"Unpropitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Mgussa's familiar motioned the Kamraviona and several officers to draw around him, when, in a very low tone, he gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations seemed unpropitious, for we immediately repaired to our boats and returned to our quarters. Here we no sooner arrived than a host of Wakungu, lately returned from the Unyoro war, came to pay their respects to the king: they had returned six days or more, but etiquette had forbidden their approaching majesty ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... between the piles. The place was haunted by strange and fearsome insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust down between the cracks in the worn floor. But those boys were satisfied that they were having a perfectly blissful time, and were serenely happy in defiance of unpropitious surroundings. They were 'playing the wag,' and to be playing the wag under any circumstances is a guarantee of pure felicity to the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... was also out of all patience, and vexed to the soul at the society of the parrot. Bewailing his misfortune, he was railing at the revolutions of the skies; and, wringing the hands of chagrin, was lamenting his condition, and saying: "What an unpropitious fate is this; what ill-luck, and untoward fortune! Could they any way suit the dignity of me, who would in my day strut with my fellow-crows along the wall of a garden:—It were durance sufficient for ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... almost given over sacrificing and consulting the flame or the entrails; for no reversal or respite of their sufferings had followed their most assiduous acts of deprecation. Moreover the omens were generally considered by the priests to have been unpropitious or adverse. A sheep had been discovered to have, instead of a liver, something very like a gizzard; a sow had chewed and swallowed the flowers with which it had been embellished for the sacrifice; and a calf, after receiving ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... has been equally unpropitious to the love-lorn Phoebe Wilkins. I fear the reader will be impatient at having this humble amour so often alluded to; but I confess I am apt to take a great interest in the love troubles of simple girls of this class. Few people have an idea of the world ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... original cantons they appeared closer; to the cities, especially Zurich, less restrictive. This conflict of opinion had contributed not a little to the duration and violence of the old Zurich War, in the preceding century. Now it revived again, and that at a most unpropitious moment. In the Buergerrecht, stipulations were certainly made in regard to the Emperor and Empire, as well as the Confederates, so that the obligations under which the two cities had come toward them, seemed to be ratified ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... must bide his time. Twice he had closed with the enemy, and twice he had come away the worse. Nothing was to be gained by this method. He must bide his time, wait for an encounter, dodge it if the moment proved unpropitious, but refrain from close attack. He must wait for ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... the latest statistical returns, there are several hundred Russian premieres danseuses and thousands of coryphees of all grades congregated in the Metropolis, many of them without engagements, and reduced to giving dancing lessons to the daughters of profiteers, Crypto-Semites and other unpropitious persons. The organisation of a Russian Ballet train would therefore serve the double purpose of freeing these gifted performers from an ignoble use of their talents and at the same time initiating the provinces in the poetry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... islands of St. Francis and St. Peter. Certainly Captain Baudin, in order to render this hydrographical survey complete, should have followed out his instructions, and penetrated beyond St. Peter and St. Francis Islands. The weather, however, was too unpropitious, and this exploration was reserved for a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the mystery of God contained in them shall have been fulfilled. One thing, however, they clearly reveal to us: that the future triumph of God's kingdom is certain, and that all the great movements in the history of the nations, however unpropitious they may seem at the time, are parts of the mighty plan of divine providence which shall end in making the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... endearments graciously, but Phyllis was glad the toast wasn't cold. She recognized unpropitious portents. ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features—so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... yet not of my wife. The dart which I received from Miss Wharton sticks fast in my heart; and, I assure you, I could hardly persuade myself even to appear unfaithful to her. O Eliza! accuse me not of infidelity; for your image is my constant companion. A thousand times have I cursed the unpropitious stars which withheld from her a fortune. That would have enabled me to marry her; and with her even wedlock would have ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... returned unsuccessful, giving it, as their opinion that "blackfella bin 'perim 'longa 'crub." Peter and Barney were then despatched with orders to camp out that night and look for them all next day. A steer having been killed last night, the day was passed in jerking him. The day was very unpropitious as there had been a shower of rain in the morning, and there was no sun, so it had to be smoked with manure in one of the tents. What with the mosquitoes and sand-flies, men, horses, and cattle were kept in a continual fever. The horses would not leave the smoke of the fires, the cattle ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the arrival of Theodoric's embassy at Constantinople was unpropitious, as the Emperor Zeno was already stricken by mortal illness. On the 9th of April, 491, he died, and was succeeded by the handsome but elderly life-guardsman, Anastasius, to whom Ariadne, widow of Zeno, gave her hand in marriage. The rights ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... end of rope, That o'er a wind-bound vessel's side Has soak'd in harbor, tide and tide. On thorns and scratches, till that moment Unnoticed, you begin to comment; You never felt such bitter brambles, Such heavy soil, in all your rambles! You never felt your fleas so vicious! Till, sick of life so unpropitious, You wish at last, to end the passage, That you were dead, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... altering the institutions to which a city is accustomed; there being nothing so injurious to the people as such a change; for many are necessarily offended, and where there are several discontented, some unpropitious event may be constantly apprehended. He said it appeared to him that their resolution would have two exceedingly pernicious effects; the one conferring honors on those who, having never possessed them, esteemed them the less, and therefore had the less ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... and was accepted with equal good feeling, such as was honourable to all concerned; and the Sovereign learned, as years went on, to repose a singular confidence in the Minister with whom her first relations had been so unpropitious, but whose real honesty, ability, and loyalty soon approved themselves to her clear perceptions, which no prejudice has long been ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... tell when his customer is in a tearing hurry. It is an unpropitious time to make suggestions. The clerk must see things from the customer's point of view. It is permissible to suggest something else in place of the thing he has asked for but it is not good manners to make fun ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... for thee! First, when thou fled'st The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee; 5 Then in the battle of the Sons of Earth, When I stood foot by foot close to thy side, No unpropitious fellow-combatant, And, driving through his shield my winged spear, Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now, 10 Is it a dream of which I speak to thee? By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies! And now I suffer more than all before. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... asked to the Priory to meet Angela, to whom it was now a comfort and pleasure to talk of her treasure, so much less lost to her than in the uncongenial surroundings threatened at Coalham. And the invitation, followed by the proposal, came at a not unpropitious moment. A railway company, after much surveying, much disputing, and many heartburnings, were actually obtaining an Act of Parliament, empowering it to lay its cruel hands upon the Goyle, running its viaducts ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the son of Minerva, "Venus is unpropitious to-night. All my trouble is vain." For when the black storm broke upon the little channel islet, Alaric Hobbs saw no way of a comfortable return to the Royal Victoria at St. Heliers. "I might leave all here and claim old Fraser's hospitality for ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... far more importance than the condition of the giver of the wise exhortations. The latter is all right, he doesn't need such admonitions; the other does. The important question, therefore, should be: "Is he ready to receive them?" If not, if the time is unpropitious, the mental condition inauspicious, better do, say, nothing, than make matters worse. But, unfortunately, it generally happens that at such times the critic is far more concerned at unbosoming himself of his just and wise admonitions than he is as to whether the time is ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... motives, of the Deity are examined in respect of those events which are propitious to His favourite, they should not also be examined with the same critical pertinacity as to the greatly predominating collection of events which are decidedly unpropitious to him, so as to bring out the reason why the simpler course of saving him from all hardships and persecution had not been followed, instead of the circuitous plan of launching heavy calamities against him, and then ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Cordilleras into the Atlantic. The precipitous steeps of the sierra, with its splintered sides of porphyry and granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own volcanic fires, might seem equally unpropitious to the labors of the husbandman. And all communication between the parts of the long- extended territory might be thought to be precluded by the savage character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and impassable ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... followed thus far he has a tolerably fair notion of the unpropitious and eccentric surroundings amid which Field worked immediately after coming to Chicago. Out of this strange environment came as variegated a column of satire, wit, and personal persiflage as ever attracted and fascinated the readers ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... permission," said King, also in English. The Prince looked glum, but interposed no imperial objection. Instead he suddenly shoved the cigarette box under the nose of his dainty relative, who at that unpropitious instant stooped over to watch King's awkward ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Noah had a singular influence over her young master, who was in the habit of consulting her with regard to his affairs, and nothing could have been more unpropitious to the success of grandpa's suit than the knowing she disapproved. Beside this, Guy had only the previous week lost a small amount loaned under similar circumstances. Standing silent for a moment, while he buried ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... present is the most unpropitious moment which could have been selected for the passage of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... hapless sufferer from beneath the table. It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if "every dog will have his day," he could not have selected a more unpropitious one than this. Mrs. Ogleton, too, had a pet—a favorite pug—whose squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow! continued the brute—a chorus ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... bravely. Met it cheerfully too. The crisping breeze that curled the waters of the river, the blue sky and fair sunlight, the bright and beautiful of the scene around them, those two saw and tasted; with hopeful though very grave hearts. The other poor lady saw nothing but a dirty steamboat and a very unpropitious company. Among these however were Eleanor's fellow-voyagers, Mr. Amos and his wife; and she was introduced to them now for the first time. Various circumstances had prevented their meeting ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... children, and a farm-laborer were running by the swollen margin of the mill-stream, yelling forlornly, pointing at an object that showed itself now and again in the swirling center of the current. Plainly, somebody had chosen this most unpropitious season for an accidental bath, and his companions were sympathetically watching him drown, while not daring, not dreaming of, any foolhardy attempt ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... not to betray any agitation, she could not help it that her tone was unusually high and hard, and her mother felt sure that something unpropitious ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of. There is no country, however fair, that has not some drawback or other. There are no hopes, however promising, that may not be blighted; no prospects, however encouraging, that may not wither. Unfitness for the new field of enterprise on which a man may enter—unpropitious seasons, the designs of others, or unforeseen misfortunes; one or more of these may combine to bring about results very opposite from those we had anticipated. I would not therefore take upon myself the responsibility ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... degree of irritation in such troubles which adds a whole armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... his work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile circumstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder and more sceptical than ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... for myself, except to try and return all the things, books especially, which I had been borrowing; but about my child I feel anxious lest I should not take what is necessary for his health and comfort on so long a voyage, where omissions are irreparable. The unpropitious, rainy weather delays us now from day to day, as our ship; the Elizabeth,—(look out for news of shipwreck!) cannot finish taking in her cargo till come ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... knowledge both leads and attaches them to a superior conduct. It is a false, as well as a barbarous maxim, and a maxim very injurious both to the interests of the rich and poor, as well as of the states to which they belong, that knowledge is unpropitious to virtue. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... humorous allegory the poet bewails his unhappy lot on having fallen on an age so unpropitious to poetry, contrasting it with the happy times so responsive to his predecessors who piped to a world prepared to dance to their music. However, he must toil and be satisfied if he can make a little ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... settlement, there is more life than in Gafsa, though the surroundings are decidedly unpropitious—a waterless plain, with low hills in the foreground, phosphate-bearing, and wondrously tinted in rose and heliotrope. There are respectable stores here, very different from the shops of Gafsa. I entered a large Italian warehouse which contained an assortment of goods—clothing, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... and again patience. Here at least we seem to enjoy full security. The ice is so thin that it could not hurt by pressure—there are no bergs within reasonable distance—indeed the thinness of the ice is one of the most tantalising conditions. In spite of the unpropitious prospect everyone on board is cheerful and one ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... fact, had become so critical, and the bank manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... imperial troops, thirty thousand strong, quite outnumbered the army of Gustavus, and the officers of Wallenstein unanimously advised to give battle. Wallenstein was a superstitious man and deeply devoted to astrological science. He consulted his astrologers, and they declared the stars to be unpropitious to Gustavus. This at once decided him. He resolved, however, to act on the defensive, and through the night employed the energies of his army in throwing up intrenchments. In the earliest dawn ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Gordon that of old Was wont to preach, now once more preaching; I know well that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute; This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offer'd To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities: And ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the three men spoke or stirred, but in that time the steady blue eyes of the countryman took in the details of the scene—the luxurious furnishings, the condition of the two men—with the rapidity and minuteness of a sensitized plate. Ironic chance had chosen an unpropitious night for his call. Intoxication surrounding a bar, under the stimulus of numbers, and preceding or following some exciting event, he could understand, could, perhaps, condone; but this solitary dissipation, drunkenness for its own ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... as the obscurity would allow him to judge, but half muffled up in a cloak, and armed with a stout bludgeon. Much as he had just now been wishing for some guide, he yet could not congratulate himself on so unpropitious a rencontre. The stranger's dress and unceremonious greeting were not more suspicious than the abruptness of his appearance: for Bertram felt convinced that he must have way-laid him. Assuming however as much composure as he could, he demanded in ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... at Perigny, about a league from the capital of Burgundy, so as to make the last stage of his journey thither in leisurely state. Unpropitious weather on Saturday, January 22d, the appointed day, made postponement of the ducal parade necessary, out of consideration for the precious hangings and costly ecclesiastical robes that were to grace the ceremonies of reception and investiture. Fortunately, Sunday, January ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... unpropitious circumstances the impetuous Gauls were met on the banks of the river Allia, ten miles from Rome, on the very day on which the Fabii had been destroyed by the Etruscans the century before (July 16, 390). The result was that terror took possession of the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... late, citizen," rejoined Chauvelin urbanely. "The lady in whom you take so fervent an interest is no doubt asleep in her cell at this hour. It would not be fitting to disturb her now. She might not find shelter before morning, and the weather is quite exceptionally unpropitious." ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... handicapped here by the scarcity of ferocious game, I was more fortunate in another enthusiasm which attacked me at almost the same time. For however unpropitious the hunting is on any given part of the earth's surface, there is everywhere and always an abundance of good hidden-treasure-seeking to be had. The garden, the attic, the tennis lawn all suffered. And my initiative was strengthened by the discovery of an incomparable ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... him, for at that time he had the makings of a voluminous letter-writer. Yet it was only what one might expect. The whole world was unpropitious—obdurate indeed.... A splendid ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Dublin, similar to the Royal Society in London, as early as 1683; but the distracted state of the country proved unpropitious to the cultivation of philosophy and literature. The Royal Irish Academy grew from a society established in Dublin about 1782 by a number of gentlemen, most of whom belonged to the university. They held weekly meetings and read, in turn, essays on various subjects. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... experience. These, too, are found in all ranks; I think the Military service exhibits some of the worst specimens. But Bull in authority anywhere is apt to exhibit his horns to those whom he suspects of being nobodies. Elevation is unpropitious to the display of his ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... cold water is at the bottom of most of these complaints of unpropitious seasons, as well as of most of our soils; and it is in our power to remove the cause of these complaints and of our ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... happiness of others, had imposed on some who should have known better. Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after Fenelon's pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age,—an age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure. Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and without ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne—who did not notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace girl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment implied therein if she had—got ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... atmosphere singularly unpropitious to formidable intellectual ventures, and one never feels that his essentially ecclesiastical mind ever really grasped the human plausibility of natural paganism. But Pascal went straight back to Montaigne, and, like Pater's Marius under the influence of Aristippus, begins ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... that he owed no tribute to Helge, and would pay him none; but that he would give the required sum as a free gift to his old friend's son, leaving him at liberty to dispose of it as he pleased. Meantime, since the season was unpropitious for the return journey, and storms continually swept the sea, the king invited Frithiof to tarry with him over the winter; and it was only when the gentle spring breezes were blowing once more that he at ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... ease in a large house, but day by day her riches wane and her house contracts. She explains to her visitor that her condition at any given hour affects the whole lives of all children born at that time, and that he had come into the world at a most unpropitious moment; and she advises him to take his niece Militsa (who had been born at a lucky time) to live in his house, and to call all he might acquire her property. This advice he follows, and all goes well ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... shut the door after her, and disappeared. I stood, at the bottom of the steps, confounded at such strange and unexpected treatment. I could not withdraw till my purpose was accomplished. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door, and pulled the bell. A negro came, of a very unpropitious aspect, and, opening the door, looked at me in silence. To my question, Was Mrs. Maurice to be seen? he made some answer, in a jargon which I could not understand; but his words were immediately followed by an unseen person within the house:—"Mrs. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... friendship betrayed and the like. As, in despair from remorse, the whole life seems to be involved in one action: so in the despair we are now considering, the whole life appears to be shut up in the one unpropitious affection. Yet human nature, if fairly treated, is too large a thing to be suppressed into despair by one affection, however potent. We might imagine that if there were anything that would rob life of its strength and favour, it ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... unpropitious journey—the exposure to cold and rain—that he had hurried on the invalids, till he had accomplished his own purposes. One had already gone; the other was fast following. Speculators have consciences and affections, and his were roused ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... A more unpropitious commencement for a great career could hardly be conceived. Wesley returned to England in bad health and low spirits. He redoubled his austerities and his zeal in teaching, and he was tortured by doubts about the reality of his faith. It was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... western people from the Union," and he continued to do so, subsequent to the ratification of the treaty between the United States and Spain. The report made by Power, the Baron's agent, of the dispositions of the western people, was altogether unpropitious to his design. He, however, delayed the delivery of the posts, to which the United States were entitled, under various pretences; still having the separation in view. His proceedings to effect this object are ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... race, it is supposed, was in the high table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and privation, were bold, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... slavery. The act of her late Convention, in depriving a large number of their own constituents (the colored people) of the elective franchise, heretofore possessed by them without any allegation of its abuse on their part, would seem to prove an unpropitious state of public sentiment. We would neither deny, nor elude, the force of such evidence. But when this measure of the convention is brought out and unfolded in its true light—shown to be a party measure ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a figure the side of which is five, subtracting one from each square or two perfect squares from all, and adding a hundred cubes of three. This entire number is geometrical and contains the rule or law of generation. When this law is neglected marriages will be unpropitious; the inferior offspring who are then born will in time become the rulers; the State will decline, and education fall into decay; gymnastic will be preferred to music, and the gold and silver and brass and iron will form a chaotic mass—thus division will arise. Such ...
— The Republic • Plato
... against; come in conflict with. emulate &c (compete) 720; rival, spoil one's trade. Adj. opposing, opposed &c v.; adverse, antagonistic; contrary &c 14; at variance &c 24; at issue, at war with. unfavorable, unfriendly; hostile, inimical, cross, unpropitious. in hostile array, front to front, with crossed bayonets, at daggers drawn; up in arms; resistant &c 719. competitive, emulous. Adv. against, versus, counter to, in conflict with, at cross purposes. against ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... suppose, I loved a fair girl with beautiful blue eyes, and lips so pouting and plump, so ruddy and liquid, that the words seemed sweetened as they melted away from them; but my love was unpropitious, and another was preferred to me. I have ever been curious to know why. Vanity always in my own soul made me greatly the superior of the favored one, in all particulars. But she did not think so, and chose ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Isaurians, and Huns (Ephthalites?) served under his standard; and a sudden incursion was made into the Roman territory, for which the imperial officers were wholly unprepared. A considerable impression would probably have been produced, had not the weather proved exceedingly unpropitious. Storms of rain and hail hindered the advance of the Persian troops, and allowed the Roman generals a breathing space, during which they collected an army. But the Emperor Theodosius was anxious that the flames of war should not be relighted in this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... its own magnitude as those of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn in proportion to their magnitude, they could be descried by any human observer. The patient, persevering, reverent temper of Herschel took no account, however, of any discouraging or unpropitious circumstances. What he did was to substitute for telescopes of the ordinary construction the new and gigantic forty-foot tube already described; and, thus, with unremitting vigilance and intense zeal, he arrived at the discovery (between January ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... smiling at the simple-minded politician, who believed that everybody's politics were as honest as his own. At which unpropitious moment a number of half-drunken men, with "Vote for Trenchard!" stuck round their broken hats, came round ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... our fundamental laws. Secondly, because I am in favor of the Constitution as it is, firmly believing that no good reason exists for its change, and that an honest adherence to its wise provisions is our surest guarantee for real or supposed grievances, and that the present of all times is the most unpropitious moment to attempt any change or modification. Party politics in all their embittered madness rule the hour, but calm times and cool heads will be required whenever the American people desire to enter upon so hazardous an experiment. Let ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... ended in matrimony. His first match was unpropitious. Foiled in his attempts upon the chastity of a lady of great beauty and high honor, he was rash enough to marry her; rash, we say, for from that fatal hour all became as darkness; the curtain fell upon the comedy of his ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ladyship imposed upon the elegant Mr. Chatterly the task of expressing the desire of the company to see the unknown artist, in a neat occasional copy of verses. The poor gentleman's muse, however, proved unpropitious; for he was able to proceed no farther than two lines in half an hour, which, coupled with its variations, we insert from the blotted manuscript, as Dr. Johnson has printed the alterations in Pope's ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... going when they sat down, though the temperature of the room and the sight of hot soup might have discouraged a less determined gayety. Moreover, there were details as unpropitious as the heat: the expiring roses expressed not beauty but pathos, and what faint odour they exhaled was no rival to the lusty emanations of the Brussels sprouts; at the head of the table, Adams, sitting ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons contending hideously in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... statistics, I have since ascertained that about one in ten of these letters is dictated either by honest sympathy, the warm, uncritical recognition of youth (which I don't suppose any author would diminish, if he could), or the craving for encouragement, under unpropitious circumstances of growth. But how was I, in the beginning, to guess at the motives of the writers? They offered sugar-plums, which I swallowed without a suspicion of the drastic ingredients so many of them contained. Good Mrs. Sigourney kept a journal of her experiences in this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... day he waited a favourable opportunity to carry out his purpose, and in vain. The two sisters seemed to be inseparable in this time of trouble, and try as he might he could not get the interview for which he so ardently longed. The fates were unpropitious, and one after another his artifices were defeated until at last he was obliged to fall back upon the assistance of his friend, and ask him, as a last resource, to help ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the U. S. S. Swatara, Captain Ralph Chandler, U. S. N., commanding. In astronomical observations all work is at the mercy of the elements. Clear weather was, of course, a necessity to success at any station. In the present case the weather was on the whole unpropitious. While there was not a complete failure at any one station, the number or value of the observations was more or less impaired at all. Where the sky was nearly cloudless, the air was thick and hazy. This was especially ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... (born at Astrakhan in 1703), the son and grandson of priests, who was educated in Russia and abroad. When he decided, on his return from abroad in 1730, to adopt literature as a profession, the times were extremely unpropitious. He had, long before, during his student days in Moscow, written syllabic verses, an elegy on the death of Peter the Great, and a couple of dramas, which were acted by his fellow-students. In 1732 he ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... given himself away for nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself—let alone with me—in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... often happens when everything unpropitious is guarded against, nothing unpropitious occurs. It would have been a wonderful chance, indeed, if, supplied only for one day, a fine, clear day had come. But supplied against bad weather for two or three weeks, it was no wonder at all that the very ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... accordance with these commands [143] and set out against Amalek, to conquer whom required not only skillful strategy, but also adeptness in the art of magic. For Amalek was a great magician and knew that propitious and the unpropitious hour of each individual, and in this way regulated his attacks against Israel; he attacked that one at night, whose death had been predicted for a night, and him whose death had been preordained for a day did he ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... took the crew of le Pluton, her new adversary, by surprise; for they had not been able to distinguish the precise position of their enemy; and, besides doing vast injury to both hull and people, drew her fire at an unpropitious moment. So uncertain and hasty, indeed, was the discharge the French ship gave in return, that no small portion of the contents of her guns passed ahead of the Plantagenet, and went into the larboard quarter of le Temeraire, the French admiral's ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of prosperity: but it is the faithful page of biography that transmits to future generations the poverty, pain, wrong, hunger, wretchedness and torment, and every nameless misery that has been endured by those who have lived in obscurity, and groped their lonely way through a long series of unpropitious events, with but little help besides the light of nature. While the gilded monument displays in brightest colors the vanity of pomp, and the emptiness of nominal greatness, the biographical page, that lives in every line, is giving ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... smarting under a sense of injury which was annoyingly indefinite. It was true that Jack Meredith had come at a very unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could only have been the result of accident. It was really a case of the third person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms. Durnovo had vaguely felt in the presence of either a subtle possibility of sympathy between Jocelyn ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... of 1614 the "Restless" was launched. Immediately Captain Block entered upon an exploring tour through what is now called the East River. He gave the whole river the name of the Hellegat, from a branch of the river Scheldt in East Flanders. The unpropitious name still adheres to the tumultuous point of whirling eddies where the waters of the sound unite with those ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... provinces were much exposed, and the armies of barbarians spread over them like the lava of Mount AEtna. The imminence of our danger manifestly called for generals already illustrious for their past achievements in war; but nevertheless, as if some unpropitious deity had made the selection, the men who were sought out for the chief military appointments were of tainted character. The chief among them were Lupicinus and Maximus, the one being count of Thrace, the other a leader notoriously ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... woods have quite clothed themselves. In April the angler or the sketcher is chilled by the east wind, whirling showers of hail, and even when the riverbanks are sweet with primroses, the bluff tops of the border hills are often bleak with late snow. This state of things is less unpropitious to angling than might be expected. A hardy race of trout will sometimes rise freely to the artificial fly when the natural fly is destroyed, and the angler is almost blinded with dusty snowflakes. All ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the documented facts. It is clear that, within a generation after Shakespeare's death, common opinion both in Stratford and London recognized that in the actor and dramatist a great man had passed away, that he had been in a worldly sense highly successful, though starting from unpropitious beginnings, that he wrote with great swiftness and ease, and that in his personal relations he was gentle, kindly, genial, and witty. That the bailiff's son who returned to his native town as a prosperous gentleman, is to be identified with the actor ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... and is one of the most important features of the Park. It is worthy to rank as a feat of engineering skill with, any of the great works of modern times. The Commissioners decided to put its powers to the test yesterday afternoon, but owing to the unpropitious weather of the forenoon the trial was postponed. Nevertheless, Commissioners Stranahan, Fiske, and Haynes, with Mr. Martin, engineer in charge, and Mr. John Y. Culyer, his assistant, were at the well. During the last summer some difficulties were encountered in the sinking of the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... steady and prices remunerative, and visions of untold wealth were looming up before the minds of thousands. Prospecting was extending far and near. Every stream and ravine that deflected toward the Alleghany or Oil Creek was leased, and in very many unpropitious ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... period is eminently favourable to the growth of quick and active talents. It forms a class of men, shrewd, vigilant, inventive; of men whose dexterity triumphs over the most perplexing combinations of circumstances, whose presaging instinct no sign of the times can elude. But it is an unpropitious season for the firm and masculine virtues. The statesman who enters on his career at such a time, can form no permanent connections, can make no accurate observations on the higher parts of political ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... known as regards the chevalier or chevaliere d'Eon, I know not which. But these secret agents were, unknown to the king, all devoted to the parliaments, and consequently inimical to courtiers, favorites, and especially mistresses. God knows how they disposed of us! By these unpropitious channels the king had learnt all the hatred which was borne to madame de Pompadour. He was afraid of exciting the discontent of the people by announcing another mistress, and was no less intimidated at the severity of madame Louise, and the ill-humor of his other children. He loved his pleasure ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... was unpropitious for jokes. Even the East Ender, who had worked an edging of red and white wool into his pony's mane and hung rosettes of red, white, and blue at its ears, was too busy perspiring and hating his hundred thousand neighbours to smile. He was also busy weighing his chances of getting to Epsom ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Scotland ..... The King of Spain dies, after having bequeathed his Dominions by Will to the Duke of Anjou..... The French King's Apology for accepting the Will ..... The States-general owns Philip as King of Spain..... Anew Ministry and a new Parliament..... The Commons unpropitious to the Court—-The Lords are more condescending..... An intercepted Letter from the Earl of Melfort to his Brother..... Succession of the Crown settled upon the Princess Sophia, Elect ress Dowager of Hanover, and the Protestant Heirs ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... such things. Balzac convinced me that the French language was malleable into poetry. We are behindhand here in books, and elderly ones seem young to us. For instance, we have not caught sight yet of 'Moore's Life,' the extracts from which are unpropitious, I think. I had a fancy, I cannot tell you how it grew, that Moore, though an artificial, therefore inferior, poet, was a most brilliant letter-writer. His letters are disappointing, and his mean clinging to the aristocracy ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... return. Two or three men and several females and children spent the greater part of the afternoon and evening with us, hearing sister M. read from the books which have already been written in their language. We, however, soon found that we had arrived in a most unpropitious time; for almost every man in the vicinity was in a state ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... till all were done, that Ethel felt free to exclaim, "Now for what I have been longing to tell you—Richard is going to—" But the fates were unpropitious. Aubrey trotted in, expecting to be amused; next came Norman, and Ethel gave up in despair; and, after having affronted Flora in the morning, Margaret was afraid of renewing the offence, by attempting to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... persons so necessary as a prelude to marriage rites. Thirdly, as some say, because May was the month of old men, Majus a Majoribus, and therefore June, being thought to be the month of the young, Junius a Junioribus, was to be preferred. The Romans, however, held other seasons and days unpropitious to matrimony, as the days in February when the Parentalia were celebrated, &c. June was the favourite month; but no marriage was celebrated without an augury being first consulted and its auspices proved favourable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... loss. Above all things, no renewing of old fetters. This lackey takes a healthy enough view of the matter, for all his cynicisms. You must not take it too tragically. You have passed through your heart crisis—it comes to most of us—only with you it has happened late, and under unpropitious circumstances. That has tended to make it more severe than is usually the case. But now, let it be past and over, though naturally it will take some little time for your mind to regain its normal balance. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... was attacked during the night by a formidable band of Tuaricks; and Laing, having received twenty-four wounds, was left for dead. He afterwards recovered by the care of his companions, though several splinters of bone were extracted from his head. Undismayed by this unpropitious accident, he after a short delay resumed his journey, and reached Tombuctoo on the 18th August, 1826. There he resided for a month, during which several letters from him reached England. He described the city as every way equal, except in size, to his expectation. It was ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Phidias considers improvement in music of sufficient consequence to encourage your visits to that dangerous woman," answered Philothea: "It was an unpropitious day for Athens when she came here to invest vice with all the allurements ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... was most unpropitious, for an hour's delay might cost a kingdom; Esmond had nothing for it but to hasten to the "King's Arms", and tell the gentlemen there assembled that Mr. George (as we called the prince there) was not at home, but that Esmond would go fetch him; and taking a general's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at an unpropitious moment, for the colonel was in a cold fury, and the object of his wrath was Crewe, who sat with folded arms and tense face, looking ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... her consternation, a few days later Nona Davis became ill. The illness was only an attack of malarial fever, which Nona had been subject to ever since her childhood; nevertheless, the disease had never chosen a more unpropitious time for ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... much above a week after the calculations, in all the glory of the purple of Manor Cross, the new Popenjoy was born. For it was a Popenjoy. The Fates, who had for some time past been unpropitious to the house of Brotherton, now smiled; and Fortune, who had been good to the Dean throughout, remained true to him also in this. The family had a new heir, a real Popenjoy; and the old Marchioness when the baby was shown to her ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Steamship Company, as well as many others, often recruit their crews here. Is it because surrounding nature is so bountiful, so lovely, so prolific in spontaneous food, that these, her children, are lazy, dirty, and heedless? Does it require a cold, unpropitious climate, a sterile soil and rude surroundings, to awaken human energy and put man at his best? There is compensation always. With luxury comes enervation, effort is superfluous; while with frugality and labor we have strength, accompanied with development ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... savages, and heathen people, in those parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of God."[D] This expedition left the shores of England, December 19, 1606, and, after a protracted voyage, occasioned by unpropitious winds, which kept them in sight of home for more than "six weeks," reached the capes of Virginia. The southern cape was christened "Henry," and the northern, "Charles," after the King's sons. This was on the 26th day of April, 1607. Accompanying this expedition was Rev. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... say, 'I will compose poetry.'" If he cannot say this of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly; whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air." But the danger ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... into the house for something after starting on a journey is unpropitious. To have it brought ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... into the gloom. Boyd lost no time in gaining the plank runway that led to the dock, and finding an angle in the building, backed into it and waited, half-suspecting that he had stumbled into a trap. He reflected that both the hour and the circumstances were unpropitious; for in case he should meet with foul play, Marsh might plausibly claim that he had been mistaken for a marauder. He determined, therefore, to proceed with the greatest caution. From his momentary glimpse of the man as he made off, he knew that he was tall and active—just ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... mistress on one condition only," said the woman, in reply to the nonsense I poured into her ear, carried away by the fervor of an improvised passion, to which everything was unpropitious. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... brief silence. He was not altogether satisfied, but he judged the moment unpropitious for any further reference to ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you,' said Bertie, dropping his companion's arm, and standing before her on the path. In their walk they had come exactly to the spot where Eleanor had been provoked into slapping Mr Slope's face. Could it be possible that the place was peculiarly unpropitious to her comfort? Could it be possible that she should her have ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope |
