaforte, E in su la testa gli dette col brando: E perche l'elmo e temperato e forte, O forse incantato era, al colpo ha retto: Ma de la ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... seint Denys Ke il li freit tute Englet'e Par quentise e treson conquere E Charles li premist grant don Teres e bon garison Li treitre a Charlis dit Ke il aparillast sanz respit De bone nefs grande navie E de gent forte co'paignie E il le freit par tens garner Ou il dussent ariver En Engleter sodeinement Li traiture sanz targement en Englet'e tot se mit Au rei sire Edewars vint e dist Ke si apres li vodera fere Tutes ses choses deust co'quer Ki sire Charlis li aveit ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... as ill as my Address to the Institution; and a single line in italics in the next number intimated that it was not to appear. And thus both my schemes were, as they ought to be, knocked on the head. I have not schemed any since. Strategy is, I fear, not my forte; and it is idle to attempt doing in spite of nature what one has not been born to do well. Besides, I began to be seriously dissatisfied with myself: there seemed to be nothing absolutely wrong in a man who wanted honest employment taking this way of showing he was capable of it; but I ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... oratione,[1202] quam forte reperiens solam homo barbarus, accensus libidine et sui minime compos, irruit rabiosus in eam. Conuersa illa et tremefacta, suspiciens aduertit hominem plenum diabolico spiritu. "Heu," inquit, "miser, quid agis? Considera ubi es, reuerere ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... mercatoribus antedictis conquerentibus coram ijs celerem iustitiam faciant de die in diem sine dilatione secundum legem mercatoriam, de vniuersis & singulis qu per eandem legem poterunt terminari. Et si forte inueniatur defectus in aliquo balliuorum vel ministrorum prdictorum, vnde ijdem mercatores vel eorum aliquis dilationis incommoda sustinuerint vel sustineant, licet mercator versus partem in principali recuperauerit damna sua, nihilominus balliuus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... voice in the matter," explains Jasper Wilmarth, with an affected cautiousness. "I have tried to understand Mr. St. Vincent's views about the working of his patent, but machinery is not my forte. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... been taken, we told the maestro we would like to hear the boys sing. It was plain he did not consider singing their strong forte, but our wishes were met. One boy, standing, wielded the baton, beating time. When the singing was done with, the maestro said he would like us to see the class in arithmetic, if we had time. Accordingly fourteen or fifteen boys, from ten to fourteen years of age, stepped out ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... your fancy ask her to dance, without more ado. If she be not engaged she will at once accept your proffered arm. She will not say anything. Ten to one she will not breathe a syllable during your evolutions. Conversation is not the forte of the senoritas. But she will smile and smile, and you will have no reason to complain of her waltzing. The Mexican caballero, when he seeks a partner, will not put himself out so far as to have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... populo cum saepe coorta est Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus; Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat; Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant: Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet: Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam Prospiciens genitor, coeloque invectus aperto Flectit equos, curruque volans dat ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... the Church; a Quietist who scarcely ever quitted his retirement in an obscure Northamptonshire village, of that party which, above all others, was distinguished for its activity, bodily no less than spiritual, a clergyman who rarely preached a sermon, of the party whose great forte was preaching! ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... thiss Efect, "Gent men, I know you are men come to seeke a fortune, if You want money or Plate goe alonge with me, I will shew you wheir their is more then you all can carry away." wee gave no credit to him, butt was minded to fall on uppon the forte to take their greate gunns for the shipp, haveing none on board. Our Party being so tired, and cutt off, wee weare feigne to leave the greate gunns, money, all the Rest of the rich traide which was in that small towne. three of our Doctors being in the Hospitall Church dressing of our wounded ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... redditus orbi: Assistunt Domino turmae, gelidamq. resurgens Linquit humum Saulus: sed non redit ossibus ardor, Non oculis lumen; subitis exterrita monstris Haud aliter juveni stupuerunt pectora, quam cum Fulmina si flammis straverunt forte bisulcis Coniferam pinum, aut surgentem in sidera quercum, Agricola exsurgit conterritus, et pede lustrat Exustum nemus, et pallentes sulphure campos. Explorat late noctem, caecosq. volutat Hinc atq. hinc oculos, et ab omni nube Tonantes Expectat vocem. Interea regione viarum Progreditur ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... under the tyrannical dominion of a certain Lord of the Isles. Those Lords were famous for oppression in the days of yore, and if I can judge by the posthumous despotism exercised over me, they have not improved by their demise. The peine forte et dure is, you know, nothing in comparison to being obliged to grind verses; and so devilish repulsive is my disposition, that I can never put my wheel into constant and regular motion, till Ballantyne's devil claps in his proofs, like the hot cinder which you Bath folks used to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... simbols of the ancient World, up to the real discoveries of the present time proceeded the solution of the relation of the Eternal time, motion, and distance. Which set forte the discovery of the generational cosmological Parents of this planet, are discovered that these can be seen by ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... spent his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get piano-forte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published. By the time he had quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down to realise ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... des gend'armes et six gend'armes, se mit en route vers la Calade. La nuit etait obscure, et le temps froid; cette double circonstance protegea Napoleon beaucoup mieux que n'aurait fait la plus forte escorte. Mons. le Sous-Prefet et la gend'armerie rencontrerent le cortege peu d'instants apres avoir quitte la Calade, et la suivoient jusqu'a ce qu'ils arriverent aux portes d'Aix a deux heures du matin. Apres avoir change ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... deuced glad to see you if you are to be the entry clerk. I've had to do some of that work, and I don't like it. I don't think writing is my forte. I suppose ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... Hamoaze. The French flag under that of England proclaimed her to be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his services. He had ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... speech Jack returned a short, sailor-like reply, in which he insisted that he had only done for Avatea what he would have done for any woman under the sun. But Jack's forte did not lie in speech-making, so he terminated rather abruptly by seizing the chief's hand and shaking it violently, after which he made a ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... ville de Jerusalem plus de trente mosquees, ainsi que le fameux temple de Salomon que les premiers califes conquerants ont rebati, s'assujettiraient difficilement a un Gouvernement Chretien quelconque, qui ne disposerait pas de beaucoup de ressources et d'une forte garnison, pour en imposer aux hordes des Bedouins et pour reduire par les armes tout ce qui s'opposerait au ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... lucid, and when the subject seemed most complicated, the acuteness of his analytical mind seemed to unravel and lay bare the true features of the case, with an ease and power that required scarce an effort. His powers of ratiocination were very great, and this was the forte of his mind; his conclusions were clearly deduced ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... another form of the corn meal; Mr. Cobbett says, "it is not a word to squall out over a piano-forte," "but it is a very good word, and a real English word." It seems to mean something which is half pudding, half porridge. Homany is the shape in which the corn meal is generally used in the southern states of America, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... into the parlor, for the parlor was always private enough on a pleasant day. Nobody cared to keep the company of a rusty box stove, a tattered hair-cloth sofa, six wooden chairs, and a discordant tinny piano-forte, when the weather was pleasant enough to sit on the piazza or to walk on the prairie. To Albert the parlor was full of associations of the days in which he had studied botany with Helen Minorkey. And the bitter memory of the mistakes of the year before, was ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... from a distance, and argue the point with my mother pro and con. But the fact is, the thing was distasteful, and wouldn't bear thinking about, much less arguing. I was too lazy to go and explain the matter, and writing was not my forte. Besides, I didn't want to thwart my mother in her plans, or hurt her feelings; and so the long and the short of it is, I solved the difficulty and cut the knot by crossing quietly over to Norway. I wrote a short note to my mother, making ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... anything but that very thing ever since I found that they had hidden it, and I can't yet see any good way of getting it. My forte is direct action and that fails in this case, since no amount of force or torture could make Crane reveal the hiding-place of the solution. It's probably in the safest safe-deposit vault in the country. He wouldn't carry the key on him, probably wouldn't have it in the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... family and in whom, in spite of careful education, the evil disposition of his father comes to the surface. In this artificial treatment of the theory of heredity Clara Viebig's art does not appear to the best advantage; her forte is rather unbiased objectivity and penetrating observation of every-day life. The other novels having their scene in Berlin are distinguished for a keen sense for realities, as, for example, The Daily Bread (1900), a treatment of the servant ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... hearing so much of Wagner, the music is interesting, particularly so, because it is entirely original and free from reminiscenses.—There are some little {165} masterpieces in it, which deserve to become popular on account of their freshness; wit and humor however are not the composer's "forte" and so the first act, in which the vagabonds present themselves, is by ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... amabo, Semper maesta tua carmina morte canam, Qualia sub densis ramorum concinit umbris Daulias absumpti fata gemens Itylei)— Sed tamen in tantis maeroribus, Ortale, mitto 15 Haec expressa tibi carmina Battiadae, Ne tua dicta vagis nequiquam credita ventis Effluxisse meo forte putes animo, Vt missum sponsi furtivo munere malum Procurrit casto virginis e gremio, 20 Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatum, Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur: Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu, Huic manat tristi conscius ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... was hearing the other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and as grim as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... neat and apposite, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous and respectful attention. They were really entertained with Kant's Metaphysics! At last I took one of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte; and, when there was a pause, she began an Italian air. She was anxious to please him, and he was enraptured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it was over, he praised the singer warmly, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... prove to be Mr. William Douglas's forte. Coached by that practiced diplomat, Certina Charley, he made a speech memorable chiefly for what it did not say. The one bright, definite gleam, amidst rolling columns of oratory, was the proposal that an ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thou do? thou bard not of a thousand but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... stick, and threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... of good stuff in him; and I am not much afraid of you, Esther, at least I think not; but—" He hesitated, and then stopped, and I knew he was thinking of Fred and Carrie; but he need not. Of course Carrie would work as heartily as any of us; idling was never her forte; and Fred —well, perhaps Fred ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... murmured. "All goes well." And while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed, clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents, character by character, to their ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... said Charles, 'I'll take care the letter is moderate. Besides, it is only Philip, and he knows that letter-writing is not his forte.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gramineo spectabis equiriacampo Quem Tiberis curvis in latus urget aquis, Qui tamen ejecta si forte tenebitur unda, Coelius accipiet ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of Lima are passionately fond of music. Most of them play the piano-forte or the guitar, and also sing; but for want of good instruction neither their playing nor their singing is above mediocrity. Smoking is pretty general among females, at least those of mature age; but they indulge in this ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... development of the rationale of political and economical philosophy, in single instances, than can be discovered in the mass of harangues poured forth by Mr Cobden, were the flowers ever so carefully culled and separated from the loads of trashy weed. His forte consists in a coarse but dauntless intrepidity, with which respectability and intellect shrink from encounter. The country squire, educated and intelligent, but retiring and truth-loving, retreats naturally from contest with a bold, abusive, and unscrupulous demagogue; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... être libre de s'élancer dessus, l'on fait adroitment passer la verge dans un cordon dont le nœud coulant est rapproché au ventre, ensuite, saisissant à l'instant où l'animal parait dans sa plus forte érection, deux hommes qui tiennent les extrémités du cordon le tirent avec force et, sur le champ, le membre est séparé du corps au dessus le nœud coulant. Par ce moyen, les esprits sont retenus et fixés dane cette partie laquelle ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... blanched countenance expressed her wonder at this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed herself of the token of her glory of ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... old enough to receive "beaux" and addicted to the piano-forte accomplishment, was at that time practicing across the hall an instrumental composition, entitled, "La Reve." Under the title, printed in very small letters, was the English translation; but I never thought to look at it. An elocutionist ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... i.e. it belonged to a class of poetry the liberty of which was nearly as great as in comedy, and the speech was delivered by Sisyphus himself, who, according to the legend, is a type of the crafty criminal whose forte is to do evil and elude punishment. There is, in fact, nothing in that which we otherwise hear of Critias to suggest that he cherished free-thinking views. He was—or in his later years became—a fanatical adversary of the Attic ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... not that," said Christian, shrinking involuntarily. What from? Was it from a ghostly vision of the last time she had sung it—that is properly, to a piano-forte accompaniment, played by fingers that had afterward caught hold of her trembling fingers, and been a living comment on the song? It was that exquisite one from ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of their gay tints yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... was tired, too—as who would not be?—of the drudgery of writing for his daily bread; and relieved from the importunities of publishers and printers'-devils, he sent up fewer and fewer contributions to the magazines. He would keep his energies for a great work; poetry was, after all, his forte: he would not fritter himself away on prose and periodicals, but would win for himself, etc. etc. If he made a mistake, it was at least ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... nature, will even in infancy manifest a singular delight in musical sounds, and will in no long time imitate snatches of a tune. The present professor of music in the university of Oxford contrived for himself, I believe at three years old, a way for playing on an instrument, the piano forte, unprompted by any of the persons about him. This is called having ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... in Casa Guidi, Kate Field wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861: "They who have been so favored can never forget the square ante-room, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour; the little dining room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat; and, dearest ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... concrete, he can succeed, but if that is replaced by the x, y, z elements, he is prone to fail. There is another type of child—the one who has the executive ability, the child of action. True, he thinks, too, but his forte is in control of people and of things. He is the one who manages the athletic team, runs the school paper, takes charge of the elections, and so on. For principles to be grasped he must be able to put them into practice. The fourth type is the feeling ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... cannot be heard, and I will never stoop to noisy banging. How I hate these orchestral players! How they scratch and blow like pigs and boasters! When I did play with them they made fun of my red hair and delicate touch. The leader could not understand me, and kept on yelling "Forte, Forte." It was in the Fifth of Beethoven, and I became angry and called out in my poor German (ah! I hate German, it hurts my teeth): "Nein, so klopft das Schicksal nicht an die Pforte." You ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... always more interesting than loud talkers. I resolved to try my utmost to be quiet and interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are not, or have ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... mihi non vivit—nova forte marita. Ah, dolor! alterius nunc a cervice pependit. Vos, malefida valete accensae insomnia mentis, Littora amata ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... certainly, for it was the forte of the cardinal to prepare surprises for the agreeable entertainment of his guests. The ladies and gentlemen, the cardinals and princes of the Church, crowded around him begging for an explanation of the mystery, a disclosure of ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... novel is that most extraordinary of all punishments known to English criminal law, the peine forte et dure. The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic, and, perhaps, in some ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... chief forte lay in water athletics. He was like a duck himself, and never tired of teaching those boys who showed an inclination to learn. It was of vast importance to know just what ought to be done should a swimmer be suddenly seized with a cramp while in deep water, and with no ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... and meditation that Byron excelled. "Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte." His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled; rapid, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy, the strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... resident, an Italian, who acts as a French agent and spy on the frontiers of Tunis and Tripoli. He is paid about eighteen-pence a day, cheap enough for his high political mission. The French are mighty fond of planting spies all over Barbary; but espionage is their forte. In the evening we arrived at the Salinæ[8], "salt pits," on the coast, where we found several small coasters loading with salt for Tripoli. Salt is also exported from this place to Europe. Here we brought up for the night, creeping and feeling ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... care, Were noticeable everywhere. The port was old, the champagne dry, And every kind of luxury Which Melbourne could supply was there. They had the staple Christmas fare, Roast beef and turkey (this was wild), Mince-pies, plum-pudding, rich and mild, One for the ladies, one designed For Mr. Forte's severer mind, Were on the board, yet in a way It did not seem like Christmas day With no gigantic beech yule-logs Blazing between the brass fire-dogs, And with 100 deg. in the shade On the thermometer displayed. Nor were there Christmas ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... able to use his Hotspurs and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature a neuropath and ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as every body did, eagerly to the chapter on England, but, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... cheetah, in which this animal killed deer and other animals; and on another, on elephants, for tigers. Two tigers were killed, and Louis Belgrave had the honor of shooting one of them. Felix brought down a couple of cobras; and killing them seemed to be his forte. Khayrat invited the party to witness a battle between his mongoose and a couple of cobras his hunters had caught; and he killed them both, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... and in reply to the second, it was maintained[a] that the privilege of an ambassador, whatever it might be, was personal, and did not extend to the individuals in his suite. At the bar, after several refusals, he was induced by the threat of the peine forte et dure to plead not guilty; and his demand of counsel, on account of his ignorance of English law, was rejected, on the ground that the court was "of counsel equal to the prisoner and the commonwealth." He was found guilty, and condemned, with ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... rising lawyer of great abilities; John Burk,—the historian of Virginia; and lastly, Patrick Henry,—rough, jolly, and lazy. From such associates, all distinguished sooner or later, Jefferson learned much of society, of life, and literature. At college, as in after-life, his forte was writing. Jefferson never, to his dying day, could make a speech. He could talk well in a small circle of admirers and friends, and he held the readiest pen in America, but he had no eloquence as a speaker, which, I think, is a gift like poetry, seldom to be acquired; and yet he was a great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... with a less tragic history is La Roche Gageac on the Dordogne, below Sarlat. "Ma chere patrie," wrote the old chronicler, Jean Tarde, "une petite ville bien close et tres forte dependant de la temporalite de l'evesque de Sarlet, la quelle ne fut jamais prinse par ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... rotundis: Apparent rari stantes in tramite glauco; Radit iter, cogitque nives, sua tela, juventus. Trux matrona ruit, multos dominata per annos, Digna indigna minans, glomeratque volumina crurum; Illa parte senex, amisso forte galero, Per plateas bacchatur; eum chorus omnis agrestum Ridet anhelantem frustra, et jam jamque tenentem Quod petit; illud agunt venti prensumque resorbent. Post, ubi compositus tandem votique potitus Sedit humi; flet crura tuens nive candida lenta, Et vestem ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... least as tall as Mary St. John, and very handsome—only with somewhat masculine features and expression. She had very sloping shoulders and a long neck, which took its finest curves when she was talking to inferiors: condescension was her forte. Of the admiration of the men, she had had more than enough, although either they were afraid to go farther, or she ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... reincarcerated in the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... largest of those appropriated to the clerks, and having a piano-forte and a few arm-chairs, it was occasionally used ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... few weeks after the departure of the troops, Commodore Warren sent a small vessel to Boston with two French prisoners. One of them was Monsieur Bouladrie, who had been commander of a battery outside the walls of Louisburg. The other was the Marquis de la Maison Forte, captain of a French frigate which had been taken by Commodore Warren's fleet. These prisoners assured Governor Shirley that the fortifications of Louisburg were far too strong ever to be stormed ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room—"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"—but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... pity that your sight returned to you to enable you to do so dastardly a deed; and I am beginning to have my doubts whether or not you have not been duping us all along, and, under that guise, spying upon us—which seems to be your forte. This revelation makes me angrier than ever," he went on, "for it leaves you with no possible hope of pardon for your atrocious conduct, which merits the whole world's scorn ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... with Marion had been a joy. In the congenial surroundings of the shop she found it easy to live in to-day, leaving the future to unfold as it would. Her shorthand book lay unopened; she began to feel the truth of Marion's assurance, "Your forte is dainty, feminine things, Alex, in spite ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... the English law was against the use of torture, which, however, made progress, especially in state trials, under the Tudors. A man who refused to plead in an English court was subjected to the peine forte et dure, which consisted in piling weights on his chest until he either spoke or was crushed to death. To enforce the laws there was a constabulary in the country, supplemented by the regular army, and a police ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... touches. I will cite as an example the aria of 'Orpheus,' 'Che faro senza Euridice' Change its expression by the smallest discrepancy of time or modulation, and you transform it into a tune for a puppet-show. In music of this description a misplaced piano or forte, an ill-judged fioriture, an error of movement, either one, will alter the effect of the whole scene. The opera must, therefore, be rehearsed under my own direction, for the composer is the soul of his opera, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... discende Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, Prese costui della bella persona Che mi fu tolta, e il modo ancor m' offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte: 10 Caino attende chi vita ci spense.' Queste parole da lor ci fur porte. Da che io intesi quelle anime offense Chinai 'l viso, e tanto il tenni basso, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... started in to do some tall cursing of me, my country, my decadent race and the like. Things have been strained all the afternoon. To-night they reached a climax. He wanted me to help him in a burglary—and burglary is not my forte." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... genius, and leads them on in the true path to excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the way, why ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... matter be needed, here we have it—Mr. B. was an editor. Irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. It was his strong point—his virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a Brownson to convince him ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... knowledge that no amount of bruises could do him any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer. Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action. Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. In the competition of the previous year both had entered in ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... served the purpose of bell pulls. At this moment, my topographical observations were disturbed by the arrival of the scout with candles, and two strange-looking fellows in smock frocks, bringing in, as I supposed, a piano forte, but which, upon being placed on the table, proved to be a mere case: the top being taken off, the sides and ends let down in opposite directions, and the cloth pulled out straight, displayed an elegant dinner, smoking hot, and arranged ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Jack,—You'll be surprised to see my fist, but not more surprised than I was to hear from an old hunter just arrived, that you had taken to farming. It's not your forte, Jack, my boy. Be advised. Sell off the farm for what it will fetch, and come and join me. My antecedents are not in my favour, I grant; but facts are stubborn things, and it is a fact that I am making ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... Assistunt Domino turmae, gelidamq. resurgens Linquit humum Saulus: sed non redit ossibus ardor, Non oculis lumen; subitis exterrita monstris Haud aliter juveni stupuerunt pectora, quam cum Fulmina si flammis straverunt forte bisulcis Coniferam pinum, aut surgentem in sidera quercum, Agricola exsurgit conterritus, et pede lustrat Exustum nemus, et pallentes sulphure campos. Explorat late noctem, caecosq. volutat Hinc atq. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... somehow or another, a want of ambition or of talent did not permit him to ascend the scale, and he now kept a shop in the small seaport town of Overton, where he repaired damaged articles of science—a watch one day, a quadrant or a compass another; but his chief employment and his chief forte lay in telescopes; and accordingly, a large board, with "Nicholas Forster, Optician," surmounted the small shop window, at which he was invariably to be seen at his employment. He was an eccentric person, one of those who had narrowly escaped being ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... non vivit—nova forte marita, Ah dolor! alterius car a cervice pependit. Vos, malefida valete accensae insomnia mentis, Littora amata valete! Vale, ah! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... vue litteraire ou au point de vue social, la figure d'Henry Reeve etait essentiellement originale, et il devait ce caractere non seulement a la nature de son esprit, mais a l'education qu'il avait recue. Sur la base anglaise de la forte instruction classique son pere [Footnote: A momentary lapse of memory. It is scarcely possible that the Duc d'Aumale did not know that Reeve's father died whilst Reeve was still an infant, and that his education was directed by his mother.] voulut ajouter le couronnement des hautes etudes ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... a Pathetic Drama, in One Act, called The Sorrows of Werther. (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) [Caste follows.] Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims got for the occasion. Orchestra. Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an ORDER can possibly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... animation that constantly pervades it. As it is it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it. . . . He has two requisites of a debater, a melodious voice and clear, sharply defined enunciation. His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the point. With the most offhand assured airs in the world, and a certain appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, he proceeds ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... empty, Dennis drew the sword attached to the saddle, and though he could not distinctly remember what happened, he saw that the blade was red from point to forte, when a parapet stopped the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the full development of his genius, had, as we have seen, been the art-comrade of George Sand; he had spent the whole of the summer season of 1837 at Nohant, transcribing Beethoven's symphonies for the piano-forte whilst she wrote her romances; she was familiar with his marvellous improvisations. In her "Trip to Chamounix" (Lettres d'un Voyageur, No. VI.) she has drawn a vivid picture of their extraordinary effect, describing his unrehearsed organ recital in the Cathedral of Freibourg ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... commodatam accepit, ad ipsam restituendam tenetur, vel ejus precium, si forte incendio, ruins, naufragio, ant latronum, vel hostium incursu, consumpta fuerit vel deperdita, substracts, vel ablata." Fol. 99 a, b. This has been thought a corrupt text (Guterbock, Bracton, by Coxe, p. 175; 2 Twiss, Bract. Int. xxviii.), but agrees with Glanvill, supra, and with ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... besides, a conviction that she was angry with him for upsetting her cousin, who was gravely conversing with Miss Goff. Suddenly a horrible noise caused a general start and pause. Mr. Jack, the eminent composer, had opened the piano-forte, and was illustrating some points in a musical composition under discussion by making discordant sounds with his voice, accompanied by a few chords. Cashel laughed aloud in derision as he made his way towards the door through the crowd, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. His special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and praised ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day, and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his sufferings." Rightly must this mode of torture have been named peine forte et dure. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but there is absolutely no foundation for ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... prominent taste of his wife, which is for music, is the only one denied to him. He afforded an amusing instance of this fact last night, when Mrs. Hare, having performed several airs on the piano-forte, he asked her, "Why she played the same tune so often, for the monotony was tiresome?"—an observation that ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... recourse to heavy ordnance for this purpose. On the Tunisian frontier, where the population is both less fanatical and less warlike, we had followed a different course of procedure. We had gained the Bey's friendship by promising to support his power against the Forte's claim to suzerainty over him. Still, year after year the Sultan made as though he were fitting out a naval force to send to Tripoli and exercise this same suzerainty by deposing the Bey; and every year our squadron used to proceed to Tunis, and ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... He stretched himself and waved his arms. "Ah, now I am better. Now I am Paragot. Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot, again. Now I am free from the forms and symbols. Yes, my son. That hat has been to me Luke's iron crown. That coat has been the peine forte et dure crushing my infinite soul into my liver." He tore off his black tie and hurled it away from him. "This has been strangling every noble inspiration. I have been swathed in mummy bands of convention. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... means peculiar to that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the slender gentlemen are left to themselves; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro derelicto habiti dominium. Sec. 236. Alter casus est, Si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit, ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus & populo traditum accepit, alienae ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non ea mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet: tamen quia quod praecipuum est regiae dignitatis amifit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Moon, as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word or two on ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Alma's relatives. Little Hugh saw less and less of his mother, but he continued to thrive; and Harvey understood by now that Alma must not be expected to take much interest in the domestic side of things. It simply was not her forte. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... offered me his arm, which I gladly accepted, happy to be relieved from the impertinence of my female companion. We returned to tea; after which the ladies sung, and played by turns on the piano forte; while some of the gentlemen accompanied with the flute, the clarinet, and the violin, forming in the whole a very decent concert. An elegant supper, and half an hour's conversation after it, closed the evening; when we returned home, delighted with our entertainment, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... respect any male creature living saving that incorrigible non-respecter of persons and personages, especially of lady principals—the Boy. For the "forming" of young ladies, Miss Jane had a positive forte, but the genus boy was an unknown quantity to her, and worse—he was a positive terror. For one of them to invade the sacred precincts of her school, or its grounds, seemed to her maiden soul rank sacrilege; to scale ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... was almost prolonged into a sigh. These were marks on which I made no comments at the time. My own situation was calculated to breed confusion in my thoughts and awkwardness in my gestures. Breakfast being finished, the lady, apparently at the request of Welbeck, sat down to a piano-forte. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to attack, so distressed was it by constant butchery. In such a condition of morale an advance upon it might have changed history. In truth, the genius of Lee for offensive war had suffered by a too long service as an engineer. Like Erskine in the House of Commons, it was not his forte. In both the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns he allowed his cavalry to separate from him, and was left without intelligence of the enemy's movements until he was upon him. In both, too, his army was widely ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... appointment to the 14th, notwithstanding all his prejudices about the army, has given him sincere pleasure. I believe, between ourselves, that your college career, of which he has heard something, convinced him that your forte did not lie in the classics; you know I said so always, but nobody minded me. Your new prospects are all that your best friends could wish for you: you begin early; your corps is a crack one; you are ordered for service. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... logic or grasp with his reasoning powers, though of this, also, he is ambitious. Observation is his forte. To see, and to tell with grace, often with dignity and pathos, what he sees, is his proper vocation. Yet, where he fails, he has too much tact and modesty to be despised; and we cannot enough admire the absence of faults in a man whose ambition ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in our heart. And of a lie, thus defined, which is injurious to our neighbour, so long as his right to truth remains, it is that St. Austin affirms it to be simply unlawful, and that it can in no case be permitted, nisi forte regulas quasdam daturus es.... If a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful; but, if it can be separate from injustice, then it may be ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... life from day to day Nae "lente largo" in the play, But "allegretto forte" gay Harmonious flow: A sweeping, kindling, bauld strathspey— ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... had sung one of the "Irish melodies," somebody said, "Everything that's national, is delightful." "Except the National Debt, ma'am," says Poole. Took tea at Vilamil's, and danced to the piano-forte. Wrote thirteen or fourteen lines before I went out. In talking of the organs in Gall's craniological system, Poole said he supposed a drunkard had a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... very dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now a little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English logography seem to be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... capable of accommodating three hundred students four stories high." "HOUSEKEEPER.—A highly respectable middle-aged Person who has been filling the above Situation with a gentleman for upwards of eleven years and who is now deceased is anxious to meet a similar one." "TO PIANO-FORTE MAKERS.—A lady keeping a first-class school requiring a good piano, is desirous of receiving a daughter of the above in exchange for the same." "The Moor, seizing a bolster boiling over with rage and jealousy, smothers her." "The Dying Zouave the most wonderful mechanical representation ever seen ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... however, that it was with some apprehension that he set his foot in the stirrup, and trusted his person to the mercies of an unfamiliar animal. For whatever might be Mr. Dale's minor accomplishments as man and parson, horsemanship was not his forte. Indeed, I doubt if he had taken the reins in his hand more than once since he had ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the Varangians, in all the disputes between them and the other corps; he was liberal and open-handed; gave every soldier his due; and, bating the trifling circumstance of valour, which was not particularly his forte, it would have been difficult for these strangers to have demanded a leader more to their wishes. Besides this, our friend Hereward was admitted by him into his society, attended him, as we have seen, upon secret expeditions, and shared, therefore, deeply, in what may be termed by an ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... an active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... to the Chateau of La Roche Jagu, on the summit of a hill overhanging the river Trieux and defending the entrance. It has more of the character of a "maison forte" than of a "manoir," as was termed the habitation of a knight, and of those who holding a fief, yet did not possess the seignorial right to a castle with towers and donjon. The manoir might be enclosed by walls and moats, but not with towers. The entrance on the side opposite to the river is through ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... bad indeed.[Footnote: Question preparatoire; question prealable, sometimes called q. definitive. Desmaze, Supplices, 177. Desjardins, p. xx. Howard, passim. The English have long boasted that torture is not allowed by their law; and although the peine forte et dure was undoubted torture, the boast is in general not unfounded. Torture was abolished in several parts of Germany in the eighteenth century, but lingered in other parts until the nineteenth. It was not done away in Baden until 1831. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... suggested that they try Boston. That city was a musical centre and Camilla would be sure to meet with a good reception there. Accordingly under the guidance of the American the entire party went to Boston. Mr. Jonas Chickering, the piano-forte manufacturer kindly welcomed her and invited her to call at his residence on Boylston street, two doors from the building now occupied by the Art Club. So much pleased was he with her simple manners and her ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... military centre being at Amiens, where also is its court of appeal. Laon is the capital, and Soissons the seat of a bishopric of the province of Reims. Other important places are Chateau-Thierry, St Quentin and Coucy-le-Chateau. La Forte-Milon has remains of an imposing chateau of the 14th and 15th centuries with interesting fortifications. The ruined church at Longpont (13th century) is the relic of an important Cistercian abbey; Urcel and Mont-Notre-Dame have fine churches, the first entirely in the Romanesque ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ecclesiam, dum in terris est, ita ut neque impius in ea quisquam, neque peccator residere videatur, sed sint in ea omnes sancti et beati, et in quibus nulla prorsus peccati macula deprehendatur. Sed sicut dicitur de zizaniis: Ne forte eradicantes zizania simul eradicetis et triticum, ita etiam super iis dici potest, in quibus vel dubia vel occulta peccata sunt.... Eos saltem eiiciamus quos possumus, quorum peccata manifesta sunt. Ubi enim peccatum non est evidens, eiicere ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... succeeding the Kapellmeister's death, the expenses of Johann's family were increased by the birth of another son,—Caspar Anton Carl; and to this event Dr. Wegeler attributes the unrelenting perseverance of the father in keeping little Ludwig from this time to his daily lessons upon the piano-forte. Both Wegeler and Burgomaster Windeck of Bonn, sixty years afterward, remembered how, as boys, visiting a playmate in another house across the small court, they often "saw little Louis, his labors and sorrows." Cecilia Fischer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... delicatioris species, qui diatim distribui solet Canonicis praebendariis; Tolosatibus Pain Moufflet, quasi Pain molet dictus; forte quod ejusmodi panes singulis diebus coquantur, atque ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... considerable rivers, in the various countries which it fertilizes by its waters. We reposed here for some hours, and to my astonishment the Doctor, laying aside his pipe, entertained us with his performance on a piano forte, which was in the room, and when his tea arrived his place ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... was one of those persons who seem never to absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could see the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison with the Hub; but she had never, thus far, led ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... excited great alarm at the South, lest the "peculiar institution" should itself be brought into peril. Fear of a "general insurrection of the slaves" was talked about and perhaps felt. The mails were opened in search of "incendiary publications;" a piano-forte sent from Boston to Virginia, was returned because the purchaser found an old copy of the "Emancipator" in the case which contained it. Public meetings for the promotion of American Slavery were held. There was one at Boston in Faneuil Hall, August 21, 1835, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... sicco; nidum suum terebratione indefessa aedificans. Cibus. Libros depascit; siccos praecipue seligens, et forte succidum ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... give. He then gave 'The Queen of Wuertemberg,' with many eulogiums on her and on the connubial felicity of her and the King; not a very agreeable theme for his host, for conjugal fidelity is not his forte. At length he desired Douro to go again to the band and order them to play 'See the conquering hero comes,' and then he rose. All the company rose with him, when he ordered everybody to sit down. Still standing, he said that he had been ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... force to settle the problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... S.S.W. and shall soon be out of sight of land. We have fourteen very agreeable passengers, an experienced and remarkably pleasant captain, and a strong, large, fast-sailing ship. We expect from twenty-five to thirty days' passage.... We have a piano-forte on board and two gentlemen who play elegantly, so we shall have fine times. I am in good spirits, though I feel rather singularly to see my native shores disappearing so fast and for so ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... spine and the course of the nerves, using gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... mugitus, rugitus, et boatus pecudum, et bestiarum, sed et cantus gallorum, vt per haec et alia signa constet ibi habitare gentes: nam et fluuius decurrens monstrat signa saepe certissima in suo exitu: ignoratur tamen si tenebrae per totum territorium sint eiusdem densitatis, an forte sint in circuitu per aliquod spacium, et ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... to the nearest house. This was at the toll-gate, which was kept by a man named Curtis. He was a person of progressive tastes, supposed to have aristocratic inclinations. As he was a well-to-do man, these were evinced in a Brussels carpet and a piano-forte which figured in his small parlor, and by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school. She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far beyond the hill-side cottage where ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... me scire quaerat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte ut nescire discat.—AUGUSTINUS. De ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... least I think not; but—" He hesitated, and then stopped, and I knew he was thinking of Fred and Carrie; but he need not. Of course Carrie would work as heartily as any of us; idling was never her forte; and Fred —well, perhaps Fred was ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fabellis concinne lepideque texendis Mirus artifex Neminem habuit parem. Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta, Quam nullo illi labore constiterint, Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici; Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat, Apte varie copioseque alluderet, Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior, An in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... preliminaries in order to do justice to his subject. He had that day returned from a pilgrimage to one of the pictures, and was able to inform the artists who were present with regard to the smallest accessory. We fancied, had painting, and not penning, been his forte, he could have reproduced the picture for us on the spot, could we, at the same time, have transformed the table-cloth into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... thanks which chiefly referred to the royal marriage act. The supplies voted for this year were L7,860,250; and the national debt amounted to L127,500,000. In the course of the session, it may be remarked, that the ancient and barbarous custom of peine forte et dure, by which felons refusing to plead, were stretched on their backs and pressed to death by heavy weights, was abolished by an act, which declared that all who acted thus contumaciously were to be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... crimen, Cultus disparitas, vis, ordo, ligamen, honestas, Si sis affinis, si forte coeire nequibis, Si parochi, et duplicis desit praesentia testis, Raptave si mulier, parti nec reddita tutae; Haec facienda vetant connubia, facta retractant.'"—From Essay on Scripture Doctrines of Adultery and Divorce, by H. V. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... in space. Davos contemplated the tips of his fingers as he sat in the grateful cool, his ten voices as he named them. With them he sang, thundered, and thought upon the keyboard of his grand piano-forte. A miracle, indeed, these slender cushions of fat, ramified by a network of nerves, sinews, and bones as exquisite in their mechanism as the motion of the planets. If hearing is a miracle, so is touch; the ear is not a resonator, as has been so long maintained, but an apparatus which records ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... ministri feriarum, ciuitatum, burgorum, & villarum mercatoriarum mercatoribus antedictis conquerentibus coram ijs celerem iustitiam faciant de die in diem sine dilatione secundum legem mercatoriam, de vniuersis & singulis qu per eandem legem poterunt terminari. Et si forte inueniatur defectus in aliquo balliuorum vel ministrorum prdictorum, vnde ijdem mercatores vel eorum aliquis dilationis incommoda sustinuerint vel sustineant, licet mercator versus partem in principali recuperauerit damna sua, nihilominus balliuus vel minister alius versus nos, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a seventh, named Alphabet Precis. Mr. Precis' peculiar forte was a singular happiness in official phraseology. Much that he wrote would doubtless have been considered in the purlieus of Paternoster Row as ungrammatical, if not unintelligible; but according to the syntax of Downing Street, it was equal to Macaulay, and superior to Gibbon. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... in a heap upon the nearest chair. Her laugh was very infectious; it began with a low, mirthful ripple, well down in the throat, and rose in rapid leaps of musical joy till it had traveled a whole octave of bubbling happy sounds, when it culminated in a peal of double forte shakes and trills, that made it a joy to hear, and finally it died out in an "Oh, dear me! What a ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... such was not Albo's forte, nor was it his chief interest. While it is true that all the Jewish thinkers of the middle ages were for a great part apologetes, this did not prevent a Maimonides or a Gersonides from making a really thorough and disinterested study of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... plantation. But that which turned most to their profite, in time, was an entrance into the trade of Wampampeake; for they now bought aboute 50^li. worth of it of them; and they tould them how vendable it was at their forte Orania; and did perswade them they would find it so at Kenebeck; and so it came to pass in time, though at first it stuck, & it was 2. years before they could put of this small quantity, till y^e inland people knew of it; and afterwards they could ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... congregatis ejusdem Provinciae Episcopis jurgium terminetur: nec alicui liceat, [4] Romanae Ecclesiae, cujus in omnibus causis debet reverentia custodiri, relictis his sacerdotibus, qui in eadem Provincia Dei Ecclesiam nutu Divino gubernant, ad alias convolare Provincias. Quod siquis forte praesumpserit; & ab officio Clericatus summotus, & injuriarum reus judicetur. Si autem majores causae in medium fuerint devolutae, ad Sedem Apostolicam sicut Synodus statuit, & beata consuetudo exigit, post judicium Episcopale referantur. By these Letters it seems to me that Gallia ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... pecuniary value was not to be despised, but thirst of fame and the desire of a more public position were the chief inducements to a man of Mr. Bridges' temperament, in which ambition and patriotism formed so prominent a part. Latin, however, was not Mr. Bridges' forte; he excelled rather in the higher branches of arithmetic and the abstruse sciences. His attainments, however, in the dead languages were beyond those of most of his contemporaries, as the letter he sent to the Master and Seniors will abundantly prove. It was chiefly ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... lawyer of great abilities; John Burk,—the historian of Virginia; and lastly, Patrick Henry,—rough, jolly, and lazy. From such associates, all distinguished sooner or later, Jefferson learned much of society, of life, and literature. At college, as in after-life, his forte was writing. Jefferson never, to his dying day, could make a speech. He could talk well in a small circle of admirers and friends, and he held the readiest pen in America, but he had no eloquence as a speaker, which, I think, is a gift like poetry, seldom ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... on our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. These journeys provided the material for a book which ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... questions touching pay, the amount retained for clothing, promotion, roster, reserve, uniform, full and fatigue dress, armament, and tactics. He understood, without difficulty, the advantages of the percussion gun, but the attempt to explain rifled cannon to him was in vain. Artillery was not his forte; but he avowed, nevertheless, that Napoleon had owed more than one victory ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... sorte, l'Italia l'alza in cima della spada mirando al segno; e la sua rossa strada ne brilla insino alle sue alpine porte. Tu tendi la potenza della morte come un arco tra il Vodice e l'Hermada; varchi l'Isonzo indomito ove guada la tua Vittoria col tuo pugno forte. Giovine sei, rinato dalla terra sitibonda, balzato su dal duro Carso col fiore dei tuio fanti imberbi. Questo, che in te si compie, anno di guerra splenda da te, avido del futuro, e al ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... on me," said Jerry, now arousing himself and sauntering to the fire; "I hardly ever feel well,"—complaining was Jerry's especial forte, an excuse for all his laziness; yet his appetite never failed; and when, as was sometimes the case, one of the neighbours sent a small piece of meat, or any little article of food to his wife, under the plea of ill health he managed to appropriate nearly the whole of it. He was selfishness ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... most barbarous and cruel of the punishments of our English statutes was that distinguished by the name of Peine forte et dure, or pressing to death with every aggravation of torture. It was adopted as a manner of punishment suitable to cases where the accused refused to plead, and was commuted about the year 1406 from the older method ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... no use to put himself on his trial, for every trial had ended in a conviction,—which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that, suffering the penalty of the English common law for a contumacious refusal to answer,—the peine forte et dure,—he was prest to death with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he intended to protect the inheritance of his children, which, as he had been informed, would by a conviction of felony have been forfeit ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Mr. Lindsay,—I never imitate. Originality is, if I may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the critics allow as much as that. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 1380, when the last Venetian Count had gone, but there are later additions. At this time the Castel S. Lorenzo was built, displacing an oratory built on the site of a nunnery established before the eleventh century. Forte Molo, by the harbour (formerly Fort S. Giovanni, and now much altered) and the tower of S. Luca still remain of the earlier fortifications. As the town spread it was fortified by the addition of the Torre Menze (built in 1464 by Michelozzo and George of Sebenico, but altered in 1538), ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... and the little auditory became a ringing arena, where we fought without flinching, standing foot to foot and drawing fire for fire. The man in the monkey-jacket broke his word: silence was not his forte; he hurled denials and counter-charges vociferously; he was full of gall and bitterness, and when I closed the last page and resumed my chair, he sprang from his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... writer of historical tales and stories of adventure-intrigue, his particular forte being tales of India and the Near East. Twelve of his novels are listed in THE CHECKLIST OF FANTASTIC LITERATURE, with themes of mysticism, black versus white magic, lost-race, and even true science fiction. Many others of his stories are ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... days you find some of the traits that distinguished him later on. For one thing he disdained the drudgery of committee work: he chafed at the confinement of the conference room; eagle-like he yearned to spread his wings. His forte was talking. He loathed to mull over dull and unresponsive reports. He frankly admitted a disinclination to work, and it makes him one of the most superficial of men in what the world calls culture. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... we set this aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, as it were, compelling his heart into his eyes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... courage required to run away. They have, besides, when confronted with each other, a certain instinct for strife, as we see in other male animals, such as dogs, bulls, and so forth. But high and perilous enterprise is not Waverley's forte. He would never have been his celebrated ancestor Sir Nigel, but only Sir Nigel's eulogist and poet. I will tell you where he will be at home, my dear, and in his place,—in the quiet circle of domestic happiness, lettered ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... best lyric verses and most beautiful nature pictures; but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot, such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles, the principal character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold's dramas show that his forte was not in character-drawing nor ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... his residence not far from Bloomsbury-square, and applied for an engagement. The manager, after scrutinizing the various qualifications of the youthful candidate, inquired, "and pray sir, to what particular parts have your studies been directed? What is your forte?" "Why, sir, (replied the youth in a modest tone) I rather think that I excel in your line." "My line! (exclaimed the manager with peculiar complacency) what is that? What do you mean?" "To confess the truth, (rejoined the tyro) I flatter myself that I am most at home ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... comedy 'The Hornet of Judah'—No?—Ah, she vas a great comedy, Sampson. All London talked of her. She has been translated into every tongue. Perhaps I play in your company. I am a great actor—hein? You know not my forte is voman's parts—I make myself so lovely complexion vith red paint, I fall in love vith me." He sniggered over his stout. "The Redacteur vill not redact long, hein?" he said presently. "He is a fool-man. If he work ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... but, had she been a little sharper, she would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the prim sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and melody were well ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... nous, a force de rafiner, nous avons appauvri la notre, & n'ayant souvent qu'un terme propre a rendre une idee, nous aimons mieux affoiblir l'idee que de ne pas employer un terme noble.[3] Quelle perte pour ceux d'entre nos Ecrivains qui ont l'imagination forte, que celle de tant de mots que nous revoyons avec plaisir dans Amyot & dans Montagne. Ils ont commence par etre rejettes du beau style, parce qu'ils avoient passe dans le peuple; & ensuite rebutes par le peuple meme, qui a la longue est toujours le ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... peaceful sleep that night, anyway. Then a man with a sweet tenor sang OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT, and the fog-horn showed us just how oft, namely, every thirty seconds. But the queerest effect of all was when a girl had to play a piano-forte solo. It was something of Chopin's, full of runs and trills and little silvery notes. She started all right; but when she was half-way down the first page, BOO went the fog-horn, a longer blast than usual. We saw her fingers flying, and the turning of the page, but not a note could we ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... omnibus locis atque urbibus universis claudi protinus empla, et accessu vetitis omnibus licentiam delinquendi perditis abnegari. Volumus etiam cunctos a sacrificiis abstinere. Quod siquis aliquid forte hujusmodi perpetraverit, gladio sternatur: facultates etiam perempti fisco decernimus vindicari: et similiter adfligi rectores provinciarum si facinora vindicare neglexerint. Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 4. Chronology has ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... since the publication of "Roughing it in the Bush," to give an account of the present state of society in the colony, and to point out its increasing prosperity and commercial advantages; but statistics are not my forte, nor do I feel myself qualified for such an arduous and important task. My knowledge of the colony is too limited to enable me to write a comprehensive work on a subject of vital consequence, which might involve the happiness of others. But what I do know I will ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... You'll find your own work all in good time. It mayn't be what you'd like it to, but it'll be something that you can do better than any one else," said Miss Jinny with kind wisdom. "Look at me. I'm sure that books and catalogues is my forte, but the Lord knows better. He's given me the sense to see it, too, and so mama is comfortable and happy and someone else who hasn't a dear mother depending on her does the library ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan Whittemore—a ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more culminated ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Diogenes of Istria was all that now afforded enjoyment to the broken-down old hero. It was with intense delight that he heard the social grandeur and distinctions that had cost him so dear made ridiculous by this half-witted fellow, whose peculiar forte it was to jeer at the pomp that surrounded the governor, and imitate French elegance in a highly-burlesque manner; and when he did this, his poor princely ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... opening of the settlement. The old cat had a little girl, the orphan of some relation, who lived with her as a kind of slavish companion. I hope she has had the conscience to make her independent, in consideration of the peine forte et dure to which she subjected ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... creed was neither Christian nor scientific; now a university professor, with the bristling beard of an anarchist chief-of-section, and a roaring, guttural voice, whose intenseness left him gasping and apoplectic; now a civilised Cherokee with a mission; now a female elocutionist, whose forte was Byron's Songs of Greece; now a high caste Chinaman; now a miniature painter; now a tenor, a pianiste, a mandolin player, a missionary, a drawing master, a virtuoso, a collector, an Armenian, a botanist with a new flower, a critic with a new theory, a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... scientific truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pitture, Trovai giungendo, e nobili sculture Di marmo fatte, da scalpel non vile. Nobil giardin con un perpetuo Aprile Di varij fior, di frutti, e di verdure, Ombre soavi, acque a temprar l'arsure E strade di belta non dissimile; E non men forte estel, che per fortezza Ha il ponte, e i fianchi, e lo circonda intorno Fosso profundo e di real larghezza. Qui fei col mio Signore dolce soggiorno Con santo amor, con somma contentezza Onde ne benedico il ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... music is interesting, particularly so, because it is entirely original and free from reminiscenses.—There are some little {165} masterpieces in it, which deserve to become popular on account of their freshness; wit and humor however are not the composer's "forte" and so the first act, in which the vagabonds present themselves, is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... with a Russian party; and woe be to the Sovereign and to the Minister who is not at its head: all the resources of Russian influence and of Russian corruption are lavished to render his people rebellious and his administration unsuccessful. From this peine forte et dure we believe that Europe will now be relieved; and if the people or the sovereigns of the Continent, particularly those of Germany and Italy, make a tolerable use of the freedom from foreign dictation which the weakness of Russia will give to them, we look forward ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the parvity or lowness of Stature, be no Impediment, because we have frequently seen such Dwarf-Men, yet we did never see a Nation of them: For then there would be no need of that Talmudical Precept which Job. Ludolphus[E] mentions, Nanus ne ducat Nanam, ne forte oriatur ex iis ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... speculated in the cattle markets, and realised some fifteen or perhaps twenty per cent., of which the lawyer took the larger share. Something of this sort has been done in other businesses besides farming. Frank, however, was not the man to remain in a state of tutelage, working for another. His forte was not saving—simple accumulation was not for him; but he looked round the district to ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his "Nel cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another "Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there is a check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He has said publicly,—and the words are portentous,—"The silly girl is ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus. Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
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