"Enviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which so many kings were led captive to Rome, and by which the ambassadors of so many kingdoms and States approached the seat of Empire, to deprecate the wrath, to sollicit the friendship, or sue for the protection of the Roman people."] or the enviable account of the alfresco meals which the party discussed in their coach as described ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses. She wore on her shoulders—or rather, on her back and not her shoulders, which it scarcely passed—a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her violet shoes. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out to be regular ranchers!" he declared, and in less than a week Nort and Dick felt that they were, indeed, on their way to this enviable goal. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of mankind profound; but he should have followed up the objects of his high aspirations by a straighter road. His glory would have been truly enviable had he devoted his efforts to the happiness of his subjects, instead of harassing their minds by dissensions, and mowing down their lives by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... honor him for all future time with festive matches, in music and chariot-races, and such gymnastics as were practiced at the Grecian games. A magnificent monument was erected to his memory. "The mournful letters written by Plato after the death of Dion contrasts strikingly with the enviable end of Timoleon, and with the grateful inscription of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... continents—waits upon the development of Mexico; and that development can be sound and lasting only if it be the product of a genuine freedom, a just and ordered government founded upon law. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace. Mexico has a great and enviable future before her, if only she choose and attain the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... thing. And she feels that she has not done rightly by you, and, through her friendship and a desire to see peace all around, believes she can arrange matters to suit all concerned. To be plain and blunt, Mr. Fairchild, you are not in an enviable position. I said that I had information for you, and I 'm going to give it. You are trying to work a mine. That demands capital. You have n't got it and there is no way for you to procure it. To get capital, one must have standing—and you must admit that you are lacking to a great extent ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... and her face to the lamp, trying to imagine herself in her comfortable sitting room at the hotel, or even in her own luxurious boudoir in her Sicilian home. The attempt was fairly successful, and the result was a passing taste of that self-satisfied beatitude which is the peculiar and enviable lot of very lazy people after dinner. She cared for nothing and she cared for nobody. San Miniato and Beatrice might sit over there by the water's edge, in the moonlight, and talk in low tones as long as they pleased. There were no tiresome people from the hotel to watch their proceedings, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... melting voice and soft caressing accent by which her fair countrywomen are distinguished. Moreover she is pretty—I think her beautiful, and so do all who have heard as well as seen her,—but pretty, very pretty, all the world must confess; and perhaps that is a distinction more enviable, because less envied, than the 'palmy state' of beauty. Her prettiness is of the prettiest kind—that of which the chief character is youthfulness. A short but pleasing figure, all grace and symmetry, a fair blooming face, beaming with intelligence ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... alongside of me on the keel of the vessel Sandy McTavish, whose life he had thus so gallantly preserved, now came to his senses, and in a short time was sufficiently recovered to take care of himself. Our position, however, was far from enviable. Here were we, four human beings, seated on the keel of a vessel which might any moment go down, with neither land nor a sail in sight. For some time, after all our exertions, we ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... a painful sensation. The lot of a popular idol is in many ways an enviable one, but it has the drawback of uncertainty. Here today and gone tomorrow. Until this moment Raymond Parsloe Devine's stock had stood at something considerably over par in Wood Hills intellectual circles, ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... who here sustained the enviable reputation he had so nobly earned at Williamsburgh, led his command across the open space in front of our line, a space not more than one-fourth of a mile wide, beyond which the ground was interrupted by forests, to attack ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... beautiful, blond, gentle; we walked trustingly side by side, each holding the other by the hand, and seeming to wish for nothing better in the world.... When, after the lapse of so many years, I look back upon my former state, it seems to me to have been a truly enviable one. Unexpectedly, in the same instant, I experienced the sentiments of friendship and of love; for as I unwillingly took leave of the beautiful child, I was consoled by the thought of explaining these ideas to my young boy-friend, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Jocelyn rode slowly towards the royal gallery. Having now raised his visor, his features were fully revealed to view, and perhaps were never seen to such advantage as at this proud and happy moment. His emotions were indeed enviable—but one thing was wanting to complete his satisfaction—the presence of her, before whom, of all others, he was most eager to distinguish himself. What mattered it that scarves and kerchiefs were waved to him by some of the fairest dames in the land? What mattered it that his name ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... deplores, are still very far from this enviable state. "Your heart still burns with that fatal fire you cannot extinguish, and mine is full of trouble and unrest. Think not, Heloise, that I here enjoy a perfect peace; I will for the last time open my heart to you; I am not yet disengaged from you, and though I fight against my excessive ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... thank God," he says, "her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure, that it is even enviable to behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew, and it would be the greatest obligation which ever that obliging art could ever bestow upon a friend, if you would come and sketch it for me. I am sure if there ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... attractive at first sight, but inexpressibly monotonous and wearisome on a longer acquaintance. This was Lady Lundie the Second, now the widow (after four months only of married life) of Sir Thomas Lundie, deceased. In other words, the step-mother of Blanche, and the enviable person who had taken the house and ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to the ladies' surprise, took the vacant place beside Sophy, instead of climbing up to the box. He had been to see his intended parish, and was an enviable man, for he was as proud of it as if it had been an intended wife, and Albinia, who knew it for a slice of dreary heath, was entertained with his raptures. Church, schools, and parsonage, each in their way were perfection or at least promised to be, and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... football Yale's record was an enviable one. The schedules included, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Columbia, Stevens Institute of Technology, Dartmouth, Amherst, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... caviller is anything but enviable, and if God were to take him at his word, his lot would be anything but comfortable. Happy are they who accept God's gifts as He presents them, with thankfulness, and use them in His service faithfully, rejoicing and trusting in His infinite wisdom ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... seen, simple; he had 900 pounds a year and a house; the neighbourhood was cheap, and for some time he had no children to be a drag upon him. Who was not to be envied, and if envied why then respected, if Theobald was not enviable? ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... a very young lady, being, in point of fact, still at a remote distance from an epoch to which she appears to look forward as a grand and enviable period of existence. She has not yet entered what she calls her 'teens,' and two years must elapse before she can enter them, as she is only eleven years old. She is the only daughter of my only sister, Marian Lester, and has been newly imported from Sydney, where my sister ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the people who'd evacuated the cities. The high population of remote places was a protection for Soames and Fran. He worried, though, about Gail, her situation, and that of the three other children, was far from enviable. In the present increasing confusion and tension they were hardly likely to have any ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... to the possession of their enviable talents, still, if the author should succeed in affording his readers a few hours' pleasure from the perusal of his Journal, or enable any one to re-picture scenes he may himself have visited, the principal object of its publication will have ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... want of suitors," said courteous Mr. Engelman. "A most majestic person. Witty and accomplished. Possessed of an enviable little fortune, entirely at her ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... in one of the polite sections of New York City, up among the East Sixties, and at the insistence of my sister and aunt, who lived with me, our home was near enough the great boulevard to be designated by that enviable phrase, "Just off Fifth Avenue." We were on the north side of the street, and, nearer to the Avenue, on the south side, was the home of ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... being the result, which reflects credit on British methods generally and upon the contracting engineers in particular. This is the same firm[45] which carried out the great harbour works of Vera Cruz, and the drainage of the Valley of Mexico, and it has earned an enviable reputation in Mexico. The Tehuantepec Railway is 1,200 miles north of the Panama Coast, and may be expected to take a good deal of the United States and international transoceanic traffic, as it is nearest to the "axial line" of the world's commerce ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... damaged in some respects. It had lain in this condition for a long time, no one in or near the place being able to make the necessary repairs. In this extremity the owner bethought him of Jonas Chickering, who had acquired an enviable reputation for skill in his trade, and it was thought that a good cabinet-maker ought of necessity to be a clever piano-maker. Young Chickering, thus appealed to, consented to undertake the task, as much for the purpose of becoming familiar with the instrument as of earning the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment: To live! To live ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... come as near to being a disembodied spirit as any man can do and live. I noticed the preternatural sharpness of the ridge of his nose, the deep cavities of his temples, and I envied him. He was so reduced that he would probably die very soon. Enviable man! So near extinction—while I had to bear within me a tumult of suffering vitality, doubt, confusion, self-reproach, and an indefinite reluctance to meet the horrid logic of the situation. I could not help muttering: "I feel as if ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... England to punish and baffle the "uncivilised race," who, if they had their way, would blacken and defile for ever the old and glorious record of man upon the sea. You, who store such things in your enviable memory, will recollect how in the Odyssey, that kindly race of singers and wrestlers, the Phaeacians, are the escorts and conveyers of all who need and ask for protection at sea. They keep the waterways for civilised men, against pirates and assassins, as your nation ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... white skeletons of camels lying by the side of the track. Do you know the camel's way? He is an unfriendly, graceless beast, but he marches to within an hour of his death. He drops and dies with the load upon his back. It seemed to me, even in those days, the right and enviable way to finish. You can imagine how I must envy them that advantage ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the possibilities of spirit, but those possibilities not yet realized. We accordingly reverence the child and delight to watch him. How charming he is, graceful in movement, swift of speech, picturesque in action! Enviable little being! The more so because he is able to retain his perfection ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the reply the agents desired the landlords to make, but it did not conduce to making their own existences any the more secure or enviable. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... and woods were shining brightly, peacefully in the sun; it seemed incredible that there should be heartburnings about a land so smiling, that wrongs and miseries should haunt those who lived and worked in these bright fields. Surely in this earthly paradise the dwellers were enviable, well-nourished souls, sleek and happy as the pied cattle that lifted their inquisitive muzzles! Nedda tried to stroke the nose of one—grayish, blunt, moist. But the creature backed away from her hand, snuffling, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... versatile and capable though she was to cope with the world, her lot was not an enviable one. It was with Godspeed, not the maledictions of one's neighbors, that she had hoped to leave the place which had sheltered her so long. And Padre Antonio—how could ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... brief time after his arrival in Virginia City that Clemens began the series of hoaxes which would carry his reputation, not always in an enviable fashion, across the Sierras and down the Pacific coast. With one exception these are lost to-day, for so far as known there is not a single file of the Enterprise in existence. Only a few stray copies and clippings are preserved, but we know the story of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... their land once in every few years. The litter in which they travelled was richly decorated with gold and emeralds, and surrounded by a numerous escort. The men who bore it on their shoulders were provided by two cities specially appointed for the purpose, and the service was no enviable one, since a fall was punished by death. Halts were made at the 'tambos,' or inns regularly kept up by the Government along all the principal roads, and the people assembled all along the line, clearing stones from ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... very miserable one to Phelim and the father. The loss of the ten guineas, and the feverish sickness produced from their debauch, rendered their situation not enviable. Some other small matters, too, in which Phelim was especially concerned, independent of the awkward situation in which he felt himself respecting the three calls on the following day, which was Sunday, added greater weight to his anxiety. He ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... at present is become public property, no very enviable distinction in these unhappy times, and neither wished nor sought by myself. I have of late been subjected to circumstances which have rendered me obnoxious to the hatred of those who never forgive, the Bloody Church of Rome, which I have [no] doubt will sooner ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... literary pursuits was destined to an early termination. On the 4th of March, 1809, Mr. Madison was inducted into the office of President of the United Slates. It was at that time far from being an enviable position. At home the country was rent into contending factions. Our foreign affairs were in a condition of the utmost perplexity, and evidently approaching a dangerous crisis. The murky clouds of war, which had for years overshadowed Europe, seemed rolling hitherward, filling the most sanguine ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... walking to church on holy-days, preceded by a phalanx of halberdiers, in habiliments fashioned as in former times, seems, in the eyes of many a guild brother, to be a very enviable pitch of worldly grandeur. Few persons were ever more proud of civic honours than the Thane of Fife, but he knew well how to turn his political influence to the best account. The council, court, and other business of the burgh, occupied much of his ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... over a thousand photographs of well-furnished rooms. The best were selected, and a series of photographic pages called "Inside of 100 Homes" was begun. The editor's woman friend had correctly pointed the way to him, for this series won for his magazine the enviable distinction of being the first magazine of standing to reach the then marvellous record of a circulation of one million copies a month. The editions containing the series were sold out as fast as ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... been seen, the reader will not be astonished on his arrival with us at the Dairy Farm, to find every arrangement in accordance with the fine condition of the cows, and the enviable (to all other cows) circumstances in which they live. The cow-sheds are divided into fifty stalls, each; and the appearance presented reminded one of the neatness and order of cavalry stables. Each stall is marked with a number; a corresponding number is marked on one horn of the cow to whom ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... by peace and neutrality for the whole twentieth century, Sweden has achieved an enviable standard of living under a mixed system of high-tech capitalism and extensive welfare benefits. It has a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore constitute the resource ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... only very partially enviable just then, but the bright north wind seemed to blow his troubles back from him as he faced it, walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet Reanda. It was very unlike the man to return to his lodging ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... the clear net annual earnings of a field Negro on a sugar plantation to come up to 8 l. sterling. Now what does he earn in the course of a year when he is working for himself? I dare not repeat what some of the witnesses for the planters stated to the House of Commons, when representing the enviable condition of the slaves in the West Indies; for this would be to make him earn more for himself in one day than for his master in a week. Let us take then the lowest sum mentioned in the Book ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... it of you all, gentlemen," pursued the young man, with the same composedness of voice and manner, and turning particularly to the officers of the —— Regiment, who were grouped around their Chief; "Who is it, I ask, on whom has devolved the enviable duty of reporting me as capable of violating my faith as a subject, and my honor as ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... this: "Gentlemen,—My services are at your disposal as a candidate for re-election to the Legislative Council." Evidently his constituents were not troubled with burning questions. The position of a Governor in the Colonies is not altogether an enviable one. He has a high official and social position, but little real power, because, practically, he has to consent to any Bill passed by the two Houses. Any one can go to a Governor's reception, and their entertainments are necessarily extremely catholic in their nature. ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... Things were far from having reached this pass in the last century; but even then literature and society had outgrown the nursing of coteries, and although many salons of that period were worthy successors of the Hotel de Rambouillet, they were simply a recreation, not an influence. Enviable evenings, no doubt, were passed in them; and if we could be carried back to any of them at will, we should hardly know whether to choose the Wednesday dinner at Madame Geoffrin's, with d'Alembert, Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... earth and assigned him Paradise, the fairest place of all, as his royal dwelling. But man, beguiled by envy, and (wo is me!) caught by the bait of pleasure, miserably fell from all these blessings. So he that once was enviable became a piteous spectacle, and by his misfortune deserving of tears. Wherefore he, that had made and fashioned us, looked again with eyes of compassion upon the work of his own hands. He, not laying aside his God-head, which he had from the beginning, was made man for our sakes, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... this I pray; you have wasted a precious life upon our forlorn race. Alas! how often and how keenly do I feel, that had it not been for the name of Armine your great talents and goodness might have gained for you an enviable portion of earthly felicity; yes, Glastonbury, you have sacrificed yourself ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... everybody else the punctuality which he himself practised, began to suffer from what Elise called his "dinner-fever," and threw uneasy glances first at the dining-room door, and then at his wife, whose situation, it must be confessed, was not a very enviable one. She endeavoured to look quite calm, but often whispered something to the little Louise, which sent her very importantly in and out of the room. Elise's entertainment, both that part which was audible, and that which was inaudible, was ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... They asked, almost as cordially as if we were middle-class English people, whether we had actually survived that trip to Versailles, and forbore to comment when we said we had enjoyed it, beyond saying that if there was one enviable thing it was the American capacity for pleasure. Yet one could see quite plainly that the vacuum caused by the absence of the American capacity for pleasure was filled in their case by something very superior ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... invalid were such that in regard to him he had sunk his own will entirely. As to opinions—well, he did differ from him occasionally, but he did it mildly, and with an openness to conviction which was almost enviable. He called him Bill, Billie, or Little Bill, according to ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... answered, laying down my egg-spoon, "why in the world should I do anything? My position is a comfortable one. I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know), I enjoy an enviable social position: I am brother to Lord Burlesdon, and brother-in-law to that charming lady, his countess. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... would be a pity to resort to machinery simply because one did not know how to write well. I would rather set to work to correct the error. I happen to know one of our number who can write a very enviable hand. Do you know, Ried, that the letter you wrote me was the first thing which attracted me to you? I remember I showed the note to one of our senior partners, who was particularly disturbed by poor writing, and he said: 'Engage him, Roberts, do! A young man who can write ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... without divulging any of our plans regarding that young man, he had acquired considerable information concerning him. It was learned that Edwards had for some time been regarded as a very fast young man, and several episodes were related of him, in which he had figured in no very enviable light. ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... sitting now for the first time at the hearth of the American nation, I feel bound to respond to that high tribute made to Spain by publicly acknowledging here the enviable kindness shown by all classes of your people since I landed ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... you think me the most ungrateful woman in the world. I know only too well that to many women my position has always appeared enviable. Poor things, if they only knew! Of course, my husband is a good man. In all ways I do him perfect justice. He is everything that is kind and generous—only, alas, he is not the lover of my dreams. My children are nice handsome boys, but they are the every day children ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... absurdity, and the scorn was just which greeted one of the most important works of the critical school, Hitzig's "Explanation of the Psalms." A reviewer said: "We may entertain the fond hope that, in a second edition of this clever writer's commentary, he will be in the enviable position to tell us the day and the hour ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Jr., Tulsa, Okla., reports an enviable situation. He says: "My nut trees are growing on a farm where more than 30 years of cultivation have failed to kill the native pecan sprouts. They come up year after year from the top roots. Since acquiring the place in 1936, I have allowed the pecan sprouts and the few native walnuts to grow unchecked ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... that he had been some weeks absent at the sea-side before settling in this domicile; for the "Endymion" had been begun, and he had made considerable advances in his plan. He came to me one Sunday, and I walked with him, spending the whole day in Well Walk. His constant and enviable friend Severn, I remember, was present on the occasion, by the circumstance of our exchanging looks upon Keats's reading to us portions of his new work that had pleased himself. One of these, I think, was the "Hymn to Pan"; and another, I am sure, was the "Bower of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... back to the original sources of religious truth and to read the New Testament and the Fathers in their own tongue induced him to learn Greek and Latin after he was thirty years of age. He possessed excellent gifts and natural abilities of mind, and he soon had an enviable reputation for skill and learning. Like Sebastian Franck, whom he resembled in many points, he was profoundly interested in history and in the stages of man's historical development, and, like the former, he undertook the translation of great masterpieces ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... fancy to think a remainder of it there, just below, half an inch to the right of, the spot where a phrenologist, invited by Nataly in old days, had marked philo-progenitiveness on his capacious and enviable cerebrum. He knew well it was a fancy. But it was a fact also, that since the day of the fall (never, save in merest glimpses, before that day), he had taken to look behind him, as though an eye had been knocked in the back of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exhibited in all the streets, and especially in the market-place, where every corner provided with a shelter was converted into an hospital. The consequences were inevitable. Many; as might naturally be expected, perished, in the night, of hunger, agony, and cold. Their lot was enviable—they no longer needed any human assistance. What heart would not have bled at such scenes of horror!—and yet it was the very countrymen of these unfortunate wretches who seemed to care the least about them, and passed by with the most frigid indifference, probably because they are so familiarized ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... native possessor, and therewith the usual liability to pay tribute. He is inferior to other owners only in this one point, that he lacks the power of alienating his property. Let him who has derived so much benefit from our commiseration now relieve others. Fortunate and enviable has turned out his captivity[826], which enables him at one and the same time to enjoy the citizenship of Rome and ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... that the elder of Esmond's two kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other, when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked either way,) that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... was in that sea-fight, who, then humble and unknown, was destined one day to win laurels of a purer and more enviable kind than those which grow on the battle-field. This was Cervantes, who, at the age of twenty-four, was serving on board the fleet as a common soldier. He was confined to his bed by a fever; but, notwithstanding the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... absolute monarchy, and his subjects the most contemptible slaves. When he lays upon them his cursed hand, they reel to the ground. When he strikes the stunning blow, they drop insensibly to the earth. The oppressions and scourges of the most wretched slave are enviable in comparison with those severe wounds inflicted by this merciless tyrant, this infernal scourge of the human race. Intemperance is a monster that may well be personified. He frolicks through the ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... regretfully pointed out how his patron's readiness to accept the homage of other poets seemed to be thrusting him from the enviable place of pre-eminence in his ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... must declare—" and now Lord Fawn spoke very slowly—"then I must declare that under these circumstances, let the consequences be what they may, I must retreat from the enviable position which your favour has given me." The words were cold and solemn, and were ill-spoken; but they were deliberate, and had been indeed actually ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... He pretended to take the waters in the morning, he went for a ride in his motor-car in the afternoon, he dined at the Cercle in the evening, and spent an hour or two afterwards in the baccarat-rooms at the Villa des Fleurs. An enviable, smooth life without a doubt, and it is certain that his acquaintances envied him. At the same time, however, they laughed at him and, alas with some justice; for he was an exaggerated person. He was to be construed in the comparative. Everything in his life was a trifle ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... that in the trees, the dryads, the leaf-haunters invisible, so sad in childlessness, ceased their swinging to look upon the boy and girl so enviable in their innocence and happiness. Gilian knelt and gathered up the flowers. It was, perhaps, more to hide his vexation than from courtesy that he did so, but the act was so unboylike, so deferring in its manner, that it restored to Nan as much of her good humour ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... British race into a great British Empire. Had not Indians also a common nationhood which, despite all racial and religious differences, could be traced back across centuries of internal strife and foreign domination to a period, remote indeed but none the less enviable, when they had been their own masters? Had not the British themselves removed one of the greatest barriers to India's national unity—the multiplicity of her vernaculars—by giving English to the Western-educated classes as ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... enviable career before him," said the lawyer at the end of a long pause, "and this brings me, by the way, to the question I wish to as—had your desire to see me any connection with the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... without ample cause that he was restless and disturbed; within the last three days he had by his own instability of purpose, and vacillating tastes and temper brought himself down from as enviable a position as well can be imagined, to one ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Don Inocencio, "yours is an enviable position. To distinguish yourself, to raise yourself above the base multitude, to put yourself on an equality with the greatest heroes of the earth, to be able to say that the hand of God guides your hand—oh, what grandeur and honor! My friend, this ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... forehead, and the enlargement of the back of his skull, which rose much higher than his large and coarsely shaped ears, combined to form a physiognomy anything but prepossessing, save in the eyes of such as considered that the owner of so splendid an equipage must needs be all that was admirable and enviable, more especially when they gazed on the enormous diamond that glittered in his shirt, and the red ribbon that depended ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... increase her triumph. I wish I had wit and importance enough to write her a congratulatory letter. The ladies should deify her, and consecrate a temple to her praise. It is a diverting thought, that the mighty Emperor of the Turks should be subdued by a woman. How enviable that she alone should be the avenger of her sex's wrongs for so many ages past. She seems to have awakened Justice, who appears to be a sleepy dame in the cause ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... well admire some of these handsome Granvillaises, living their free life by the sea, earning less in the day, generally, than our Staffordshire pit girls, but living much more enviable lives. Here they are by hundreds, scattered over the beach in the early morning, and afterwards crowding into the market-place; driving hard bargains for the produce of their sea-farms, and—with rather shrill and unpronounceable ejaculations and many most winning smiles—handing ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... looking his best to-night,—that enviable, thorough-bred best, which was the natural result of culture, money, and ease; and Dolly, catching sight of Mollie's guileless blushes, deplored, while she did not wonder at them, understanding her as she did. It was ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the feijao was stewing. It took hours and hours before those awful black beans had boiled sufficiently to be edible, and the man who acted as cook had to sit up the whole night to stir them up and watch them. Yes, the position of cook for the camp was not an enviable one, for it meant marching all day and sitting up all night to prepare the feijao for the following day. Yet the love they had for their feijao—I never ate the beastly stuff myself—was so great that those lazy devils, who could not be ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the whole period of her stay, two hundred daily. The multiplicity of duties in the charge of the household affairs of such an institution, with the uncertain assistance to be found in such a place, may be better imagined than told. Under her satisfactory management the Vicksburg Home acquired an enviable reputation, and was the favorite stopping-place on the river. The great difficulty in conducting a Soldiers' Home in time of war, as every one knows who has been connected with one, is to keep it neat and clean, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... bowed low. "An enviable lineage. My deepest respects.— There was a revolution in your kingdom not so long ago, wasn't there? I heard it from the messengers of the rebel swarm. Am ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... If I were not afraid of the patronizing tone I would say that there is little doubt that if as a painter he had not had to try to write in character, he would certainly have made a characteristic writer. He has the most enviable "finds," not dreamed of in timid literature, yet making capital descriptive prose. Other specimens of them may be encountered in two or three Christmas tales, signed with the name whose usual place is the ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... people still remaining at Dusky Bay was not, we understood, the most enviable; their dependence for provisions being chiefly on the seals and birds which they might kill. They had all belonged to this colony, and one or two happened to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... is the very apotheosis of success. And yet,—one sometimes questions whether a perfectly successful man is as enviable as he seems. What do you ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... condition may be prevented and the cook enjoy an enviable esteem by the judicious use of herbs, singly or in combination. It is greatly to be regretted that the uses of these humble plants, which seem to fall lower than the dignity of the title "vegetable," should be so little understood ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... literary authority in America than Dr. Channing. However, a message from Chief Justice Marshall, through Judge Story, belongs with it: "Tell her I have read with great pleasure everything she has written, and wish she would write more." She had gained an enviable position in literature and she had done a great deal of useful work during the fifteen years since the timid appearance of "A New England Tale," but she seems to have regarded her books as simply a "by-product": "My author existence ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... indisputably his leader in the courts, and for whose forensic abilities it is known, that he entertains, and has often expressed, the highest admiration. The position of the two men was singular, and to the ex-attorney not very enviable. Scarlett was in high practice before Brougham was even called to the bar. He kept a head of him in their profession throughout; and twice he had filled the first places at the bar, when the respective attainments of these eminent persons ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... when your wedding-day comes with the end of the year?" She sat down by the fire in her room, and for the first time in her life, the harmless existence of one of those domestic drudges whom she despised began to seem enviable to her. There were merits visible now, in the narrow social horizon that is bounded ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... long lawsuit, although he had never before heard that he had such cases in court. Meanwhile his neighbours predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher rank, with some malignity, accounted him already a degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in his situation, marked his embarrassments with more compassion. He was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the division of a common, or the holding of a black-fishing, or poaching court, or any similar occasion, when they conceived themselves, oppressed by the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... day of trial came, therefore, he was not in an enviable frame of mind. He knew that hundreds of eyes would be upon him, and that he would have a very undesirable publicity. Only a few weeks before the strike he had been spoken of as a possible candidate for the town council, and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... circumstance, that under the disguise of Greek warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had attained, through the genius of Calprenede and Scuderi, an enviable immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have found in that endless desert of phraseology at once their ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Notwithstanding this enviable situation a clamour is excited, the people are agitated, and discord, with its train of evils, is prevailing. Some of our citizens, in the height of political prosperity, are seeking to destroy an order of things which has prevailed an hundred and ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... a dramatic critic is, in many respects, an enviable one. Lately, there has been the growing practice among critics of roasting a play on the morning after production, and then having another go at it in the Sunday edition under the title of "Second Swats" ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Stilicho" he had now been engaged for a year, and to-night he is writing the last words of the last scene. Shortly after twelve he has finished it, and, throwing down his pen, he paces about the room with enviable feelings. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... box of royalty, at the opera, it seemed to me they were rather pathetic than otherwise. But I am sure they would have never imagined themselves so, and that in their own eyes they were a radiantly enviable party returning from a ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... purpose of trapping the principal streams of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Fitzpatrick, a trapper well known and respected by the mountaineers, had charge of the party. He was, at that time, well acquainted by experience with the Rocky Mountains, and has, since then, gained an enviable fame as an Indian Agent. The new party travelled North and commenced operations on the Platte River, which they followed down stream to one of its tributaries, the Sweet Water River. From here they worked on until they reached the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is France at present with regard to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the nose. Yet no law in England forbids me my cigar, Nero! What is law at half-past eight was not crime at six and a half! Britannia says, 'Man, thou art free, and she lies like a commonplace woman. O Nero, Nero! you enviable dog! you serve but from liking. No thought of the world costs you one wag of the tail. Your big heart and true instinct suffice you for reason and law. You would want nothing to your felicity, if in these moments ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manner the demand for locomotives was very great, and with Mr. Thomas N. Miller[24] I organized in 1866 the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, which has been a prosperous and creditable concern—locomotives made there having obtained an enviable reputation throughout the United States. It sounds like a fairy tale to-day to record that in 1906 the one-hundred-dollar shares of this company sold for three thousand dollars—that is, thirty dollars for one. Large annual dividends had been paid regularly and the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... when Sir George and Lady Bennington left on their yearly visit to England, leaving Hal with the enviable holiday ahead of him of playing host at their summer residence in the Thousand Islands. He was privileged to ask what boys he liked; he could have his own canoe and sailboat, any of the servants from the city ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... who enjoy the widest—if not the most enviable—reputation, are the fire companies. They are all volunteer, and their engines are admirable. They are all jealous as Kilkenny cats of one another, and when they come together, they scarcely ever lose an opportunity ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... it,—and the public—the great public which, apart from all 'interested' critical bias, delivers its own verdict, is always ready to hearken and to applaud the writer of its choice. There is no more splendid and enviable life!—if I could only make a hundred pounds a year by it, I would rather be an author than a king! For if one has something in one's soul to say—something that is vital, true, and human as well ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... or showily in the street. It attracts attention of no enviable kind, and is looked upon as a want of good breeding. In the carriage a lady may dress as elegantly as she pleases. With respect to ball-room toilette, its fashions are so variable, that statements which are true of it to-day, may be false a month hence. Respecting no institution of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... scene. But it was the peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty-one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune and sorrow. Never had her father's position seemed so strong and enviable as during his tenure of the office of Vice-President; but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious. Holding property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so deeply in debt that nothing ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... be spending my time under such enviable circumstances requires some explanation, especially when I state that the exceedingly pretty woman ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... be found built into the older portion of the structure. In 1806 the original house was removed a few feet to the south to make room for a new tavern, and there it is still standing. The new house in which the original proprietor and landlord made his enviable reputation was needed to accommodate the increased public travel soon after the opening of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike, as described in an article entitled "From the White Horse to Little Rhody," and published in the first volume of this magazine. No house along the entire line of this ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... thankfulness you have, and know not of. Here have I listened to your troubles, as you call them, for more than two hours, and never once told you any of my own. Troubles! you are, in my estimation, a very happy, enviable girl." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the abruptness of the summons, these two great dignitaries arrived at the imperial gate in no enviable state of mind; but when the sultan had informed them of the tumult then raging in the capital, they resumed their ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... much more painful tax on income than the pecuniary—it is the thought of those who are worsted in the struggle for bare existence. Vae victis! Yet those who achieve the bare existence, who starve not, neither shiver, have surely enviable compensations. Not theirs the distressful, wearying problems of sociology. Far from feeling any responsibility for their fellow-beings, they do not even fulfil their own personal duty to society,—witness the breeding of babies in back streets. They have ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the governor, on the second day of the session (Sept. 4, 1849), delivered his message. It was a well-timed document, and admirably expressed to attract attention to the new territory. After congratulating the members upon the enviable position they occupied as pioneers of a great prospective civilization, which would carry the American name and American institutions, by the force of superior intelligence, labor and energy, to untold results, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... election questions, and brought him forward with tenfold powers of mischief, as the champion of the mob: and, even as it was, ministers had brought themselves, by the proceedings against the printers, into no very enviable position. Riots and tumults in the avenues of the house were the order of the day, and the life of Lord North was on one occasion brought into imminent danger. On the day that the lord mayor was committed, indeed, the tumult ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with whatever principles may have been presented. If this plan be faithfully pursued, rapid progress, on the part of the learner, will be the inevitable result; and that teacher who pursues it, cannot fail of acquiring distinction, and an enviable popularity in his ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... scenes were black with crape. The drawn faces of bereaved wife, mother, sister, and widowed girl showed piteously everywhere. Gray-haired parents knelt at the grave of the boy whose enviable fortune it was to be brought home in time to die in his mother's room. Towards the nameless mounds of Arlington, of Gettysburg, and the rest, the yearning of desolated homes went out in those waves of anguish ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... sum of the Italian knowledge of life. That people should thank you, with a smile of striking sweetness, for the gift of twopence, is a proof, certainly, of extreme and constant destitution; but (keeping in mind the sweetness) it also attests an enviable ability not to be depressed by circumstances. I know that this may possibly be great nonsense; that half the time we are acclaiming the fine quality of the Italian smile the creature so constituted for physiognomic radiance may be in a sullen ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... money. When that passion would seize him he would leave his business, his hired help, his home and wife and little one, and would lose himself for days at a time seeking to satisfy that passion. An enviable husband, father, citizen, and neighbor but for that evil; but how wretchedly that ruined all! Dr. Holland, of Springfield, Massachusetts, says: "I have all my days had a card-playing community open to my observation, and yet I am unable ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... second Baronet, a child only three and a half years old. His prospects were certainly not enviable, he and his sister Anne having had for a time, for actual want of means, to be "settled in tenants' houses." The rental of Gairloch and Glasletter at his father's death only amounted to 5954 merks, and his other estates in the Low Country were settled on his mother, Sir Kenneth's ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... system were shaken off, they did not doubt their ability to compete for the markets of the world. Even Washington, who had fewer illusions than most of his contemporaries, told his fellow citizens of America that they were "placed in the most enviable condition, as sole lords and proprietors of a vast tract of continent, comprehending all the various soils and climates of the world, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life." Independence was the magic word which the common man believed would open ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... beggars, harassed by blackmailers, threatened by kidnappers, frustrated in his attempts to bestow charity by the cry "tainted money"—certainly the lot of the world's richest man was far from being an enviable one. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... most enviable of their kind, and there are signs that their turn may be coming once more in the primacy to which their numbers have always entitled them. Only the other day we were reading a paper by a man of that science which deals with life on strictly ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... informed that one of the chief objects of Captain Glazier's journey is to make observations and collect material for another book, which will no doubt be a very interesting one to read, and will add still greater honors to one who, though still a young man, has already acquired an enviable reputation as an author. After a very cordial shake of the hand from some comrades and citizens, the captain left the Central Hotel on his fine black horse, 'Paul Revere,' which has brought him safely thus far from Boston since the ninth of May, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... very great and enviable man, Mr. Florance, but I propose to save fifteen years on your twenty-five. I'll equal or better ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... of middle-class girls still sat on by the fire, but Hester Thornton now, not Annie, was the center of attraction. It was the first time in all her young life that Hester had found herself in the enviable position of a favorite; and without at all knowing what mischief she was doing, she could not resist improving the occasion, and making the most of her dislike ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... daughter! I must be mistaken in thinking I ever knew any one by that name, though it seems strangely familiar," said the doctor, and as by this time he had heard all he wished to hear, he arose, and bidding Mr. Liston good-morning walked away in no enviable ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... blest; and she used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and the wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are always changing their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to the windows—she had learned that all this was the happy quarter—of the enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... on her the task of making, buying, or assembling from parts purchased a score or more of presents. As one of the chief aims of Hiawatha Institute was to teach wealthy men's daughters how to be economical, it goes without saying that each of these girls had on hand no enviable Winter Task. ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis |
