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More "Forte" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than those of military force to settle the problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more and more that of an endless introduction to a new era. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... Patteson's forte. Though his pen flowed so freely in letters, and he could pour out his heart extemporaneously with great depth, fervour and simplicity, his sermons were laboured and metaphysical, as if he had taken too much pains with them as it were, and he could not speak ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... le vouloient. Pour nous, a force de rafiner, nous avons appauvri la notre, & n'ayant souvent qu'un terme propre a rendre une idee, nous aimons mieux affoiblir l'idee que de ne pas employer un terme noble.[3] Quelle perte pour ceux d'entre nos Ecrivains qui ont l'imagination forte, que celle de tant de mots que nous revoyons avec plaisir dans Amyot & dans Montagne. Ils ont commence par etre rejettes du beau style, parce qu'ils avoient passe dans le peuple; & ensuite rebutes par le peuple ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... per cent., of which the lawyer took the larger share. Something of this sort has been done in other businesses besides farming. Frank, however, was not the man to remain in a state of tutelage, working for another. His forte was not saving—simple accumulation was not for him; but he looked round the district to discover ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... that they try Boston. That city was a musical centre and Camilla would be sure to meet with a good reception there. Accordingly under the guidance of the American the entire party went to Boston. Mr. Jonas Chickering, the piano-forte manufacturer kindly welcomed her and invited her to call at his residence on Boylston street, two doors from the building now occupied by the Art Club. So much pleased was he with her simple manners and her wonderful playing ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan Whittemore—a real good ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... dost thou do? thou bard not of a thousand but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless, lank-jawed judges' upon the fortunate ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... irrigation, nor brilliant at agriculture. Neither was it the Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it was the Southern Cross. Take the cross as a symbol inclusive of more than Christian symbolism. Take it as a symbol signifying peine forte et dure. Is it not peculiarly characteristic of Africa to deal with us as she is doing? Does she not truly follow her star in banishing you, and shifting ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... this little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a white ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... obsequious tutors of his sons with his novel mode of instilling the rudiments of the Latin tongue, although he knew not a word of the language; and the obedient mistresses of his daughters with his short road to attaining a perfection in playing the piano-forte, without knowing a note of the gamut: but what could they say; why, nothing more or less than they were 'astonished;' which was vague enough to be as true ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... effeuille, sur les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... systematis nostri fines lucentium Naturam indagaverit Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. CI[C]I[C]CCCXXII AEtatis vero ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... at length found time to write to you. You will no doubt expect a long letter after so much delay, but I am afraid you will be disappointed, as long letters are not my forte. In your last, you asked me to send Bessy any information I could. I can assure you I shall be most happy to do so, and to encourage her taste for knowledge as much as lies in my power. I send her Bonwick's Geography of Australia, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... those countreys, and also for further search of the passage to Cataya (whereof the hope continually more and more increaseth) that certaine numbers of chosen souldiers and discreet men for those purposes should be assigned to inhabite there. [Sidenote: A forte to be built in Meta Incognita.] Wherevpon there was a strong fort or house of timber, artificially framed, and cunningly deuised by a notable learned man here at home, in ships to be caried thither, wherby those men that were appointed to winter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... the beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, and they continue crescendo,—the voice of the teacher and the voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who is expected to carry out the system and the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Frank's forte. This is all that he now finds with which to wither me. However, even if he had any thing more or more pungent to say, I should not hear him, for I am beginning to dance ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... he at once rose to prominence at the bar of Northern Ohio. The Cuyahoga bar was for many years considered the strongest in the State, but amongst all of its talented members, each with his own peculiar forte, for the faculty of close and long-continued reasoning, clearness of statement, nice discrimination, and never ending ingenuity, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... stood an upright piano forte—the manufacture, as well as the property, of Monsieur Langevin. It bore the date of 1806; and was considered as the first of the kind introduced into Normandy. It was impossible not to be struck ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... qui Miekes[29] fut clamee Fu grande la bataille, et fiere la mellee, Enchois car on eust nulle tente levee, Commencha li debas a chelle matinee. Li cinc frere paien i mainent grant huee, Il keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit l'espee, Et une forte targe a son col acolee. Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demoree, Un gentil crestien de France l'onneree— Armeire n'i vault une pomme pelee; Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamee, Le branc li embati par dedans la coree,[30] Mort l'abat du cheval; ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... it was several times intimated to her during her progress up the hill. "The speakers from a distance" had all failed to appear except two. The forte of one of these seemed to be statistics. He astonished his audience if he did not edify them, putting into round numbers every fact connected with the temperance cause that could possibly be expressed by figures—the quantity of spirits consumed in Canada, the money paid for it, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... but mean circumference: Washington Irving is admirable at a sketch, one of the liveliest and most graceful of essayists, and quite equal to the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and humour—qualities ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... noble farewell address, brings us to 1692, when nineteen persons were legally hanged, charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts, and when in that State Giles Cory perished under the awful torture, judicially applied, known as the "peine forte et dure." ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... particular athletic forte, and now when my very life depended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on the occasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head the rooter's raucous and reproachful cries of "Ice Wagon," ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would be pardoned, as the probability would be that his innocence was thus proved by visitation of God. I once knew of such a case, where a woman was accused of murdering her husband; she held her mute of malice at her trial, and was adjudged to suffer peine forte et dure." ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... lad. Josephs had been in the Pillory about an hour when it so happened that the Reverend John Jones, the chaplain of the jail, came into the yard. Seeing a group of warders at the mouth of the labor-cell, he walked up to them, and there was Josephs in peine forte et dure. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... happily arranged for the following week. Lady Moseley, when she retired to the drawing-room after dinner, commenced a recital of the ceremony and company to be invited on the occasion. Etiquette and the decencies of life were not only the forte, but the fault of this lady; and she had gone on to the enumeration of about the fortieth personage in the ceremonials, before Clara found courage to say, that "Mr. Ives and myself both wish to be married ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... illustrations to his own works. This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block, but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of making groups of costumes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... prospects, and no profession whatever, he had a generous willingness to liberate his affianced to an artistic career; or, at least, there was no talk of her giving up her scheme of teaching the piano-forte because she was engaged to be married, he was exactly fitted to become the husband of a wage-earning wife, and was so far from being offensive in this quality that everybody (including Miss Desmond, rather fitfully) ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro derelicto habiti dominium. Sec. 236. Alter casus est, Si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit, ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus & populo traditum accepit, alienae ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non ea mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet: tamen quia quod praecipuum est regiae dignitatis amifit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem vel invitum, cujus libertatem ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... one, he says, except John Blakman has yet written a special life of Henry VI, and Blakman's is not an opus absolutum but a "fragmentum duntaxat operis longe majoris alicubi forte ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... family and in whom, in spite of careful education, the evil disposition of his father comes to the surface. In this artificial treatment of the theory of heredity Clara Viebig's art does not appear to the best advantage; her forte is rather unbiased objectivity and penetrating observation of every-day life. The other novels having their scene in Berlin are distinguished for a keen sense for realities, as, for example, The Daily Bread (1900), a treatment of the servant question which in the technique of Zola gives a panorama ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Directeur—and reincarcerated in the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... was varied by changing the keys or register just as on the organ. On the other hand, with the piano one can vary the sonority by augmenting or diminishing the force of the attack, hence its original name of "forte piano,"—a name too long, which was shortened at first by suppressing the last syllables; so that one reads, not without astonishment, in the accounts given of young Mozart, of the skill he showed in playing "forte" ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... known to the readers of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, carefully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... that it is "de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque, a la fois, la tete, le coeur, le corps." It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... become poetical, it isn't your forte; but listen while I talk of matters more important. You've sometimes heard me mention ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... usually at the shop; but when it so happened that he could remain at home after tea, it was his delight to settle himself comfortably down in the big rocking chair, in the well-lighted sitting-room, and to muse and doze, while Alice sang, and played upon the piano-forte. He had so many other cares, that he did not like to be troubled with bad reports of his children's conduct, This was so well understood by all the family, that even George seldom ventured to go to him with a complaint. The management of domestic affairs was thus left almost ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... immediately follows, for there is hardly a finer effect in music than that of the soft voices singing the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," while the strings gently pulse; and the fortissimo C major chord on the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzo-forte minor chords, is as dazzling in its brilliancy to-day as when it was first sung. The number of unisons, throwing into relief the two minor chords on C and F, should be especially noted. The chorus in the next number is poor, matched with this, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... pervades it. As it is it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it. . . . He has two requisites of a debater, a melodious voice and clear, sharply defined enunciation. His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the point. With the most offhand assured airs in the world, and a certain appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except on business," confronted her. Should she go on? Did the sign refer to ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... who heard her, rushed to me; by a strong effort, I recovered myself, swallowed the glass of water she brought, and walked to the piano-forte, where Rosa ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... disputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... quis dignius cecinit? Pictoris Florentini sine fraude vitam quasi inter crepuscula vesperascentem coloribus quam vividis depinxit. Vesperi quotiens, dum foco adsidemus, hoc iubente resurgit Italia. Vesperi nuper, dum huius idyllia forte meditabar, Cami inter arundines mihi videbar vocem magnam audire clamantis, Pa o' me/gas ou' te/qnhken. Vivit adhuc Pan ipse, cum Marathonis memoria et Pheidippidis ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... belonged to a class of poetry the liberty of which was nearly as great as in comedy, and the speech was delivered by Sisyphus himself, who, according to the legend, is a type of the crafty criminal whose forte is to do evil and elude punishment. There is, in fact, nothing in that which we otherwise hear of Critias to suggest that he cherished free-thinking views. He was—or in his later years became—a ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... says) "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve the ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... a young man his intentions when you know he has no intentions, but is unable to deny that he has paid attentions; to threaten an action for breach of promise of marriage; to pretend that your daughter is a musician when she has with the greatest difficulty been coached into playing three piano-forte pieces which she loathes; to use your own mature charms to attract men to the house when your daughters have no aptitude for that department of sport; to coach them, when they have, in the arts by which men can be led to compromize themselves; ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... marriage and starting a daily paper in a Western town. Had the town been larger the story would have been different. As it was, we spent our money, not without result; for Mr. Croly discovered that his forte was not execution, but direction, and that his fertility of brain only needed a sufficiently wide field to develop powers capable of ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... kind; but how the tone was produced there is no statement, no word to base an inference upon. The name has not been met with again between the Estense document and Scipione Maffei's well-known description, written in 1711, of Cristofori's "gravecembalo col piano e forte." My view of Cristofori's invention allows me to think that the Estense "piano e forte" may have been a hammer cembalo, a very imperfect one, of course. But I admit that the opposite view of forte and piano, contrived by registers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... was established in 1860 in the house, not far from the ancient "Cat-Hole," of one Mrs. O'Toole, "a pretty good all-round cook, whose forte was apple dumplings" served daily. The steward was Charles Kendall Adams, '61, while other members were Walter W. Perry and Byron M. Cutcheon of the class of 1861 and Martin L. D'Ooge ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... aspectabilis constructione ut recte Philosophemur duo sunt imprimis observanda: Unum ut attendentes ad infinitam Dei potentiam & bonitatem ne vereamur nimis ampla & pulchra & absoluta ejus opera imaginari: sed e contra caveamus, ne si quos forte limites nobis non certo cognitos, in ipsis supponamus, non satis magnifice ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... telling her about our making our own dresses. Nan, you are right: needlework is our forte; nothing is a trouble to us. Few girls have such clever fingers, I believe; and then you and Dulce have such taste. Mrs. Paine once told me that we were the best-dressed girls in the neighborhood, and she wished Carrie looked half as well. I am telling you this, not from vanity, but ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English logography ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... friend), had the last winter destroyed and kild up all our hoggs, insomuch as of five or six hundred (as it is supposed), there was not above one sow, that we can heare of, left alive; not a henn nor a chick in the forte (and our horses and mares they had eaten ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... tiny den, was a great favorite. At our own restaurant, two Negro women made the best corn-fritters we had ever tasted; a green parrot and a monkey squawked and chattered on the balustrade; a Filipino boy played marches on a cracked piano-forte. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... is observed on all sides how very little great A and great B, notwithstanding the high position they have earned for themselves in their calling, know of matters out of their own line. On the other hand, the man of whom it was said that 'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... said Stephen, "they must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the way, why ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Jack returned a short, sailor-like reply, in which he insisted that he had only done for Avatea what he would have done for any woman under the sun. But Jack's forte did not lie in speech- making, so he terminated rather abruptly by seizing the chief's hand and shaking it violently, after which he made ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... C. Marrineal and The Patriot. It amused Marrineal almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to be satisfied," said one of his friends to the musician, one day; "all the world admires you; money drops from the keys of your piano-forte; and a princess is in love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... et visiva, per hoc purgetur, et cerebrum a sua superfluitate purgetur, etc. Etiam qui sternutat frequenter, dicitur habere forte ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... (l. ii. c. 19, p. 142) compares the cruelty of the Gauls and the clemency of the Goths. Ibi vix quemquam inventum senatorem, qui vel absens evaserit; hic vix quemquam requiri, qui forte ut latens perierit. But there is an air of rhetoric, and perhaps of falsehood, in this antithesis; and Socrates (l. vii. c. 10) affirms, perhaps by an opposite exaggeration, that many senators were put to death ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Garnet Wolseley, making his way to Coomassie, as a crow would fly, is just about the manner in which we may be sure that Germanicus made his way into Germany—as straight as he could go. But military history is not the forte of the author of the Annals. He knew it and avoided it as much as he could,—very unlike Tacitus, who, practically acquainted with military as well as civil affairs, writes with an obvious liking, of combats and civil wars, and, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... in Dublin, nominally in preparation for the law, at Trinity College. But my college career convinced my uncle that my forte did not lie in the classics, and Sir George succeeded in inducing him to yield to my wishes, and interested himself so strongly for me that I obtained a cornetcy in the 14th Light Dragoons a week before the regiment sailed for Portugal. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... first instance I have met with in history of a prisoner standing 'mute of malice.' Coke read him a lecture on the subject, pointing out that by his obstinacy he was making himself liable to peine forte et dure, which meant that order could be given for his exposure in an open place near the prison, extended naked, and to have weights laid upon him in increasing amount, he being kept alive with the "coarsest ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... en jeune corps Pense auoir seure garnison; Mais Mort plus forte, le met hors De sa ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... but she could never endure them, because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could think of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the simbols of the ancient World, up to the real discoveries of the present time proceeded the solution of the relation of the Eternal time, motion, and distance. Which set forte the discovery of the generational cosmological Parents of this planet, are discovered that these can be seen ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. These journeys provided the material for a book ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... says Baron de Grimm, "n'est presque jamais faux, mais malheureusement il a voix, figure, tout, contre lui. Une sensibilit'e forte et profonde, qui faisait disparaitre la laideur de ses traits sous le charme de l'expression dont elle les rendait susceptible, et ne laissait aper'cevoir que lea caract'ere et la passion dont son 'ame 'etait remplie, et lui donnait @ chaque instant ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... to warn us from trying to make too many genera out of these animals. Dr. Gray, whose particular forte—or shall I say weakness?—was minute subdivision, classed (in 1847) the Indian porcupines in three sub-families, Hystrix, Acanthion, and Atherura; and Acanthion he some years after (1866, see 'P. Z. S.' p. 308) divided again into three groups, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, fencer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... arrampiccata piu lassa e prosaicamente seduta sulla sua sedia portatile sta scrivendo una lettera sopra un foglio a vignetta. L' Italiano continua ad ascendere ... e giunte alla vetta ... all' amplissima libera vista, il cuore dell' Italiano batte piu forte ... la mente s' esalta, e i piu energici pensieri vi bollono.... Ma gli occhi ritornano svegliati dei passi dei Cavalli, appie del ripiane s' affaccia una numerosa comitiva ... e un pique nique! Fuggi fuggi mal capitate Italiano la straniero l' inseque ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... the University, an honour which he at once declined, feeling that its acceptance would not only interfere with his freedom in composition, but bind him down to an occupation which he confessed was not his forte. This Chair had been specially created in the hope that he would fill it, and it marks the first, though by no means the last, attempt on the part of the Berliners to secure his services for ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... observed the count, good-naturedly, seeing Baldassare's embarrassment at having his ignorance exposed. (The cavaliere never could leave poor Adonis alone.) "We all know your forte is the ballroom; there you ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces. The chickens, which had always ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... parut avoir ete autrefois une grande et forte ville. Elle a un tres-beau port. On voit a Zara le corps de ce saint Simeon a qui N. S. fut presente dans le temple. Elle est entouree de trois cotes par la mer, et son port, egalement beau, est ferme d'une chaine ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... controversy between him and me about the scriptural warrants of church censures, now in that they are clearly against him. Next Aretius, who thought it hard, yea impossible, to bring in excommunication at that time, saith also, Dabit posterior aetas tractabiliores forte animas,—peradventure the following age shall bring forth more tractable souls; and thereupon he adviseth not to despair of the restitution of excommunication. I cited also other testimonies to show that the Zurich divines did endeavour and long for ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the teasers, to begin to troll; and then almost at once a greedy swordfish appeared, absolutely fearless and determined. R. C. hooked him. The first leap showed the Marlin to be the smallest of the day so far. But what he lacked in weight he made up in activity. He was a great performer, and his forte appeared to be turning upside down in the air. He leaped clear twenty-two times. Then he settled down and tried to plug out to sea. Alas! that human steam-winch at the rod drew him right up to the boat, where he looked to weigh about one ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... crime veritable est d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.' ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... incident of this novel is that most extraordinary of all punishments known to English criminal law, the peine forte et dure. The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic, and, perhaps, in some ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... not bring himself to share her point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant too soon. So, of course, I 've ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... viol or bass viol are generally admitted to be more melodious than those produced by other kinds of instruments, and many have expressed a desire to see an instrument so constructed as to be played with keys, like the organ or piano forte, and give the tones of the violin. This is the character of the instrument here introduced. It is elegant in appearance; occupies less than half the space of a piano forte, and is so light and portable that a lady-performer may readily place it before her, and thus avoid the necessity,—unpleasant ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... if I were you, I wouldn't chance it. Fighting has never really been your forte; Witness Larissa, and your rapid transit, Chivied by slow foot-sloggers of the Porte; Far better make for Denmark o'er the foam; There is no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... laudatory exclamation is often brought into use. And yet they seem to be satisfied, generally, when their children obtain, by a mere skimming over its surface, but a peep into the realities and refining beauties of the science; when the favorite daughter in the use of the piano-forte, for instance, becomes only the ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... rose in my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as every body did, eagerly to the chapter on England, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... could manage the rights!" Jack said. "Spelling is not my forte, and Howard, who is great at it, ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... Genesis was meant to teach scientific truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no scientific authority ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... resolve, Mr. Joe tried the "moral dodge," as he elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... l'ignore. Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... horns, hoof and tail! This gives the fifth hero time to erect his impregnable tower before the fiend returns from the end of the world. When he comes to the tower he finds all his skill is naught, so he has recourse to artifice, which indeed has always been his forte. He begs piteously to be allowed one last look of his beloved princess. They can't refuse him so slight a favour, and make a tiny hole in the tower wall, but, tiny as it is, the Devil is able to pull the princess through it and instantly mounts on high with her. Now ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... remain long at Singapore. His principal object was to procure a vessel to trade between that place and Sarawak. Trading, however, was not his forte; but he already felt the deepest interest in the welfare of those people. By accident—or, more properly, by Providence—he appears to have been sent to put a stop to an unnatural war, and to save the lives of the unfortunate rebels; and the benefit ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... (He says "Yes" with his eyes, bows, and moves up C. The piano is now forte. BELINDA accompanies him up a little, then stops. He turns in entrance up C., and they exchange glances. TREMAYNE exits to R., behind yew hedge. BELINDA stays looking after him, then moves down to back of table and picking up the book of poems, gives ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... Oramus, si forte non molestumst, Demostres, ubi sint tuae tenebrae. Te campo quaesivimus minore, Te in circo, te in omnibus libellis, Te in templo summi Iovis sacrato. 5 In Magni simul ambulatione Femellas omnes, amice, prendi, Quas vultu vidi tamen serenas. A, vel te sic ipse flagitabam, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... capable of violent fits of work, but of "few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number of hexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers would tolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, and power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy." ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... power, standing in the main threshold, and the little auditory became a ringing arena, where we fought without flinching, standing foot to foot and drawing fire for fire. The man in the monkey-jacket broke his word: silence was not his forte; he hurled denials and counter-charges vociferously; he was full of gall and bitterness, and when I closed the last page and resumed my chair, he sprang from his place to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... courage required to run away. They have, besides, when confronted with each other, a certain instinct for strife, as we see in other male animals, such as dogs, bulls, and so forth. But high and perilous enterprise is not Waverley's forte. He would never have been his celebrated ancestor Sir Nigel, but only Sir Nigel's eulogist and poet. I will tell you where he will be at home, my dear, and in his place,—in the quiet circle of domestic happiness, lettered indolence, and elegant enjoyments, of Waverley-Honour. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... literature, fiction is the one to which, by nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women will of course be found competent to the highest success in other departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the threshold of this ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... still your life from day to day Nae "lente largo" in the play, But "allegretto forte" gay Harmonious flow: A sweeping, kindling, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... d'assainissement de la ville de Paris, dont je faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: 'Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... commodatam accepit, ad ipsam restituendam tenetur, vel ejus precium, si forte incendio, ruins, naufragio, ant latronum, vel hostium incursu, consumpta fuerit vel deperdita, substracts, vel ablata." Fol. 99 a, b. This has been thought a corrupt text (Guterbock, Bracton, by Coxe, p. 175; 2 Twiss, Bract. Int. xxviii.), but agrees with Glanvill, supra, and with Fleta, L. II. ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... touching pay, the amount retained for clothing, promotion, roster, reserve, uniform, full and fatigue dress, armament, and tactics. He understood, without difficulty, the advantages of the percussion gun, but the attempt to explain rifled cannon to him was in vain. Artillery was not his forte; but he avowed, nevertheless, that Napoleon had owed more than one victory to his ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... our right appeared Fort Amsterdam, mounting no less than sixty guns in two tiers, capable, it seemed, of blowing us all out of the water, while there was a chain of forts on the opposite side, and at the bottom of the harbour the fortress, said to be impregnable, of Forte Republique enfilading the whole, and almost within grape-shot distance. Athwart the harbour was moored a Dutch thirty-six gun frigate and a twenty-gun corvette. The commodore had been ordered to diplomatise, and so he did in the most effectual way, for we all sailed in with a flag ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... masterpiece of Art. All that he knows he knows profoundly, nor does it require an Artesian bore to bring that knowledge bubbling to the surface. His mastery over his intellect is as great as that of Liszt over the piano-forte,—it is a slave to do his bidding. He is the result of a thousand years of culture. A "Double-First" never gives way to enthusiasms; his heart never gets into his head. Impulse is snubbed as though it were a poor relation; and argument is carried on by clear, acute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the famous "Selah," which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the staff on ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... years of age, and had had but little success as a writer. He must have felt that parody was not his forte, and, with his connection with le Mercure, an opportunity was presented to deal with actualities, where his powers of observation might come into play. He was, as he says of himself, born an observer. "Je suis ne de maniere que tout me devient une matiere de reflexion; c'est comme une philosophie ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... battaglia veniva rinforzando, E in ogni parte apparisce la morte: E mentre in qua e in la, combatte Orlando, Un tratto a caso trovo Bujaforte, E in su la testa gli dette col brando: E perche l'elmo e temperato e forte, O forse incantato era, al colpo ha retto: Ma de la ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... thunder. Hill was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, adaptable, and full of the past; Toombs was inexhaustible, original, inflexible, and full of the now. It was Hill's special forte to close a campaign; Stephens' to manage it; Toombs' to originate it. In politics as in war, he sought, with the suddenness of an electric flash, to combat, vanquish, and slay. Hill's eloquence exceeded ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Empress made a present to the institution of a piano-forte; it had also a hand-organ, which pleased the poor inmates exceedingly. On one occasion the Empress, on entering the asylum, observed that the inmates appeared unusually dull, when she called them near, and played on the hand-organ ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... I am proud to say, the distinguished subject of this memoir had the honor once of being chosen semi-monthly secretary, after a sharp and close canvass. In the transactions of this society the principal forte of Daniel was debating; albeit the character of his elocution was not the most brilliant, and it was not often until after the ayes and noes were called, that it could be determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... sight of the unresponsive quiet around her. Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... man had but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was entitled to peace he still had to ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... difficulty in justifying Washington's course by the opinion of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologics, 1 ma., 2 dae., Quaest. XCVI, Art. 4), who says that an unjust law is not binding in conscience "nisi forte propter vitandum scandalum vel turbationem." Aquinas is speaking of an unjust law which may be resisted unless scandal or tumult would result from resistance. Washington is speaking of a law which he considers right, but which he would not enforce if it should occasion such evils. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... pluck I can muster against great anxieties and in a very shattered state of health, I am trying to do things that will bring in money soon; and I could not, if I were not mad, step out of my way to work at what might perhaps bring me in more but months ahead. Journalism, you know well, is not my forte; yet if I could only get a roving commission from a paper, I should leap at it and send them goodish (no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... am," replied Eleanor emphatically. "You ought to know from past experiences that disagreeable scenes are my forte." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... and nothing occurred to interrupt the smooth current of Fanny's existence, until it was deemed advisable to engage a person properly qualified to give her instructions on that indispensable fixture to a fashionable parlor—the piano-forte. A teacher of some reputed talent was employed for this purpose; he was a Mr. Price, of Charlestown—and has since rendered himself somewhat famous for his amours in the above city with a married lady whom we shall call Mrs. Stout; he had for some time been giving her lessons on the piano—but the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... before us. For a short time it was really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to undergo the peine forte et dure as the condition of our presence! We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness itself, would have had us stay and sit down in comfort at the supper-table, after the crowd had thinned, but we ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... forte indulsit cura soporem, Et toto versata thoro jam membra quiescunt, Continuo templum et violati Numinis aras, Et quod praecipuis mentem suboribus urget, Te videt in somnis; tua sacra et major imago Humana turbat pavidum, cogitque ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... distressed was it by constant butchery. In such a condition of morale an advance upon it might have changed history. In truth, the genius of Lee for offensive war had suffered by a too long service as an engineer. Like Erskine in the House of Commons, it was not his forte. In both the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns he allowed his cavalry to separate from him, and was left without intelligence of the enemy's movements until he was upon him. In both, too, his army was widely scattered, and had ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... say a word about your letters; except that Kate and I have come to a conclusion which makes me tremble in my shoes, for we decide that humorous narrative is your forte, and not statesmen of the commonwealth. I won't say a word about your news; for how could I in that case, while you want to hear what we are doing, resist the temptation of expending pages on those darling children? ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... donkey-fashion, straight; You've seen them do it, when their load's too great. "If I mistake not," he begins, "you'll find Viscus not more, nor Varius, to yoar mind: There's not a man can turn a verse so soon, Or dance so nimbly when he hears a tune: While, as for singing—ah! my forte is there: Tigellius' self ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... on me," said Jerry, now arousing himself and sauntering to the fire; "I hardly ever feel well,"—complaining was Jerry's especial forte, an excuse for all his laziness; yet his appetite never failed; and when, as was sometimes the case, one of the neighbours sent a small piece of meat, or any little article of food to his wife, under the ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... lyht, So doth the semly sonne bryht. When briddes singeth breme; Deowes donketh the dounes, Deores with huere derne rounes Domes forte deme; Wormes woweth under cloude, Wymmen waxeth wounder proude, So wel hit wol hem seme, Yef me shal wonte wille of on, This wunne weole y wole forgon Ant ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... n'est pas forte; j'ai contracte une toux opiniatre, il y a plus de deux ans, qui ne me quitte point. Cependant j'espere mettre la main a l'oeuvre bientot. Je ne peux dire, mademoiselle, combien votre affection—car ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... a dancing man. Too lazy. Now I'll undertake to steer any girl and dance down any fellow you please. Dancing's my forte.' And Dolly glanced from his trim feet to his flashing gem with the defiant air of a ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with which it came, showed that we were ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... merino. He draws the curtain. It is an ante-room. One half of it is a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in glass cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried them; they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in perfect time. Thereat he wondered. But the truth is, it was a house wherein precision reigned: a tuner and a clockmaker visited by ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... trade, your mind turns from elementary problems to the less distracting task of finding out how to make your discovered degree of talent count for all that it may be worth. After trying your hand at a variety of subjects, you will find your forte. But take your time about it. Every adventure in composition teaches you something new about yourself, your art and the markets wherein you gain your daily bread. The way to learn to write—the only way—is by writing, and ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... more be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much, even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely one and the same relation to their weights and ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,—"You see, that ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... "Vostre Majeste seit les humeurs des Angloys et leur voluntez estre forte discordantes, desireux de nouvellete, de mutation, et vindicatifz, soit pour estre insulaires, ou pour tenir ce natural de la marine."—Renard to Mary: Granvelle ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking- stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'—pressed slowly to death under planks,—for refusing to plead to an indictment for witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries, to keen-eyed benevolence ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... locis atque urbibus universis claudi protinus empla, et accessu vetitis omnibus licentiam delinquendi perditis abnegari. Volumus etiam cunctos a sacrificiis abstinere. Quod siquis aliquid forte hujusmodi perpetraverit, gladio sternatur: facultates etiam perempti fisco decernimus vindicari: et similiter adfligi rectores provinciarum si facinora vindicare neglexerint. Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 4. Chronology has discovered some contradiction in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... ne forte putes me, quae facere ipse recusem, Cum recte tractant alii, laudare maligne; Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet; falsis terroribus implet, Ut magus; & modo me ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... in personalities, and natural aptitude for popular oratory. Lincoln frankly admitted his formidable qualifications. But the Republican managers had a shrewd appreciation of both opponents; they saw that Lincoln's forte lay in hitting out straight, direct, and hard; and they felt that blows of the kind he delivered should not go out into the air, but should alight upon a concrete object,—upon Douglas. They conceived a wise plan. On July ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... organized a children's spectacle, in which I was entrusted with a part. The piece chosen was Iphigenie en Aulide. Mademoiselle de Sabran and her brother, as well as a young Strogonoff, were, it is said, perfect actors. Armand de Polignac had a little part. Tragedy was not my forte. But in the second piece I achieved a little success, which the Chevalier de Boufflers was kind enough to celebrate in a very bright couplet, sung at the close. He gave me the name of the Little White Mouse. After that ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... in which they may be said to have been so engaged all along; but with heavy effort, and under the express direction of a professional master of the ceremonies. The Adalian jester was a tall ugly fellow, who had considerable power of comic expression in his face, but whose forte lay in a cap of fantastic device. It was made of the skin of some animal, whose genus I will not venture to guess; and had been contrived in such fashion that the tail hung over the top, and whisked about at the caprice of the wearer. This was a never-failing source of amusement to the performer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... an engulfing stream of impetuous force, with the roar of thunder. Hill was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, adaptable, and full of the past; Toombs was inexhaustible, original, inflexible, and full of the now. It was Hill's special forte to close a campaign; Stephens' to manage it; Toombs' to originate it. In politics as in war, he sought, with the suddenness of an electric flash, to combat, vanquish, and slay. Hill's eloquence exceeded his judgment; Stephens' judgment was superior to his oratorical ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... et prisca formidine sacram, omnes ejusdem sanguinis populi legationibus coeunt, caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda primordia. Est et alia luco reverentia. Nemo nisi vinculo ligatus ingreditur, ut minor et potestatem numinis prae se ferens, Si forte prolapsus est, attolli et insurgere haud licitum: per humum evolvuntur: eoque omnis superstitio respicit, tanquam inde initia gentis, ibi regnator omnium deus, cetera subjecta atque parentia. Adjicit auctoritatem fortuna Semnonum: centum pagis habitantur; ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... thirteen movements, as shown in the above analysis, unless some variety of musical note was to be added to the vocality produced in the larynx; all of which movements might communicate with the keys of a harpsichord or forte piano, and perform the song as well as the accompaniment; or which if built in a gigantic form, might speak so loud as to command an army or ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... mass, intoning, as he came, a passage from the Psalms: "Je me re-jouirai; je partagerai Sichem, et je mesurerai la vallee de Succoth. Galaad sera a moi, Manasse sera a moi.... Moab sera le bassin ou je me laverai et je jetterai mon soulier sur Edom.... Qui est-ce qui me conduira dans la ville forte? Qui est-ce qui me conduira jusquen Edom?" (I will rejoice; I will divide Shechem and mete out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine; Ma-nasseh is mine.... Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... See, for example, the letter given by Wadding: Annals, ii., p. 16 (Rome, 1732). Tanta me amaritudo cordis, abundantia lacrymarum et immanitas doloris invasit, quod nisi ad pedes Jesu, consolationem solitae pietatis invenirem, spiritus meus forte deficeret et penitus anima liquefieret. Wadding's text should be corrected by that of the Riccardi MS., 279. f^o 80a and b. Cf. Mark of Lisbon, t. i., p. 185; Sbaralea, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... The supplies voted for this year were L7,860,250; and the national debt amounted to L127,500,000. In the course of the session, it may be remarked, that the ancient and barbarous custom of peine forte et dure, by which felons refusing to plead, were stretched on their backs and pressed to death by heavy weights, was abolished by an act, which declared that all who acted thus contumaciously were to be adjudged guilty of the crimes laid to their charge. At the close of the session Lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to their parlour with a sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... have known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... little voice in the matter," explains Jasper Wilmarth, with an affected cautiousness. "I have tried to understand Mr. St. Vincent's views about the working of his patent, but machinery is not my forte. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... England proclaimed her to be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his services. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed in the ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... has written a cantata called "The Birth of Love." Its fiery ending is uncharacteristic, but the beautiful tenor solo and an excellent bass song prove his forte to lie in the realm of tenderness. Brewer's music has little fondness for climaxes, but in a tender pathos that is not tragedy, but a sort of lotos-eater's dreaminess and regret, he is congenially placed. Smoothness is ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Stephen, "they must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... was not his forte, and his nervousness made him sputter. His speech was vibrant, trenchant, like hammerstrokes, and he said things to which there was no answer. He had a horror of discussion: he ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... crag[538] was tane by the Englismen, beseiged by the Governour, but still keapt; and at it was slane Gawen, the best of the Hammyltonis,[539] and the ordinance left. Whareupon, the Englismen encouraged, begane to fortifie upoun the hill above Broughty hous, which was called the Forte of Broughty, and was verray noysome to Dondy, which it brunt and laid waist; and so did it the moist parte of Anguss, which was not assured, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... afterwards acquires, by the junction of other considerable rivers, in the various countries which it fertilizes by its waters. We reposed here for some hours, and to my astonishment the Doctor, laying aside his pipe, entertained us with his performance on a piano forte, which was in the room, and when his tea arrived his place was occupied ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... subitement plus forte et, n'hsitant davantage Monsieur, dis-je, ou Madame, j'implore vritablement votre pardon; mais le fait est que je somnolais et vous vntes si doucement frapper, et si faiblement vous vntes heurter, heurter ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... rare power of making every word he uttered to be distinctly heard all over a large audience, without any apparent effort on his part. Besides, it was musical. The hearer went away with its expressive inflections and cadences still sounding in his ears. But his voice was not his only forte. He had a mind as full of sanctified wit and quick perception as an egg is full of food. A clear thinker, a cogent reasoner, and I may add, full of love and the Holy Ghost, it is not a matter of ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... masse; seulement des granits feuilletes, des roches feuilletees, melangees de quartz et de mica; des fragmens meme de quartz pur; mais absolument aucun schiste purement argileux, ni aucune pierre calcaire, rien qui fit effervescence avec l'eau-forte, et la pate meme qui renferme ces cailloux n'en fait aucune. Leur forme varie; les uns sont arrondis et ont manifestement perdu leurs angles par le frottement; d'autres ont tous leurs angles vifs, quelques uns meme ont la forme rhomboidale qu'affectent si frequemment ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Tertius C. Marrineal and The Patriot. It amused Marrineal almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's lukewarmness, by the vigor ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gaudet, Rovereda Davido, Et Verona tibi, Quosdanovice, patet. Vae mihi (raptor ait Gallus) ne forte per Alpes Heu! Bona pars ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... been printed. He composed fifty-three works for the church, a hundred and eighteen for orchestra, twenty-six operas and cantatas, a hundred and fifty-four songs, forty-nine concertos, sixty-two piano-forte pieces, and seventeen pieces ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... si forte placet veteres sopire querelas Anthemium concede mihi; sit partibus istis Augustus longumque Leo; mea jura gubernet ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... his movements, you might almost think him quick and naturally impetuous. There could be no greater mistake; or, if he is such by natural disposition, this is one of the points where his seminary training has taught him to control and master himself. The forte of his character is his unchanging equanimity. And yet there must have been in him a wondrous amount of nervous energy to enable him to survive very serious injuries to his frame in early life, and to endure the severe physical labors ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... that Luther emphatically reaffirmed this book, in a letter to Capito [July 9], 1637, as one of his very best." (Creeds 1, 303.) In his letter to Capito, Luther says: "Nullum enim agnosco meum iustum librum nisi forte 'De Servo Arbitrio' et 'Catechismum,'" thus endorsing De Servo Arbitrio in the same manner as his Catechism. (Enders 11, 247.) Before this Luther had said at his table: "Erasmus has written against me in his booklet Hyperaspistes, in ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... in a very shattered state of health, I am trying to do things that will bring in money soon; and I could not, if I were not mad, step out of my way to work at what might perhaps bring me in more but months ahead. Journalism, you know well, is not my forte; yet if I could only get a roving commission from a paper, I should leap at it and send them goodish (no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three hundred students four stories high." "HOUSEKEEPER.—A highly respectable middle-aged Person who has been filling the above Situation with a gentleman for upwards of eleven years and who is now deceased is anxious to meet a similar one." "TO PIANO-FORTE MAKERS.—A lady keeping a first-class school requiring a good piano, is desirous of receiving a daughter of the above in exchange for the same." "The Moor, seizing a bolster boiling over with rage and jealousy, smothers her." "The Dying Zouave the most wonderful mechanical ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the establishment during my visit. The men took this duty by turns—each for a fortnight—and Stout excelled the others. It was he who knew how to extract sweet music from the tea-kettle and the frying-pan! But Stout's forte was buttered toast! He was quite an adept at the formation of this luxury. If I remember rightly, it was an entire loaf that Stout cut up and toasted each morning for breakfast. He knew nothing of delicate ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... or expressed, of men and things? Explosive violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... on such occasions were adopted, the prisoner was three times brought before the Court, and called to plead; the consequences of persisting in standing mute being solemnly announced to him at each time. If he remained obdurate, the sentence of peine forte et dure was passed upon him; and, remanded to prison, he was put into a low and dark apartment. He would there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked for the most part. A weight of iron would be placed upon him, not quite enough to crush him. He would have no sustenance, save ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... more calmness than might have been expected. Instead of twisting his own neck, as he had hinted he might, if unsuccessful, the young author quietly remarked that tragedies were not his forte and that he intended ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... had he peeped through the blinds of No.—Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, Rouget, tu me ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... analytical chemist, says) "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve the ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... hez some forte—like huntin' an' such, But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much; Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me; Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!" When I tickled the back ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... as those kindred spirits which poets tell us were created pairs, and dispersed in space to seek out their particular mates. A harmony pervades the whole, a perfect modulation of numbers, never, perhaps, surpassed, and rarely equaled in compositions of their class. This was the forte of Thomas Ingoldsby; a harsh line or untrue rhyme grated on his ear like the Shandean hinge." These observations are just. As a rhymer, Mr. Barham has but one equal ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in a chair and crossing her legs, "I've found my forte at last. For three years, nearly, I've been employed by the Secret Service Department ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... of a viol or bass viol are generally admitted to be more melodious than those produced by other kinds of instruments, and many have expressed a desire to see an instrument so constructed as to be played with keys, like the organ or piano forte, and give the tones of the violin. This is the character of the instrument here introduced. It is elegant in appearance; occupies less than half the space of a piano forte, and is so light and portable that a lady-performer may readily place ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... on to him, sort of explaining matters: "You need not fear that I shall not sustain my end of the adventure. As any of the boys here will tell you, I can handle a forty-five or a Winchester about as well as anybody—and big-game hunting really is my forte. Indeed, I may say—using one of our homely but expressive colloquialisms—that when it comes to lion-hunting ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a white dress ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... man felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, "A wenomous one!" and "A wiralent wiper!" to the applause of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... began. The schoolmaster had read in Rabe's grammar: Nemo saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, and had always looked upon dancing as a species of insanity. True, he had watched puppies and calves dancing when they felt frisky, but he did not believe that Cicero's maxim applied to the animal world, and he was in the habit of drawing a sharp line between men and animals. Now, as he ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... fabellis concinne lepideque texendis Mirus artifex Neminem habuit parem. Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta, Quam nullo illi labore constiterint, Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici; Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat, Apte varie copioseque alluderet, Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetue in scriptis, poeta elegantior, An in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... aria of 'Orpheus,' 'Che faro senza Euridice' Change its expression by the smallest discrepancy of time or modulation, and you transform it into a tune for a puppet-show. In music of this description a misplaced piano or forte, an ill-judged fioriture, an error of movement, either one, will alter the effect of the whole scene. The opera must, therefore, be rehearsed under my own direction, for the composer is the soul of his opera, and his presence is as necessary to its success as is that of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that I cannot be heard, and I will never stoop to noisy banging. How I hate these orchestral players! How they scratch and blow like pigs and boasters! When I did play with them they made fun of my red hair and delicate touch. The leader could not understand me, and kept on yelling "Forte, Forte." It was in the Fifth of Beethoven, and I became angry and called out in my poor German (ah! I hate German, it hurts my teeth): "Nein, so klopft das Schicksal nicht an die Pforte." You remember ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... constant butchery. In such a condition of morale an advance upon it might have changed history. In truth, the genius of Lee for offensive war had suffered by a too long service as an engineer. Like Erskine in the House of Commons, it was not his forte. In both the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns he allowed his cavalry to separate from him, and was left without intelligence of the enemy's movements until he was upon him. In both, too, his army was widely scattered, and had to be brought ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... turbulento hoc, suspicioso ac difficillimo tempore, sive citius, sive aliquanto tardius, in medio cursu abreptum iri. Quapropter ignarus quid de me futurum sit, quum Dei permissu in carceres et vincula forte detrudendus sim, ad omnem eventum scriptum hoc condidi: quod ut legere, et ex eo causam meam cognoscere velitis, etiam atque etiam rogo. Fiet enim, ut hac re non parvo labore liberemini, dum quod multis ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... date from 1380, when the last Venetian Count had gone, but there are later additions. At this time the Castel S. Lorenzo was built, displacing an oratory built on the site of a nunnery established before the eleventh century. Forte Molo, by the harbour (formerly Fort S. Giovanni, and now much altered) and the tower of S. Luca still remain of the earlier fortifications. As the town spread it was fortified by the addition of the Torre Menze (built in 1464 by Michelozzo and George of Sebenico, but altered in 1538), the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... great square edifices of a grand and gloomy aspect, built of dark blue stones (pietra forte) measuring from 3 to 4feet. The bases, to the height of from 20 to 30 feet, consist of coarsely chiselled rubble work, which lessens the baldness, and contributes character and effect to the from 200 to 300 feet of plain wall. At intervals are strong ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... they were comforted in their miseries by the gracious words of one of their company, called Sweer-to-go, who showed them that this adventure had been foretold by the prophet David, Psalm. Quum exsurgerent homines in nos, forte vivos deglutissent nos; when we were eaten in the salad, with salt, oil, and vinegar. Quum irasceretur furor eorum in nos, forsitan aqua absorbuisset nos; when he drank the great draught. Torrentem pertransivit anima nostra; when the stream of his water carried ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... signore, per sor acqua La quale e multo utile et humele et pretiosa et casta; Laudato si, mi signore, per frate focu Per lo quale ennallumini la nocte Et ello e bello et jocundo e robustioso e forte. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the happiest portions of existence are the most difficult to chronicle. We may—nay, we must, impart our miseries and annoyances to our many "dear friends," whose forte is sympathy or consolation—and all men are eloquent on the subject of their woes; not so with their joys: some have a miser-like pleasure in hoarding them up for their own private gratification; others—and they are prudent—feel that the narrative is scarcely agreeable ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... hardly our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... overmuch irrigation, nor brilliant at agriculture. Neither was it the Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it was the Southern Cross. Take the cross as a symbol inclusive of more than Christian symbolism. Take it as a symbol signifying peine forte et dure. Is it not peculiarly characteristic of Africa to deal with us as she is doing? Does she not truly follow her star in banishing you, and shifting you, and ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... an unknown quantity to Lady Ingleby. So was the wild beating of her own heart. But she knew the situation called for tact, and was not tactful speech always her special forte? ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... to do justice to his subject. He had that day returned from a pilgrimage to one of the pictures, and was able to inform the artists who were present with regard to the smallest accessory. We fancied, had painting, and not penning, been his forte, he could have reproduced the picture for us on the spot, could we, at the same time, have transformed the table-cloth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... lunched with her on our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were going, he was pretending to ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, and they continue crescendo,—the voice of the teacher and the voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the teacher who is expected to carry out the system ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... impossible to get in the sweet-pea, and the convolvulus, and lost and bewildered herself among the multitude of leaves that formed the cup of the rose, Mr. Gummage snatched the pencil from her hand, rubbed out the whole, and then drew it himself. It must be confessed that his forte lay in flowers, and he was extremely clever at them, "but," as he expressed it, "his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... anything of the sort," resumed Camilla, "I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—" Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... love that it is "de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque, a la fois, la tete, le coeur, le corps." It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is true in measure of every strong juvenile attachment: but it is rarely indeed so copiously ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple, l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of Chatham, to the annoyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... prisoner remains a mute only from obstinacy, then in some cases judgment shall be awarded against him as if he had pleaded or were found guilty, and in others he shall be remitted to his penance, that is to suffer what the Law calls Peine forte et dure, which is pressing, of which the readers will find an account in the subsequent life of Burnworth, alias Frazier; and therefore I shall not treat further ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... precedent, I was allowed to keep mine burning at discretion. Now some readers of these pages may think that a confinement, such as I have described, wherein, there was to be obtained a sufficiency of meat, drink, tobacco, and light literature, is not, after all, a peine forte et dure; and that it is both weak and unreasonable thereanent to make one's moan. So, in bygone days, when a lazy fit was strong upon me, have I thought myself. I am not malicious enough to wish that the most contemptuously ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... you, I wouldn't chance it. Fighting has never really been your forte; Witness Larissa, and your rapid transit, Chivied by slow foot-sloggers of the Porte; Far better make for Denmark o'er the foam; There ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... ut dominus servi pro derelicto habiti dominium. Sec. 236. Alter casus est, Si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit, ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus & populo traditum accepit, alienae ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non ea mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet: tamen quia quod praecipuum est regiae dignitatis amifit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem vel invitum, cujus libertatem sartam ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... critic remarked that his forte was the analysis of the souls and bodies of a type half virgin and half courtesan, is now available in a volume of selections admirably translated ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... the pilot on board. We have a fair wind from S.S.W. and shall soon be out of sight of land. We have fourteen very agreeable passengers, an experienced and remarkably pleasant captain, and a strong, large, fast-sailing ship. We expect from twenty-five to thirty days' passage.... We have a piano-forte on board and two gentlemen who play elegantly, so we shall have fine times. I am in good spirits, though I feel rather singularly to see my native shores disappearing so fast and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Florentini sine fraude vitam quasi inter crepuscula vesperascentem coloribus quam vividis depinxit. Vesperi quotiens, dum foco adsidemus, hoc iubente resurgit Italia. Vesperi nuper, dum huius idyllia forte meditabar, Cami inter arundines mihi videbar vocem magnam audire clamantis, Pa o' me/gas ou' te/qnhken. Vivit adhuc Pan ipse, cum Marathonis memoria ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... improvisation on the aeolopantaleon. This instrument, invented by the cabinet-maker Dlugosz, of this town, combines the aeolomelodicon [FOOTNOTE: An instrument of the organ species, invented by Professor Hoffmann, and constructed by the mechanician Brunner, of Warsaw.] with the piano- forte....Young Chopin distinguished himself in his improvisation by wealth of musical ideas, and under his hands this instrument, of which he is a thorough master, made a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... but, had she been a little sharper, she would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the prim sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and melody were well marked, and there was no mistaking the agility ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English logography seem to be his: he marshals an array of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... declared that he would have no conversation with Jones on business affairs, unless in the presence of a third party. Jones represented that if they went on as they were now doing, the property would soon be swallowed up by the lawyers. To this Mr. Brown, whose forte was not eloquence, tacitly assented with a ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... if it were no wood." Nothing could surpass Louis's obsequiousness: "Sicut mandasti ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus," etc. He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: "Quod si forte obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos in verbo regio pollicemur tuae Beatitudini atque promittimus exsequi facere tua mandata, omni appellationis aut oppositionis obstaculo prorsus excluso," etc. Louis was never more to be distrusted than when he bound himself ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... your music, though I cannot hope again to accompany your harp with my flute. My last andante movement was too forte for those whom it took by surprise. Let not your allegro vivace be damped by young Crotchet's desertion, which, though I have not heard it, I take for granted. He is, like myself, a scientific politician, and has an eye as keen as a needle to his own interest. He ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... was his forte," said Charles; "yet he never loaded his lectures; everything he said had a meaning, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... passion, Some to men's feelings, others to their reason; The last of these was never much the fashion, For reason thinks all reasoning out of season. Some speakers whine, and others lay the lash on, But more or less continue still to tease on, With arguments according to their 'forte;' But no one dreams of ever ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... readers of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred; nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the necessity of us all. Keen are the refutations of time. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... think her mind was specially adapted to the didactic style, nor was it much to her taste. When writing in that style her pen did not seem to be entirely at ease, or to move quite at its own sweet will. Careful statement and nice theological distinctions were not her forte. And yet her mental grasp of Christian doctrine in its vital substance was very firm, and her power of observing, as well as depicting, the most delicate and varying phenomena of the spiritual life was like an instinct. A purer or more whole-hearted ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the other,—you may have, in your algebra class, a goldsmith who is afraid of being snobbish if he speaks to a map-engraver, or a tailor who does not presume to address an opinion on Archimedes' square to a piano-forte maker. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the period of his marriage, from the profits of his writings and his wife's dowry, he was master of nearly a thousand pounds and a well-stocked farm; and increasing annual gains by his writings, seemed to augur future independence. But the Shepherd, not perceiving that literature was his forte, resolved to embark further in farming speculations; he took in lease the extensive farm of Mount Benger, adjoining Altrive Lake, expending his entire capital in the stocking. The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Yordas—the oldest family in Yorkshire. Men of great power, both for good and evil, mainly, perhaps, the latter. It has struck me sometimes that the county takes its name—But etymology is not my forte. What has he to do with us, you ask? Sir, I will answer you most frankly. 'Coram populo' is my business motto. Excuse me, I think I hear that door creak. No, a mere fancy—we are quite 'in camera.' Very well; reverend sir, prepare your mind for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... "Terram vero Landa Rolfoni quaesitam existimarem esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam nempe Americae e regione Gronlandiae, quae forte hodie Estotilandia," etc. Crymogoea, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Maria bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of pane santo, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of pan forte da Siena, compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,—a mixture as pernicious as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure production ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... with a sigh. "It is abominable work to write letters," he said; "I cannot comprehend why you, Gneisenau, who are so good a soldier, at the same time know so well how to wield the pen. It is not my forte, although I had a notion once to be a savant, and really become a sort of writer. In those calamitous days, subsequent to 1807, despair and ennui sought for some relief to my mind, and made me write a book, and I believe ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... dance—the Lancers. Two thirds of the young company, including Don and Dorry, attended the village dancing-school; and one and all "just doted on the Lancers," as Josie Manning said. Uncle George, knowing this, had surprised the D's by secretly engaging two players,—for piano-forte and violin,—and their well-marked time and spirited playing put added life into even the lithe young forms that flitted through the rooms. Charity looked on in rapt delight, the more so as kind Sailor Jack already had carried the sleepy and warmly ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... my Address to the Institution; and a single line in italics in the next number intimated that it was not to appear. And thus both my schemes were, as they ought to be, knocked on the head. I have not schemed any since. Strategy is, I fear, not my forte; and it is idle to attempt doing in spite of nature what one has not been born to do well. Besides, I began to be seriously dissatisfied with myself: there seemed to be nothing absolutely wrong in a man who wanted honest employment taking ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... was hearing the other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and as grim as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... Krech grinned. "If I lay the foundation, it's up to you to erect the edifice. Brain-work, not manual labor, is my forte." Then he added more seriously, "I've thought of something; instead of the accomplice being actually a member of the household, mightn't he be just some one who has the entree—the run of the house? Some one who could carry off the situation if he had been ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... forms a rare but fitting background to poetic genius, I invariably do, to be praised and thanked for a week, and then to be again as before told, upon the slightest provocation, "You better not meddle with verses." "You stick to prose." "Verses are not your forte." "You can't begin to come up with ——, and ——, and ——." On that auroral night, crowned with the splendors of the wild mystery of the North, I am sure that the muse awoke and stirred in the depths of my soul, and needed but a word of recognition ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... my wife and I constantly sat alone, and she wrote. It is no disrespect to her to say that writing is not her forte, but the communications she made in this way were exceedingly voluminous, and couched in a particularly happy style, though on subjects far above the range of ordinary compositions. We never obtained a single ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... curious marking, and usually overlooked by pianists, is the crescendo and con forza of the cadenza. This is obviously erroneous. The theme, which occurs three times, should first be piano, then pianissimo, and lastly forte. This opus is dedicated ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... sort arme en jeune corps Pense auoir seure garnison; Mais Mort plus forte, le met hors ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... Emerson is coming up this afternoon. He is a most interesting man to talk to. Only don't—" She nearly said, "Don't protect him." But the bell was ringing for lunch, and, as often happened, Cecil had paid no great attention to her remarks. Charm, not argument, was to be her forte. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... "Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis; Accurrit quidam ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... genus omne perosa Foemineum, et senibus glacies non aequa rotundis: Apparent rari stantes in tramite glauco; Radit iter, cogitque nives, sua tela, juventus. Trux matrona ruit, multos dominata per annos, Digna indigna minans, glomeratque volumina crurum; Illa parte senex, amisso forte galero, Per plateas bacchatur; eum chorus omnis agrestum Ridet anhelantem frustra, et jam jamque tenentem Quod petit; illud agunt venti prensumque resorbent. Post, ubi compositus tandem votique potitus Sedit humi; flet crura tuens nive candida lenta, Et vestem laceram, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... provided descending with such alacrity into the persons of her honoured guests, and had little occasion to exercise, with respect to any of the company saving Claverhouse himself, the compulsory urgency of pressing to eat, to which, as to the peine forte et dure, the ladies of that period were in the custom of subjecting ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... around her. Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... I, 15: "Quando peccatum tale est, ut idem sit poena peccati, quantum est quod valet voluntas sub dominante cupiditate, nisi forte, si ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... N. penalty; retribution &c. (punishment) 972; pain, pains and penalties; weregild[obs3], wergild; peine forte et dure[Fr]; penance &c. (atonement) 952; the devil to pay. fine, mulct, amercement; forfeit, forfeiture; escheat[Law], damages, deodand[obs3], sequestration, confiscation, premunire[Lat]; doomage [obs3][U.S.]. V. fine, mulct, amerce, sconce, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Shakespeare's forte lay in characterization, and that endlessly diversified. But when he sketched each several character it seems that he was never content till he had either found or fabricated the aptest words possible for representing its form and pressure most true to life. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... incarnate—that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, both in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... residence not far from Bloomsbury-square, and applied for an engagement. The manager, after scrutinizing the various qualifications of the youthful candidate, inquired, "and pray sir, to what particular parts have your studies been directed? What is your forte?" "Why, sir, (replied the youth in a modest tone) I rather think that I excel in your line." "My line! (exclaimed the manager with peculiar complacency) what is that? What do you mean?" "To confess the truth, (rejoined ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... could. But it's not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... they, their goods and their camels, might enjoy comparative safety. The expense of putting it up would be very small, and it would avoid the constant friction which is bound to exist at present in a country where honesty is not the chief forte of the lower people, and where quarrels are ever rampant. Even during the short stay of Messrs. Clemenson and Marsh's caravan, several articles were stolen under their very eyes in the Consulate shelter, and at the time of my visit caravans, British or otherwise, were absolutely at the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... sicut meus est mos, Flumineas propter salices et murmura Cami, Multa movens mecum, fumo inspirante, iacebam. Illic forte mihi senis occurrebat imago Squalida, torva tuens, longos incompta capillos; Ipse manu cymbam prensans se littore in udo Deposuit; Camique humeros agnoscere latos Immanesque artus atque ora hirsuta videbar: Mox lacrymas inter tales ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... but the dialogue is colorless, the rhymes poor, the plot, such as it contains, but indifferently handled, and even Empedocles, the principal character, is frequently tedious and unnatural. Arnold's dramas show that his forte was not ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... said Charles, 'I'll take care the letter is moderate. Besides, it is only Philip, and he knows that letter-writing is not his forte.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... Albanorum Alexander, filii Alexandri ... filii Mane, filii Fergusii, primi Scotorum regis in Albania'. Qui quoque Fergusius fuit filius Feredach, quamvis a quibusdam dicitur filius Ferechere, parum tamen discrepant in sono. Haec discrepantia forte scriptoris constat vitio propter difficultatem loquelae. Deinde dictam genealogiam dictus Scotus ab homine in hominem continuando perlegit donec ad primum Scotum, videlicet, Iber ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... reason; The last of these was never much the fashion, For Reason thinks all reasoning out of season: Some speakers whine, and others lay the lash on, But more or less continue still to tease on, With arguments according to their "forte:" But no one ever dreams ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... had spent his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get piano-forte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published. By the time he had quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... had to obey. June 15, 1806, Louis started from Saint Leu to go to his kingdom. He was accompanied by his wife and his two sons, the elder, Charles Napoleon, who died in Holland the 5th of the next May, and the other, Louis Napoleon, who died at Forte, in 1831, in the insurrection of the States of the Church against the Pope. His third son, later Napoleon III., was born in 1808. The new King entered The Hague June 23, 1806. He countermanded a body ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... of whom a critic remarked that his forte was the analysis of the souls and bodies of a type half virgin and half courtesan, is now available in a volume of selections admirably translated by ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... Nocte brevem si forte indulsit cura soporem, Et toto versata thoro jam membra quiescunt, Continuo templum et violati Numinis aras, Et quod praecipuis mentem suboribus urget, Te videt in somnis; tua sacra et major imago Humana turbat pavidum, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... ice-fall a plan incline, and says that the whole was less remarkable for the amount of ice, than for the characteristics indicated by the words I have quoted. He says that it required une assez forte dose de courage to slip down to the stone of which I have spoken; the fact being that at the time of my visit it would have been impossible to do so with any chance of stopping oneself, for the flat surface of the stone was all but ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... down the room and entered the line, bearing the old air of superiority. "I'll show them how to spell," he thought as he took his place. Spelling had been his strong forte in the old days of school, and it was soon evident that he retained his former ability. The letters of the most confusing words fell from his lips as though the very pages of the spelling-book were engraved upon his brain. He held his place until the contest had ruled ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... have taken up so much precious time in splitting hairs on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery. Perhaps it did good. It certainly did the men good. It was an education to them, and exciting to their audiences. Mr. Douglass's forte was in oratory; in exposing the hideousness of slavery and the wrongs of his race. Mr. Ward—a protege of Gerrit Smith's—was scholarly, thoughtful, logical, and eloquent. Mr. Douglass was generally worsted in debate, but always triumphant in oratory. A careful study of Mr. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Gougeard or any of his officers that the enemy was at hand. The artillery with which our rear was to be protected was at this moment on the little square of Droue. It consisted of a mountain battery under Sub-Lieutenant Gouesse of the artillery, and three Gatlings under Sub-Lieutenant De la Forte of the navy, with naval lieutenant Rodellec du Porzic in chief command. Whilst it was being brought into position, Colonel Bernard, Gougeard's chief of staff, galloped off to stop the retreat of the other part of our column. ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... of The Clarverings is in the genuine fun of some of the scenes. Humour has not been my forte, but I am inclined to think that the characters of Captain Boodle, Archie Clavering, and Sophie Gordeloup are humorous. Count Pateroff, the brother of Sophie, is also good, and disposes of the young hero's interference in a somewhat masterly manner. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... replied Eleanor emphatically. "You ought to know from past experiences that disagreeable scenes are my forte." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... pleaded Iff; "it is, if you don't mind my mentioning the fact, not your forte. Silence, on the other hand, suits your style cunningly. So shut up ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... "I do wish the doctor was here. He does so dearly love badinage. That, and bridgework, is his forte." ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... countenance expressed her wonder at this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate, for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous woman—an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had disembarrassed ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... sex: that I should be a good economist, a good mistress, as well as a good mother of a family. I wish my Eudora to be able to accompany her voice agreeably on the harp. I wish that she may play agreeably on the piano-forte; that she may know enough of drawing, to feel pleasure from the sight and from the examination of the finest pictures of the great painters; that she may be able to draw a flower that happens to please her; and that she may unite ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... methods than those of military force to settle the problems with which it was faced; and this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the character of a conclusion to the war and more and more that of an endless introduction to a new era. The work ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... au bout de trois journees Il arrive au sommet des hautes Pyrenees. La, dans l'espace immense il regarde en revant; Et sur une montagne, au loin, et bien avant Dans les terres, il voit une ville tres forte, Ceinte de murs avec deux tours a chaque porte. Elle offre a qui la voit ainsi dans le lointain Trente maitresses tours avec des toits d'etain, Et des machicoulis de forme sarrasine Encor tout ruisselants de poix ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... July, 1629, the English flag floated, for the first time, over the fortress of Quebec. "There was not in the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this examinate's knowledge, any victuals, save only one tubb of bitter roots"—such is the evidence of one of Kirke's captains. This, in brief, is the story of the first of the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... plane fiat, cum nuper subditi nostri nonnulli Tripoli in Barbaria et Argellae ab eius loci incolis voluntatem vestram forte nescientibus male habiti fuerint, et immaniter diuexati, Caesaream vestram Maiestatem beneuole rogamus, vt per Legatum nostrum eorum causam cognoscas, et postremo earum prouinciarum proregibus ac praefectis imperes, vt nostri libere ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that we are strongest in humour—others, that our power is in pathos. The judicious declare that our forte lies in both—in the two united, or alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated with such heartless levity? ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... can muster against great anxieties and in a very shattered state of health, I am trying to do things that will bring in money soon; and I could not, if I were not mad, step out of my way to work at what might perhaps bring me in more but months ahead. Journalism, you know well, is not my forte; yet if I could only get a roving commission from a paper, I should leap at it and send them goodish (no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... difficult to interfere; for when correct tempi and proper modifications of these were taken the defects of style which the flood had carried along or concealed became painfully apparent. The orchestra generally played mezzoforte; no real forte, no real piano was attained. Of course, in important cases I took care to enforce the reading I thought the true one, and to insist upon the right tempo. The excellent musicians did not object to this; on the contrary, they showed themselves sincerely ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... but how dost thou do? thou bard not of a thousand but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless, lank-jawed judges' upon ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... wonderfully patient with our troublesome brats. It was only to day, when that horrid little Jacky Smith hurt himself so, that I saw Elizabeth take him into the kitchen, wash his face and hands, and cuddle him up and comfort him, quite motherly. Her forte ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... prominent taste of his wife, which is for music, is the only one denied to him. He afforded an amusing instance of this fact last night, when Mrs. Hare, having performed several airs on the piano-forte, he asked her, "Why she played the same tune so often, for the monotony was tiresome?"—an observation that ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... wife's dowry, he was master of nearly a thousand pounds and a well-stocked farm; and increasing annual gains by his writings, seemed to augur future independence. But the Shepherd, not perceiving that literature was his forte, resolved to embark further in farming speculations; he took in lease the extensive farm of Mount Benger, adjoining Altrive Lake, expending his entire capital in the stocking. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Basil Morton and his wife, one or two of Alma's relatives. Little Hugh saw less and less of his mother, but he continued to thrive; and Harvey understood by now that Alma must not be expected to take much interest in the domestic side of things. It simply was not her forte. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... sight of land. We have fourteen very agreeable passengers, an experienced and remarkably pleasant captain, and a strong, large, fast-sailing ship. We expect from twenty-five to thirty days' passage.... We have a piano-forte on board and two gentlemen who play elegantly, so we shall have fine times. I am in good spirits, though I feel rather singularly to see my native shores disappearing so fast and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon one woman. She was beaten ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... was done for, I covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... mazurka with great grace and activity, and selected for his partner the Gouvernante, a fine, fat bouncing woman of twenty-five. He likewise, at my request, sang a Russian romance, which he accompanied on the piano-forte: his voice was a very plaintive, but weak barytone. The kindness of the Russian nobles to these unfortunate beings does infinite honour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... Froude's denial that a sentence described by the Spanish Ambassador de Silva as having been passed upon a pirate could have been pronounced in an English court of justice, Freeman asked, "Is it possible that Mr. Froude has never heard of the peine forte et dure?" Freeman of course knew it to be impossible. He knew also that the peine forte et dure was inflicted for refusing to plead, and that this pirate, by de Silva's own account, had been found guilty. But he ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Hotspurs and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature a neuropath and ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... that at first he refused to plead. It is the first instance I have met with in history of a prisoner standing 'mute of malice.' Coke read him a lecture on the subject, pointing out that by his obstinacy he was making himself liable to peine forte et dure, which meant that order could be given for his exposure in an open place near the prison, extended naked, and to have weights laid upon him in increasing amount, he being kept alive with the "coarsest ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... liking for people makes it easier for her to concentrate attention on the details of nursing, as thereby she is fulfilling her life's ambition in studying and serving human beings. She may be a real success if she can only convince herself that this is her forte. If not, and she dreams of other fields of service, her concentration on the thing at hand is not perfect enough for her to compete successfully with the ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... whether it be an elk or a deer. I am very much pleased with your project on the Harmonica, and the prospect of your succeeding in the application of keys to it. It will be the greatest present which has been made to the musical world this century, not excepting the Piano-forte. If its tone approaches that given by the finger as nearly only as the harpsichord does that of the harp, it will be very valuable. I have lately examined a foot-bass newly invented here, by the celebrated ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... taceat vel forte repente, Ante pios fratres, lector in Ecclesia. Est opus egregium sacros jam scribete libros, Nec mercede sua scriptor ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... Coleridge's forte. In politics he was happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred; nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the necessity ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... popular mind; and fire, in an insurance sense, as distinct from explosion, was accurately defined by Justice McIlvaine, of the Supreme Court of Ohio (1872), in the case of the Union Insurance Company vs. Forte, i.e., an explosion was a remote cause of loss and not the proximate cause, when the fire was a burning of a gas jet which did not destroy, though the explosion caused by the burning gas-jet did destroy. Earlier than this decision, however (in 1852), Justice Cushing, of the Supreme Court of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... agriculture. Neither was it the Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it was the Southern Cross. Take the cross as a symbol inclusive of more than Christian symbolism. Take it as a symbol signifying peine forte et dure. Is it not peculiarly characteristic of Africa to deal with us as she is doing? Does she not truly follow her star in banishing you, and shifting you, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... genius: the belles are faded fan-twinkling spinsters, prurient vulgar misses from school, and enormous citizens' wives. The company are entertained with lukewarm negus, and the sounds of a paltry piano forte. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... [11] "Sed si forte placet veteres sopire querelas Anthemium concede mihi; sit partibus istis Augustus longumque Leo; mea ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... gentium; in sicco; nidum suum terebratione indefessa aedificans. Cibus. Libros depascit; siccos praecipue seligens, et forte succidum ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... common people treat the priests respectfully, but once I heard several attacking one warmly on the score of eternal punishment. "Sara," said one, "per cento anni, per cinque cento, per mille o forse per dieci mille anni, ma non sara eterna; perche il Dio e un uomo forte—grande, generoso, di buon cuore." {16} An Italian told me once that if ever I came upon a priest whom I wanted to tease, I was to ask him if he knew a place called La Torre Pellice. I have never yet had the chance of doing ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... et empoisonnez de ladite heresie lutherienne et calvinienne, et qui pis est de la moytie, se trouva finallement des evesques qui estoient tous plains et couvers de ceste mauldite farinne. Et pour ce que le roy tenoit le main forte pour faire pugnir de la peine du feu les coulpables, y en avait mille a sa suitte et en la ville de Paris, lesquelz faisoient bonne mine et meschant jeu, feignoient d'estre vrays catholiques, et en leur secret et ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... poetical, it isn't your forte; but listen while I talk of matters more important. You've sometimes heard me ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... true, Rosa!" I said quietly. "You have invited me into this carriage simply to lie to me. But you are an indifferent liar—it is not your forte. My dear child, do you imagine that I cannot see through your poor little plan? Mrs. Sullivan Smith has been talking to you, and it has occurred to you that if you cast me off, the anger of that—that thing may be appeased, and I may be saved ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... clerest of euery element God hath appered vnto many a one Inspyrynge them / with grete wytte refulgent Who lyst to rede many dayes agone Many one wryteth trouthe / yet c[om]forte hath he none Wherfore I fere me / lyke a swarme of bees Wylde fyre wyll lyght amonge a ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... Lady Moseley, when she retired to the drawing-room after dinner, commenced a recital of the ceremony and company to be invited on the occasion. Etiquette and the decencies of life were not only the forte, but the fault of this lady; and she had gone on to the enumeration of about the fortieth personage in the ceremonials, before Clara found courage to say, that "Mr. Ives and myself both wish to be married at the altar, and to proceed to Bolton Rectory immediately ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... as the bottom means the north and the top the south, why does not the right mean the west and the left the east? I suppose I could have made this out by a little thought, but thinking, that is reflection, not being my forte, it is the last thing I ever care to do. Barbican, throw me a word ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Duncan Yordas—the oldest family in Yorkshire. Men of great power, both for good and evil, mainly, perhaps, the latter. It has struck me sometimes that the county takes its name—But etymology is not my forte. What has he to do with us, you ask? Sir, I will answer you most frankly. 'Coram populo' is my business motto. Excuse me, I think I hear that door creak. No, a mere fancy—we are quite 'in camera.' Very well; reverend sir, prepare your mind for a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... gloria in oculis sita sunt. Fortuna omnia ea victoribus praemia posuit. Res, tempus, pericula, egestas, belli spolia magnifica magis quam oratio mea vos hortentur. Vel imperatore vel milite me utimini; neque animus neque corpus a vobis aberit. Haec ipsa, ut spero, vobiscum una consul agam, nisi forte me animus fallit, et vos servire magis quam ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... his proceedings, or at least would know how to frame some sort of an excuse for them. But he merely divides the succulent stem close to the surface of the ground, above or below, and leaves the wreck unutilized even by him. A comfort is that flight is not his forte. He is generally to be found by the exploring penknife or trowel close by the scene of his crime, and is thus easily subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends survive in different spots of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... attentions; to threaten an action for breach of promise of marriage; to pretend that your daughter is a musician when she has with the greatest difficulty been coached into playing three piano-forte pieces which she loathes; to use your own mature charms to attract men to the house when your daughters have no aptitude for that department of sport; to coach them, when they have, in the arts by which men can be led to ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... bruises could do him any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer. Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action. Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. In the competition of the previous ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... when his stronghold in ye Southron land, Of formidable front, Forte Sumter hight, Did fall into Kyng Coten's rebell hand, Who coward-wise did challenge to the fight, Some several men again his host of might; Then Samuel, for so was he yclipt, Begun in batail's gear himself to dight, As being ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... read in histories of early times was like to this. Each day a weight was added to that already lying on the breast of a strong man, bound on his back by the cords of his oppressors, until relief and destruction came together, and the man was crushed; such was the peine forte et dure." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... demonstrationem pro Terrae motu adstruendo. Nunquam ausi sunt id asserere Nul igitur obstat quin loca illa in sensu literali Ecclesia intelligat, & intelligenda esse declaret, quamdiu nulla demonstratione contrarium evincitur; quae si forte aliquando a vobis excogitetur (quod vix crediderim) in hoc casu nullo modo dubitabit Ecclesia declarare, loca illa in sensu figurato & improprio intelligenda esse, ut illud Poetae, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... elementary problems to the less distracting task of finding out how to make your discovered degree of talent count for all that it may be worth. After trying your hand at a variety of subjects, you will find your forte. But take your time about it. Every adventure in composition teaches you something new about yourself, your art and the markets wherein you gain your daily bread. The way to learn to write—the only way—is by writing, ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Canary Islands to this country are about 3,500 tons a-year. The United States of America, and of late years, Brazil, also, take off a few cargoes of this article. Lancerota produces, annually, about 300 tons of barilla; Forte ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... nostro gioventu deve maturare i Frutti della nostra vecchiezza, e confortare con quell i desiderii dei populi nostri divoti, e propogare il seme di quella pianta che deve proteggerli, habbiamo Stabilito d'accompagnarci con una virgine eccelsa ed amorosa allattata alia mammella della leonessa forte e dell' Agnella mansueta. Percio essendo ci stato figurato sempre il vostro populo Europeo Romano par paese di donne invitte, i forte, e caste; allongiamo la nostra mano potente, a stringere una di loro, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... aluga-se um rico piano forte do autor Erard, de 3 cordas, por 280$, garantido; na rua da Quitanda ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in the true path to excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of expedient, with a persuasive eloquence, enlivened with wit and humor, he at once rose to prominence at the bar of Northern Ohio. The Cuyahoga bar was for many years considered the strongest in the State, but amongst all of its talented members, each with his own peculiar forte, for the faculty of close and long-continued reasoning, clearness of statement, nice discrimination, and never ending ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... je la pli alta finigxo, la unua, cxiam forte tenante per la du manoj la tenilon, metis sian sxovilon sur la lignan superajxon, kie trovigxas la drapa mureto: La dua malrapide komencas malfermi la sakon. Ili ambaux estas ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... unexpected strength of Fareham's fence, attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method. Joining his opponent's blade near the point, from a wide circular parry, he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire length of Fareham's blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp; and then, in the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch, he lunged at his enemy's breast, aiming at the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... usages in England on such occasions were adopted, the prisoner was three times brought before the Court, and called to plead; the consequences of persisting in standing mute being solemnly announced to him at each time. If he remained obdurate, the sentence of peine forte et dure was passed upon him; and, remanded to prison, he was put into a low and dark apartment. He would there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked for the most part. A weight of iron would be placed upon him, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Vurmisero gaudet, Rovereda Davido, Et Verona tibi, Quosdanovice, patet. Vae mihi (raptor ait Gallus) ne forte per Alpes Heu! Bona pars in rem ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... purity incarnate—that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo—and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, both ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the telling of a story is her forte, you put her below Wilkie Collins or Mrs. Oliphant; if you say her object is to give a picture of English society, she is surpassed by Bulwer and Trollope; if she be called a satirist of society, Thackeray is her superior; if she ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... hastened to explain that her servants were nearly all sick, and that in her dilemma, 'Lena had volunteered her services, adding by way of compliment, undoubtedly, that "her niece seemed peculiarly adapted to such work—indeed, that her forte lay among pots ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... discende Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, Prese costui della bella persona Che mi fu tolta, e il modo ancor m' offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte: 10 Caino attende chi vita ci spense.' Queste parole da lor ci fur porte. Da che io intesi quelle anime offense Chinai 'l viso, e tanto il tenni basso, Finche il Poeta ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... hands; also a gentleman in a cocked hat, gold-lace, and breeches, who, no doubt, had something to do with the ceremonial of the Sessions. I saw, too, a procession of a good many old cabs and other carriages, filled with people, and a banner flaunting above each vehicle. These were the piano-forte makers of York, who were going out of town to have ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... adults, but as to the effect upon their vocal organs there need be no reasonable doubt. A. B. Bach, in "Principles of Singing," p. 142, says: "If children are allowed to sing their higher notes forte, before the voice is properly equalized, it will become hard, harsh and hoarse, and they will fail in correct intonation. A mistake in this direction not only ruins the middle register but destroys the voice ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... and bewailings were not a natural resource with Polly, whose forte was action. Her first thought in the morning was: what should she do about it? Something must be done, of course, and she was the only one to do it. What it was she had not the faintest idea, but then it was her business to find out. Here was she, eighteen years ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... guardians, and removed the discalced provincial; and against the will of your Majesty and your royal decrees tried to convert the discalced fathers into Observantines, under the protection of Don Juan Cereco Salamanca. Because he removed a guardian of Manila, Fray Jose Forte, for causes which the ex-provincial ought to have discovered, this order caused the greatest scandal in the community that has been seen here. As it did not happen in my time, I am only obliged to inform your Majesty of it, but ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... very day you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thought of anything but that very thing ever since I found that they had hidden it, and I can't yet see any good way of getting it. My forte is direct action and that fails in this case, since no amount of force or torture could make Crane reveal the hiding-place of the solution. It's probably in the safest safe-deposit vault in the country. He wouldn't carry the key on him, ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... fellow artists forgot their jealousies, and in the nervous excitement of the moment complimented her highly. Beaumont, anxious to kick down her rival, declared, 'That, to say the least of it, it was a better rendering of the part than Leslie's.' And on hearing this, Bret, whose forte was not repartee, moved away; Mortimer, in his least artificial manner, said that it was not bad for a beginning and that she'd get on if she worked at it. Dubois strutted and spoke learnedly of how the part had been played in France, and ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... others, was one called 'Twenty Years Ago'—a simple air, the words to which are supposed to be uttered by a man who revisits the playground of his youth. I remember that one night at the White House, when a few ladies were with the family, singing at the piano-forte, he asked for a little song in which the writer describes his sensations when revisiting the scenes of his boyhood, dwelling mournfully on the vanished joys and the delightful associations of forty years ago. It is not likely that there was much in Lincoln's lost youth that he would wish to recall; ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... not my forte,—not even oovry poo,— I stuck to keerds ez played by them ez did not parly voo, An' bein' how that poker wuz my most perficient game, I poneyed up for 20 blues an' set into the same. Three-fingered Hoover stayed behind an' parly-vood so well That all the kramy delly ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... His forte was that of a brilliant writer and most industrious compiler, a popularizer of science. He was at times a bold thinker; but his prudence, not to say timidity, in presenting in his ironical way his thoughts on the origin of things, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Uncle Sammy Fired away at his logical forte: Discussion was his occupation, And altercation his sport; He argued himself out of churches, he argued himself ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... that sweetness of disposition which forms a rare but fitting background to poetic genius, I invariably do, to be praised and thanked for a week, and then to be again as before told, upon the slightest provocation, "You better not meddle with verses." "You stick to prose." "Verses are not your forte." "You can't begin to come up with ——, and ——, and ——." On that auroral night, crowned with the splendors of the wild mystery of the North, I am sure that the muse awoke and stirred in the depths of my soul, and needed but a word of recognition and encouragement ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's lukewarmness, by the vigor of his own attacks upon Enderby. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The French flag under that of England proclaimed her to be a prize. She was quickly boarded by boats from the shore, every one in them eager to be on board, for a prize crew are supposed to have their pockets well lined with coin, and to be ready to spend it. She was soon known to be "La Forte," captured by the "Thisbe" in the East Indies. She at once went into dock, her crew was paid off, and Rawson got confirmed in his rank of commander; but Ronald Morton received no further acknowledgment of his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... at all; if she pledged her word, it might not always be profitable to keep it; but she liked to be on pleasant terms with everyone, and would be amiable to the last, no matter what happened. Comedy was her forte, rather than tragedy. If tragedy entered her life she would probably turn it into ridicule. Wholly without care, whimsical and generous to a degree, if it suited her mood, Louise Merrick possessed a nature capable of great things, either ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... and put him in a loose wrapper, and after considerable delay the surgeon came, and set his arm skilfully, and behold this ardent spirit caged. He chafed and fretted sadly. Fortitude was not his forte. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... morning after her arrival, having finished her piano-forte practice, touched her harp twice, and arpeggioed the Spanish Fandango on her guitar, Miss Betty read two paragraphs of "Gilbert" (for she was profoundly determined to pursue her tasks with diligence), ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, who, with his attendant, Captain Crowe, goes forth, in the style of Don Quixote and Sancho, to do the world. Smollett's forte was in the broadly humorous, and this is all that redeems this work from ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... fearless and determined. R. C. hooked him. The first leap showed the Marlin to be the smallest of the day so far. But what he lacked in weight he made up in activity. He was a great performer, and his forte appeared to be turning upside down in the air. He leaped clear twenty-two times. Then he settled down and tried to plug out to sea. Alas! that human steam-winch at the rod drew him right up to the boat, where he looked to weigh about one ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... magno in populo cum saepe coorta est Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus; Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat; Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant: Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet: Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam Prospiciens genitor, coeloque invectus aperto Flectit equos, curruque ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... in Rome, and by-and-by busy painting his great fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the "Last Judgment," which occupied him eight years; in 1542 he was appointed architect of St. Peter's, and he planned and built the dome; sculpture was his great forte, but his genius was equal to any task imposed on him, and he has left poems to show what he might have done in the domain of letters as he has done in those of arts, with which his fame is more ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... remained silent, petrified with amazement. And Liszt when in the full development of his genius, had, as we have seen, been the art-comrade of George Sand; he had spent the whole of the summer season of 1837 at Nohant, transcribing Beethoven's symphonies for the piano-forte whilst she wrote her romances; she was familiar with his marvellous improvisations. In her "Trip to Chamounix" (Lettres d'un Voyageur, No. VI.) she has drawn a vivid picture of their extraordinary effect, describing his unrehearsed organ recital in the Cathedral of Freibourg to his little ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Lake Superior (under which head are included the following bands: Fond du Lac, Boise Forte, Grand Portage, Red Cliff, Bad River, Lac de Flambeau, and Lac Court D'Oreille) number about five thousand one hundred and fifty. They constitute a part of the Ojibways (anglicized in the term Chippewas), formerly one of ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... non aequa rotundis: Apparent rari stantes in tramite glauco; Radit iter, cogitque nives, sua tela, juventus. Trux matrona ruit, multos dominata per annos, Digna indigna minans, glomeratque volumina crurum; Illa parte senex, amisso forte galero, Per plateas bacchatur; eum chorus omnis agrestum Ridet anhelantem frustra, et jam jamque tenentem Quod petit; illud agunt venti prensumque resorbent. Post, ubi compositus tandem votique potitus Sedit humi; flet crura tuens nive candida lenta, Et vestem laceram, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... will excuse my describing the scene which ensued, for, as I have before said, and as the reader has probably assented, description is not my forte; beside, I am in a devil of a hurry to get the ship under weigh, or all will ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... she would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the prim sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and melody were well marked, and there was no mistaking the ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... they had only spent about 330 pounds. He did not know that he could say anything more. He had spoken several times on his journey down, and it seemed to him that he had said the same thing over and over again. His forte was not in public speaking, but he hoped they would take the will for the deed. They never could forget the very kind and hearty reception they had received in every place they had visited ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... "is hardly our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... average, belles-lettric literature is not much superior to newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate sex excesses: it renders homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and superstitions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order of society, all its shortcomings ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... were hung up like a trophy between two foxes' tails, which served the purpose of bell pulls. At this moment, my topographical observations were disturbed by the arrival of the scout with candles, and two strange-looking fellows in smock frocks, bringing in, as I supposed, a piano forte, but which, upon being placed on the table, proved to be a mere case: the top being taken off, the sides and ends let down in opposite directions, and the cloth pulled out straight, displayed an elegant dinner, smoking hot, and arranged in as much form as if the college ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... felt this as a personal affront, in a way of which the Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected on the slate, before she "seized the half- hour just previous to post-time to assure" her friends of this or of that; and Dr Johnson was, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... used to say before her. And it was not so easy to turn a letter prettily: that was Trampy's forte. She knew something about it. Lily, in her night-dress, with her elbows on the table, bit her pen, reflected, in a mental effort that gave her a headache. And that note-paper wasn't nice, either, without a heading; true, it only rested with herself; ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... was one of those persons who seem never to absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could see the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison with the Hub; but she had never, thus far, led in ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit; Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... itaque Denarius de Palma, ille qui singulis Diebus Dominicis et [lege a] fidelibus offerrebatur. Cur autem dictus 'de Palma' non constat, nisi forte sic dictus fuerit quod in manum seu palmam traderetur." Denarius Dominicalis, idem.—Arest. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... process of deduction that Daniel realized the thing to be a reproduction of the photograph he had sent. He glanced hurriedly over the account of the meeting, catching here and there phrases like "Mrs. Dott's forte is evidently platform speaking"—"clear thought, well expressed"—"tumultuous applause." He felt that he ought to read the account from beginning to end, but also that he could not. Azuba, however, when it was shown to her, had no such feeling. She bore it to the kitchen, read it all, and returned ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... because he had never seen till now so round and shapely an arm, hands so small and white, tipped with pink filbert nails. He did not learn the game so quickly as might be. He, like Maurice, was pondering over the unusual position in which he found himself; but analysis of any sort was not his forte; so he soon forgot all save the delicate curve of Madame's chin and throat, the soft ripple of her laughter, the abysmal gray of ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... muy grandioso, Pouca gente e muito feito, Forte e mui victorioso, Mui ousado e furioso Em tudo o que ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... of wild vines, the little garrison slipped out through what had seemed an impassable fissure in the crater, got in the rear of the army and demolished it completely. That's the kind of man that Spartacus was. Fighting was his forte. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... great A and great B, notwithstanding the high position they have earned for themselves in their calling, know of matters out of their own line. On the other hand, the man of whom it was said that 'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... passion, Some to men's feelings, others to their reason; The last of these was never much the fashion, For Reason thinks all reasoning out of season: Some speakers whine, and others lay the lash on, But more or less continue still to tease on, With arguments according to their "forte:" But no one ever dreams of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... affair. There was no make-belief, that's a sure thing. Whatever the British Officer may be his forte has never lain in his acting. So, by 2.30, I made my last salute to the last of the old lot and boarded the Triad. A baddish wrench parting from de Robeck and Keyes with whom I have been close friends for so long. Up to midnight de ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... profession; but somehow or another, a want of ambition or of talent did not permit him to ascend the scale, and he now kept a shop in the small seaport town of Overton, where he repaired damaged articles of science—a watch one day, a quadrant or a compass another; but his chief employment and his chief forte lay in telescopes; and accordingly, a large board, with "Nicholas Forster, Optician," surmounted the small shop window, at which he was invariably to be seen at his employment. He was an eccentric person, one of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... would rub his eyes for a moment, and then consciousness and extraordinary humour returned to him together, and his acting suffered in no way from the excesses which had overwhelmed him. Eccentricity was his forte, and it was usually found necessary to have characters expressly written for him; but there can be no doubt that he was very highly esteemed by the playgoers of his time, who viewed his loss to the stage as ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... mental, action of animals, and that it could no more be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much, even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely one and the same relation to their weights ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Fluker, in spite of accidents, had ever set upon her husband a value that was not recognized outside of his family. In this respect there seems a surprising compensation in human life. But this remark I make only in passing. Mrs. Fluker, admitting in her heart that farming was not her husband's forte, hoped, like a true wife, that it might be found in the new field to which he aspired. Besides, she did not forget that her brother Sam had said to her several times privately that if his brer Pink wouldn't have so many ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... nothing occurred to interrupt the smooth current of Fanny's existence, until it was deemed advisable to engage a person properly qualified to give her instructions on that indispensable fixture to a fashionable parlor—the piano-forte. A teacher of some reputed talent was employed for this purpose; he was a Mr. Price, of Charlestown—and has since rendered himself somewhat famous for his amours in the above city with a married lady whom we shall call Mrs. Stout; he had for some time been giving her lessons on the piano—but ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... You'll find your own work all in good time. It mayn't be what you'd like it to, but it'll be something that you can do better than any one else," said Miss Jinny with kind wisdom. "Look at me. I'm sure that books and catalogues is my forte, but the Lord knows better. He's given me the sense to see it, too, and so mama is comfortable and happy and someone else who hasn't a dear mother depending on her does the ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... constructione ut recte Philosophemur duo sunt imprimis observanda: Unum ut attendentes ad infinitam Dei potentiam & bonitatem ne vereamur nimis ampla & pulchra & absoluta ejus opera imaginari: sed e contra caveamus, ne si quos forte limites nobis non certo cognitos, in ipsis supponamus, non satis magnifice de creatoris potentia ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... ex me scire quaerat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte ut nescire discat.—AUGUSTINUS, De ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the Englismen, beseiged by the Governour, but still keapt; and at it was slane Gawen, the best of the Hammyltonis,[539] and the ordinance left. Whareupon, the Englismen encouraged, begane to fortifie upoun the hill above Broughty hous, which was called the Forte of Broughty, and was verray noysome to Dondy, which it brunt and laid waist; and so did it the moist parte of Anguss, which was not assured, and under ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... powers of development of the rationale of political and economical philosophy, in single instances, than can be discovered in the mass of harangues poured forth by Mr Cobden, were the flowers ever so carefully culled and separated from the loads of trashy weed. His forte consists in a coarse but dauntless intrepidity, with which respectability and intellect shrink from encounter. The country squire, educated and intelligent, but retiring and truth-loving, retreats naturally from contest with a bold, abusive, and unscrupulous demagogue; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... lost much, it was several times intimated to her during her progress up the hill. "The speakers from a distance" had all failed to appear except two. The forte of one of these seemed to be statistics. He astonished his audience if he did not edify them, putting into round numbers every fact connected with the temperance cause that could possibly be expressed by figures—the quantity of spirits consumed ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... much resembling those of a marionette. He had a hoarse voice, and such a rapid utterance, that although I understood German well enough for ordinary purposes, I could not understand one half he said. Ere long he had seated himself at the piano-forte, and was improvising such wild, sweet fancies, that the music of one's dreams is not more sweet and wild. Then suddenly some painful thought seemed to pass over his mind, as if he imagined, that he was there to amuse ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... nothing; and the "care" Maurice denied, dogged all his busy interest in his dinner—for which he had made the plans, as Eleanor, until the term ended, was obliged to go out to Medfield to give her music lessons; besides, "planning" was not her forte! But in the thrill of excitement about the dinner and in the mounting adventure of being happy, she was able to forget her fear that Mr. Houghton might be "horrid" to Maurice. If the Houghtons didn't like an elopement, it would mean that they had no romance in them! ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... sese per totam pene vitam prostituunt. Apud plurimas tribus juventutem utriusque sexus sine discrimine concumbere in usus est. Si juvenis forte indigenorum coetum quendam in castris manentem adveniat ubi quaevis sit puella innupta, mos est; nocte veniente et cubantibus omnibus, illam ex loco exsurgere et juvenem accedentem cum illo per noctem manere unde in sedem propriam ante diem ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is, of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man of genius he hopes one day to shine. He is almost the only man to whom Bludyer is ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Florence are great square edifices of a grand and gloomy aspect, built of dark blue stones (pietra forte) measuring from 3 to 4feet. The bases, to the height of from 20 to 30 feet, consist of coarsely chiselled rubble work, which lessens the baldness, and contributes character and effect to the from 200 to 300 feet of plain wall. At intervals are strong bronze ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... 191. "The Philharmonic Society in London presented to him.....a magnificent grand-piano forte of Broadwood's manufacture." Schindler says expressly, "Presented by Ferd. Ries, John Cramer, and Sir George Smart." Cannot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... iron memory, I had easily mastered my little part of Pasquino, and, putting on the costume of the actor who had fallen ill, I found myself a full-fledged if a new performer. I was to speak in the Venetian dialect; that was inconvenient for me rather than difficult, but at Forte, where we were, any slip of ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... passionately fond of music. Most of them play the piano-forte or the guitar, and also sing; but for want of good instruction neither their playing nor their singing is above mediocrity. Smoking is pretty general among females, at least those of mature age; but they indulge in this practice only in their own apartments. Of late years ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the wine still left in the bottle, and when he had finished it he said: "AKH! PARDON, maybe you wanted some more. It was horribly careless of me. However, I suppose I must have taken too much, and my head isn't very strong. [Footnote: ET JE N'AI PAS LA TETE FORTE.] There was a time when I lived on Morskaia Street, AU REZ-DE- CHAUSSEE, and had marvellous apartments, furniture, you know, and I was able to arrange it all beautifully, not so very expensively though; my father, to be ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... his family: thanks which chiefly referred to the royal marriage act. The supplies voted for this year were L7,860,250; and the national debt amounted to L127,500,000. In the course of the session, it may be remarked, that the ancient and barbarous custom of peine forte et dure, by which felons refusing to plead, were stretched on their backs and pressed to death by heavy weights, was abolished by an act, which declared that all who acted thus contumaciously were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... said he, placing an arm about her shoulders, "now that you have seen many of the wonder-spots of Europe, and know more about antiques and art than any of us, I suppose you are quite decided that business is not your forte, eh? The next thing I'll hear from you, you'll have dropped your ambitions and be sailing down a love-stream to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... was annoying for Milly regularly to find her own and the family purse reduced to a state that demanded rigid economy. The Invader, stirring in that limbo where she lay, might have answered that rigid economy was Milly's forte and real delight, and that it was well she should have nothing to spend in ridiculously disguising the fair body they were condemned to share. Mildred certainly left behind her social advantages which ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that critics may have given him, and all the faults they may find in him, Van Dyck was a great, and in the main an earnest portrait painter. Perhaps 'Charles in white satin, just descended from his horse,' is the best of the single portraits which were held to be Van Dyck's forte. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... capable of accommodating three hundred students four stories high." "HOUSEKEEPER.—A highly respectable middle-aged Person who has been filling the above Situation with a gentleman for upwards of eleven years and who is now deceased is anxious to meet a similar one." "TO PIANO-FORTE MAKERS.—A lady keeping a first-class school requiring a good piano, is desirous of receiving a daughter of the above in exchange for the same." "The Moor, seizing a bolster boiling over with rage and jealousy, smothers her." "The Dying Zouave the most wonderful ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... sisters, and Mr Barker thought that what was left could not be better applied than in the purchase of furniture for the parlour and school-room. The twenty-five guineas which the girls had themselves earned was the means of procuring them a good piano-forte; a thing which was quite necessary in their new establishment, but which could not at present have been afforded if their own industry had not ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... in Casa Guidi, Kate Field wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861: "They who have been so favored can never forget the square ante-room, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour; the little dining room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat; and, dearest of all, the large ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... different view of life, and at every relief a crowd of sniggering darkies assemble, on both sides, with applications for bukshish. At first one hears, "Sahib, Sahib!" in a deprecating tone of voice, mindful of sudden wakings of former Sahibs, sticks, and consequent sore backs, then piu forte, "Sahib!" crescendo, "Sahib, Sahib!" and then at last, in a burst of harmony, "Sahib purana Baira kutch bukshish mil jawe?"[33] and the miserable doolie traveller, who has been, probably, feigning sleep in sulky savageness for the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... that day returned from a pilgrimage to one of the pictures, and was able to inform the artists who were present with regard to the smallest accessory. We fancied, had painting, and not penning, been his forte, he could have reproduced the picture for us on the spot, could we, at the same time, have transformed the table-cloth into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... tongue of the serpent to Eve, and said: Why commanded you God that ye should not eat of all the trees of Paradise? This he said to find occasion to say that he was come for. Then the woman answered and said: Ne forte moriamur, lest haply we die, which she said doubting, for lightly she was flexible to every part. Whereunto anon he answered: Nay in no wise ye shall die, but God would not that ye should be like him in science, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: 'Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez pas la permission de vous tutoyer. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them a little fete, organized a children's spectacle, in which I was entrusted with a part. The piece chosen was Iphigenie en Aulide. Mademoiselle de Sabran and her brother, as well as a young Strogonoff, were, it is said, perfect actors. Armand de Polignac had a little part. Tragedy was not my forte. But in the second piece I achieved a little success, which the Chevalier de Boufflers was kind enough to celebrate in a very bright couplet, sung at the close. He gave me the name of the Little White Mouse. After that the Queen called me her little white mouse, and showed me a thousand kindnesses. ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... "Yes, it was his forte," said Charles; "yet he never loaded his lectures; everything he said had a meaning, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;—'tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making a drawing ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... as a pretty girl once said to me, 'women are a sex by themselves, so to speak,' and the sharper the line between their worldly functions and ours, the better. This greater swiftness and less erring subtlety of mind, their forte and privilege, justifies the painted mask that Artifice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can play without let. They gain the strength of reserve. They become important, as in the days of the Roman Empire were the Emperor's mistresses, as was the Pompadour at Versailles, as was our Elizabeth. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... do anything that really shocked her last night? Why didn't I wait for her this morning and find out the worst?" And his lips twisted awry—for to find out the worst was not his forte. Meditation, seeking as usual a scapegoat, lighted on Rosek. Like most egoists addicted to women, he had not many friends. Rosek was the most constant. But even for him, Fiorsen had at once the contempt and fear that a man naturally ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... marriage act. The supplies voted for this year were L7,860,250; and the national debt amounted to L127,500,000. In the course of the session, it may be remarked, that the ancient and barbarous custom of peine forte et dure, by which felons refusing to plead, were stretched on their backs and pressed to death by heavy weights, was abolished by an act, which declared that all who acted thus contumaciously were to be adjudged guilty of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a gentleman in a cocked hat, gold-lace, and breeches, who, no doubt, had something to do with the ceremonial of the Sessions. I saw, too, a procession of a good many old cabs and other carriages, filled with people, and a banner flaunting above each vehicle. These were the piano-forte makers of York, who were going out of town to have a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in his theory ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... a human four-and-a-half-year-old travelling, for the best part of a summer, is an imposition upon herself, her parents, and the public at large. To leave her with Bart's mother, whose forte is Scotch crossed with Pennsylvania Dutch discipline, will probably be to find on her return that she has developed a quaking fear of the dark; while, if she goes to my mother, bless her! who has the beautiful and soothing Southern genius for doing ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... great masterpieces of humor, which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried in the courts of an orthodox morality and found lamentably wanting; or else, by way of giving them another chance, they are being subjected to the peine forte et dure of modern analysis, and are revealing hideous and melancholy meanings in the process. I have always believed that Hudibras owes its chilly treatment at the hands of critics—with the single and most genial exception of Sainte-Beuve—to the absolute ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... whites sent for by vessels to other parts of the world. It is hardly strange that the Legislature did not even take the measure into consideration, and it does not appear that Jefferson ever returned to it. Practical legislation was not his forte. But his influence told nobly, as has been related, in barring slavery from the Northwestern territory, and, had just a little more support been found in 1784, would have saved the Southwest also to freedom, with almost certain promise of result in early freeing of the whole country. Just two or ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... infinitely versatile: books and book-making are indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous departments of science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical discovery, music as above, painting as elsewhere, sculpture ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be quiet and interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are not, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... in the forlorne hope of all dispayre Against the Forte where Beauties Army lies, Assayld with death, yet armed with gastly feare, Loe! thus my loue, my lyfe, my fortune tryes. Wounded with Arrowes from thy lightning eyes, My tongue in payne my harts counsels bewraying, My rebell thought for me in Ambushe lyes, To my lyues ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... cannot be heard, and I will never stoop to noisy banging. How I hate these orchestral players! How they scratch and blow like pigs and boasters! When I did play with them they made fun of my red hair and delicate touch. The leader could not understand me, and kept on yelling "Forte, Forte." It was in the Fifth of Beethoven, and I became angry and called out in my poor German (ah! I hate German, it hurts my teeth): "Nein, so klopft das Schicksal nicht an die ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... me," said Jerry, now arousing himself and sauntering to the fire; "I hardly ever feel well,"—complaining was Jerry's especial forte, an excuse for all his laziness; yet his appetite never failed; and when, as was sometimes the case, one of the neighbours sent a small piece of meat, or any little article of food to his wife, under the plea of ill health he managed to appropriate ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... our estate (and how that sicknesse was encreased and hot amongst vs) one day went foorth of the Forte, and walking vpon the yce, hee saw a troupe of those Countreymen comming from Stadacona, among which was Domagaia, who not passing ten or twelue dayes afore, had bene very sicke with that disease, and had his knees swolne as bigge as a childe of two yeres old, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... and yet it must be said that there is scarcely a quatrain in which the rhyme does not trip him into a platitude, and there are too many swaggering with that expression forte d'un sentiment faible which Voltaire condemns in Corneille,—a temptation to which Dryden always lay too invitingly open. But there are passages higher in kind than any I have cited, because they show imagination. Such are the verses in which he describes the dreams ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... paying' him the respect which he felt right sincere pleasure in receiving. The medium between dignity and humility which he hit off in these scenes, was worthy o'f being recorded; but, to do him justice, his forte lay in humility. He certainly condescended with a grace, and made them feel the honor done them by his vouchsafing to associate with such poor creatures as if he was one of themselves. To do them also justice, they ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... in the matter," explains Jasper Wilmarth, with an affected cautiousness. "I have tried to understand Mr. St. Vincent's views about the working of his patent, but machinery is not my forte. I can ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... This fluency and force of language, so often found in striking disparity to his other attainments, has armed critics and students of his racial peculiarities with the opinion that talking is his peculiar forte. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... No.—Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Southern sun, into a master orator. The original, ever-varying, and beautiful imagery with which he illustrated and enforced his arguments impressed Webster, Clay, Everett, and even John Quincy Adams. But his forte lay in arraigning his political opponents, when his oratory was "terrible as an army with banners;" nothing could stand against the energy of his look, gesture, and impassioned logic, when once he was fairly under ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... souls before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... siquis Forte Deo doliturus erit, daia praemia nollet, Sed meruise dari sciet, invitus que ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... heard her, rushed to me; by a strong effort, I recovered myself, swallowed the glass of water she brought, and walked to the piano-forte, where ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... honourable high court as follows:—That she should once more be questioned in kindness touching the articles contained in the indictment; and if she then continued stubborn she should be subjected to the peine forte et dure, for that the defensio she had set up did not suffice, and that there were indicia legitima, praegnantia et sufficientia ad torturam ipsam; to wit—1. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... of tree. fort, a stronghold. fur, soft hair. forte, one's strong point. faint, weak; languid. forth, forward. feint, a pretense. fourth, the next after third. fair, clear; handsome. fare, food; cost of passage. frays, quarrels. phrase, part of a sentence, feet, plural of foot. fore, toward ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Bishopriggs as having privately taken refuge from her anonymous correspondent at Swanhaven Lodge—was, musically speaking, far from being an efficient substitute for Mrs. Delamayn. Julius possessed, in his wife, one of the few players on the piano-forte under whose subtle touch that shallow and soulless instrument becomes inspired with expression not its own, and produces music instead of noise. The fine organization which can work this miracle had not been bestowed on Mrs. Glenarm. She had been carefully taught; and she was to be trusted ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of anything but that very thing ever since I found that they had hidden it, and I can't yet see any good way of getting it. My forte is direct action and that fails in this case, since no amount of force or torture could make Crane reveal the hiding-place of the solution. It's probably in the safest safe-deposit vault in the country. He wouldn't carry the key on him, probably ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant too soon. So, of course, I 've had ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... accepit, ad ipsam restituendam tenetur, vel ejus precium, si forte incendio, ruins, naufragio, ant latronum, vel hostium incursu, consumpta fuerit vel deperdita, substracts, vel ablata." Fol. 99 a, b. This has been thought a corrupt text (Guterbock, Bracton, by Coxe, p. 175; 2 Twiss, Bract. Int. xxviii.), but agrees ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... of its ailment, and could tell at a glance whether the little one was or was not affected by the evil eye of a secret enemy. If a pig was stolen, she was shrewd in her conjectures as to the direction its wrathful owner must take in the search. But her forte lay in bringing about love-matches. Many were the charms at her command for this purpose, and equally numerous the successes with which she was accredited. Some particulars of her doings in this direction were furnished by Jerry Magwire, a jolly ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... the most modest of children, and fully decided within myself that a man so clever as a real live editor must needs be could not have been mistaken. He had seen and judged, and practically told me that writing was not my forte. ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... first movement of the Surprise Symphony, before the body of the work begins, we have an early example of the Prelude. This slow Prelude, short though it be, is most carefully planned; with its crescendo from pp to a sf forte and its free modulation it arouses a genuine feeling of expectancy. The first theme of the Exposition (Vivace Assai) is a happy illustration of Haydn's sparkling rhythm, and as tossed off by the violins is of irresistible ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... hearing the other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and as grim as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... before they carried things with too high a hand. Not having a half-penny at command, she was helpless. Without money and without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the correspondence was going on. She supported herself by playing the piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... which makes many a plain face comely, as well as many a pretty one ugly for want of skill and knowledge of the fitness of things. She also took her turn to provide books for the readings, and as art was her forte she gave them selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson, who is never old. Bess read these aloud as her contribution, and Josie took her turn at the romances, poetry, and plays her uncles recommended. Mrs Jo ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... his passion seemed to grow in the absence of the beloved object. His only plan of winning her was to win his spurs first; but as what? Clearly his forte, it seemed, was in writing. If he could be a successful writer of romances, of songs, of plays, surely she would not refuse him. And so he began another romantic story, "Velasquez, the Novice," opening with the Monks of St. Bernard, among whom had been, so the tale ran, a mysterious ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... einzelne Manner gegeben, die uber ihrer Zeit Standen und von ihren Gegensatzen nicht beruhrt wurden.—BACHMANN. Hengstenberg, i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, aut solos non insanio; tertium enim non est, nisi (quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes.—HOBBES, quoted by DE MORGAN, 3rd June 1858: Life of Sir W. R. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Ac ne forte putes me, quae facere ipse recusem, Cum recte tractant alii, laudare maligne; Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet; falsis terroribus implet, Ut magus; & modo ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... oppidanis et toti provinciae gravis ob crebras exactiones, quas privata auctoritate, non consulto plerumque Andino ipso, faciebat, summum omnium odium in se concitaverat. Igitur rex Monsorellum, qui tunc forte in aula erat, clam revocat, et literas Bussii ei ostendit; additque se decoris familiae et ejus dignitatis perquam studiosum, noluisse rem adeo injuriosam eum celare; ceterum scire ipsum debere, quid consilii in ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... sir—Sir Duncan Yordas—the oldest family in Yorkshire. Men of great power, both for good and evil, mainly, perhaps, the latter. It has struck me sometimes that the county takes its name—But etymology is not my forte. What has he to do with us, you ask? Sir, I will answer you most frankly. 'Coram populo' is my business motto. Excuse me, I think I hear that door creak. No, a mere fancy—we are quite 'in camera.' Very well; reverend sir, prepare your ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... coquette, who drew to her hundreds of hearts, this kindly magician, who turned all her lovers into friends. Then pass directly to the next paper, on the terrible Corsican, "who weakened his greatness by the gigantic—who loved to astonish—who delighted too much in what was his forte, war,—who was too much a bold adventurer." And further on, the account of Napoleon's conversation with Goethe at Weimar, in which account M. Sainte-Beuve shows how fully he values the largeness and truthfulness and penetration of the great German. The ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... by surprise is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the threshold of ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... for Milly regularly to find her own and the family purse reduced to a state that demanded rigid economy. The Invader, stirring in that limbo where she lay, might have answered that rigid economy was Milly's forte and real delight, and that it was well she should have nothing to spend in ridiculously disguising the fair body they were condemned to share. Mildred certainly left behind her social advantages ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... where his fine translations of Spanish ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review" from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854, and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression was exhausted in six weeks. It passed through five editions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... The two great families of Este and Medici interested themselves in the poet's favour. Without that protection it is probable that the one line on the donation of Rome by Constantine to Silvester, where the poet speaks 'puzza forte' would have sufficed to put the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every room was ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... de my Lord Temple, l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to whom he had so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Sancto, Direct. Mystic. tr. iii. disp. 5, section I, n. 315: "Visio corporea est infima, visio imaginaria est media, visio intellectualis est suprema." N. 322: "Apparitio visibilis, cum sit omnium infima, est magis exposita illusioni diaboli, nisi forte huic visioni corporali visio intellectualis adjungatur, ut in apparitione S. Gabrielis archangeli facta ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... is considered Page's forte, he has never had any instruction further than his own reading and investigation. He began to conduct in opera and concert early in life, and has had much experience. He has also been active as a ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Luther emphatically reaffirmed this book, in a letter to Capito [July 9], 1637, as one of his very best." (Creeds 1, 303.) In his letter to Capito, Luther says: "Nullum enim agnosco meum iustum librum nisi forte 'De Servo Arbitrio' et 'Catechismum,'" thus endorsing De Servo Arbitrio in the same manner as his Catechism. (Enders 11, 247.) Before this Luther had said at his table: "Erasmus has written against me in his booklet Hyperaspistes, in which he endeavors to defend ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent au ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... quite long, which surprised me, for writing essays is not Annetta's forte, and hers are generally as brief as St. Clair's. Annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behavior, but there isn't a shadow of orginality in her. Here is ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... concerto-allegros (for instance, in the classic forms of Mozart, Beethoven and others), the first orchestral tutti is a complete introductory Exposition, in concise form, of the thematic material used in the body of the movement. See the first piano-forte concerto of ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... minor, it renders the first stanza in flowing concords largo affettuoso, and a single bass fugue, Then suddenly shifting to one flat, major, duple time, it executes the second stanza, "Hark! they whisper" ... "What is this, etc.," in alternate pianissimo and forte phrases; and finally, changing to triple time, sings the third triumphant stanza, andante, through staccato and fortissimo. The shout in the last adagio, on the four final bars, "O Death! O Death!" ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too cold a word.—I love you for your noble attachment to the fat ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a less tragic history is La Roche Gageac on the Dordogne, below Sarlat. "Ma chere patrie," wrote the old chronicler, Jean Tarde, "une petite ville bien close et tres forte dependant de la temporalite de l'evesque de Sarlet, la quelle ne fut jamais ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... fiamme, di passar concesso; Ch' egli l'Eroe pi forte, Cui Scelse amor fra tanti Per' quiui vnir, i ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... infeliciter tentaret, Tum in fabellis concinne lepideque texendis Mirus artifex Neminem habuit parem. Haec liberalis animi oblectamenta, Quam nullo illi labore constiterint, Facile ii perspexere, quibus usus est amici; Apud quos urbanitatum et leporum plenus Cum ad rem, quaecunque forte inciderat, Apte varie copioseque alluderet, Interea nihil quaesitum, nihil vi expressum Videbatur, Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte afiatim exuberare, Ita suos tandem dubios reliquit, Essetue in scriptis, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Cecilia was at first extremely painful; but time and constancy of mind soon lessened its difficulty. She amused herself with walking and reading, she commissioned Mr Monckton to send her a Piano Forte of Merlin's, she was fond of fine work, and she found in the conversation of Mrs Delvile a never-failing resource against languor and sadness. Leaving therefore to himself her mysterious son, she wisely resolved to find other employment for her thoughts, than conjectures with which she could ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... although corn kaj cxiuspecaj legomoj kreskis and all kinds of[7] vegetables bone, arboj estis nekonataj. Ecx grew well, trees were unknown. la malproksima montaro staris Even the distant mountains stood tutnuda; kaj kiam la ventoj all bare; and when the winds blew blovis forte el gxiaj negxoj, la strong from amidst their[8] snows, mizeruloj tremetis pro malvarmeco, the poor folk shivered for cold, kaj ne povis ecx en siaj dometoj and could not get comfortable[9] komfortigxi, cxar la penetranta even in their cottages, for the enfluo ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Smaragdum et aliquando Haymonem." AElfric's preface for his "Sermones Catholici." In the preface of his sermons on the lives of Saints, AElfric states that he intends not to translate any more, "ne forte despectui habeantur ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... with a commanding presence and amiable countenance. He was bold, earnest, energetic, persevering; artless, and honest as the day. He said exactly what he meant. His mental vision was clear, strong, and accurate. Imagination was never active; oratory was not his forte. Demonstrative evidence suited him best. In his religious character he was conscientious, devout, and reverent, never excited ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... amazement. And Liszt when in the full development of his genius, had, as we have seen, been the art-comrade of George Sand; he had spent the whole of the summer season of 1837 at Nohant, transcribing Beethoven's symphonies for the piano-forte whilst she wrote her romances; she was familiar with his marvellous improvisations. In her "Trip to Chamounix" (Lettres d'un Voyageur, No. VI.) she has drawn a vivid picture of their extraordinary effect, describing his unrehearsed ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood." Nothing could surpass Louis's obsequiousness: "Sicut mandasti ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus," etc. He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: "Quod si forte obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos in verbo regio pollicemur tuae Beatitudini atque promittimus exsequi facere tua mandata, omni appellationis aut oppositionis obstaculo prorsus excluso," etc. Louis was never more to be distrusted ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... learned, those other lines called "Children"; and there were only five days in which to learn them. Memorizing poetry, particularly when she could not quite understand its meaning, was not Peace's strong forte, and it was small wonder that she was dismayed at this change of program; but it was useless to protest. When Miss Peyton decided to do a certain thing, "all the king's horses and all the king's men" could not alter her decision. Peace had learned this from bitter experience and many hours ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... For how can that be finished which is never begun? But, though all the world were to laugh at me, I should laugh at all the world, were it to tell me it is more difficult to prevent the beginning, growth, and excess of any passion, than it is to learn to play excellently on the piano forte. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... to Sir Thomas, my dear," he said. He tried to speak casually, and, as a natural result, infused so much meaning into his voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern coughed confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He abandoned it in favor of directness. "He was telling me that you had refused ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... -Constiteram, exorientem Auroram forte salutans, Cum subito a laeva Roscius exoritur. Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vestra; Mortalis visust pulchrior ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to the question she had put, "Bones has some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his forte." ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... casting a sweet glance at Sir Robert, who immediately led her to the piano-forte, followed by the Scottish merchant of the Baltic, whither the noble symphony of "The Douglas," "hound and horn," soon gathered the rest of the company. The remainder of the evening passed away delightfully in the awakened harmony. Mrs. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: 'Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas se bien ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it was three miles from the Blount place to the nearest house. This was at the toll-gate, which was kept by a man named Curtis. He was a person of progressive tastes, supposed to have aristocratic inclinations. As he was a well-to-do man, these were evinced in a Brussels carpet and a piano-forte which figured in his small parlor, and by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school. She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far beyond the hill-side cottage where she was condemned to vegetate. Now she was very pretty, with dancing blue eyes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... considered the first dilettante mistress of music in Paris, related to me, an experiment which she once tried upon a young woman who was totally deaf and dumb. Madame E—— fastened a silk thread about her mouth, and rested the other end upon her piano forte, upon which she played a pathetic air. Her visitor soon appeared much affected, and at length burst into tears. When she recovered, she wrote down upon a piece of paper, that she had experienced a delight, which she could not express, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... l'arbuste effeuille, sur les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... absolutely fearless and determined. R. C. hooked him. The first leap showed the Marlin to be the smallest of the day so far. But what he lacked in weight he made up in activity. He was a great performer, and his forte appeared to be turning upside down in the air. He leaped clear twenty-two times. Then he settled down and tried to plug out to sea. Alas! that human steam-winch at the rod drew him right up to the boat, where he looked to weigh about ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... we, when we were first amused by that very pretty musical toy, the German Eolina, anticipate, that within three years we should hear such an instrument as the one we are about to describe. In shape, size, and compass, the AEOLOPHON is the counterpart of a babinet piano-forte, having six octaves of keys extending from FF to F; and its sounds are produced by a series of metallic springs, set in vibration by the action of the air produced from a bellows. It has three pedals—one for filling the wind-chest, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... old age Mr. Howells is selecting queer titles for his books. A while ago we had that feeble tale, "The Coast of Bohemia," and now we have "My Literary Passions." "Passions," literary or otherwise, were never Mr. Howells' forte and surely no man could be further from even the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... in that at first he refused to plead. It is the first instance I have met with in history of a prisoner standing 'mute of malice.' Coke read him a lecture on the subject, pointing out that by his obstinacy he was making himself liable to peine forte et dure, which meant that order could be given for his exposure in an open place near the prison, extended naked, and to have weights laid upon him in increasing amount, he being kept alive with the "coarsest bread ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... reconciled to his proceedings, or at least would know how to frame some sort of an excuse for them. But he merely divides the succulent stem close to the surface of the ground, above or below, and leaves the wreck unutilized even by him. A comfort is that flight is not his forte. He is generally to be found by the exploring penknife or trowel close by the scene of his crime, and is thus easily subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends survive in different spots of the adjacent underworld, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... you find some of the traits that distinguished him later on. For one thing he disdained the drudgery of committee work: he chafed at the confinement of the conference room; eagle-like he yearned to spread his wings. His forte was talking. He loathed to mull over dull and unresponsive reports. He frankly admitted a disinclination to work, and it makes him one of the most superficial of men in what the world calls culture. His intelligence ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Si quis forte mei domum Catonis, Depictas minio assulas, et illos Custodis vidit hortulos Priapi, Miratur, quibus ille disciplinis, Tantam sit sapientiam assecutus, Quam tres cauliculi et selibra farris; Racemi duo, tegula sub una, Ad summam ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... wind instruments, that led me to a most careful consideration of the advantages this system presented, for, in performances on a large scale, the following somewhat crude rule prevailed: all those passages marked piano were executed by a single set of instruments, while those marked forte were carried out by a duplicated set. As an instance of the way in which I took care to ensure an intelligible rendering by this means, I might point to a certain passage in the second movement of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... said, "is hardly our forte at present. The park's been Nature's playground for over a century, and she's made the most of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... banks of the lake, that you would find your fiddle unharmed, and that I would enable you to conquer your rival. But I don't feel that I am bound to do any thing of the kind for nothing; generosity was never my forte, and I have lived long enough among the burghers of Holland to insist on being well paid for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... for it was the forte of the cardinal to prepare surprises for the agreeable entertainment of his guests. The ladies and gentlemen, the cardinals and princes of the Church, crowded around him begging for an explanation of the mystery, a disclosure of ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... your sight returned to you to enable you to do so dastardly a deed; and I am beginning to have my doubts whether or not you have not been duping us all along, and, under that guise, spying upon us—which seems to be your forte. This revelation makes me angrier than ever," he went on, "for it leaves you with no possible hope of pardon for your atrocious conduct, which merits the whole world's scorn ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... novel. I have written fifty pages, described my hero and heroine, made them thoroughly in love with each other; and now I intend to part them for a season, without letting them be certain of the state of each other's heart. I think narrative my forte, but it will not do to have no conversations, and my dialogues seem so short and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... senseless call him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an upright piano forte—the manufacture, as well as the property, of Monsieur Langevin. It bore the date of 1806; and was considered as the first of the kind introduced into Normandy. It was impossible not to be struck with the various rational sources of amusement, by means of which this estimable character ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, or in any ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... that Mag had gone down to the village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... fame of which they carried to their northern homes. It was both directly and indirectly through one of these officers that the claims of Nice as a sanatorium came to be put so plainly before Smollett. [Losing its prestige as a ville forte, Nice was henceforth rapidly to gain the new character of a ville de plaisir. In 1763, says one of the city's historians, Smollett, the famous historian and novelist, visited Nice. "Arriving here shattered in health and depressed in spirits, under the genial influence of the climate he ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... never been my particular athletic forte, and now when my very life depended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on the occasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head the rooter's raucous and reproachful cries of "Ice Wagon," ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et semper eris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus. Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Saturn, turned analytical chemist, says) "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... accomplishments: she does not talk French, Spanish, or Italian, but she knows how to play every game that ever was invented, can tell stories to suit every age, can soothe a screaming child sooner than any one else, can rattle off cotillions on the piano-forte of a winter's evening without thinking it hard that she cannot join in the dance; and lastly, can lay down an interesting book or piece of crochet work to run on an errand for Aunt, or untangle the bob-tails of a kite, without showing ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... (sagacity) 498; discretion &c. *(caution) 864; finesse; craftiness &c. (cunning) 702; management &c. (conduct) 692; self-help. cleverness, talent, ability, ingenuity, capacity, parts, talents, faculty, endowment, forte, turn, gift, genius; intelligence &c. 498; sharpness, readiness &c. (activity) 682; invention &c. 515; aptness, aptitude; turn for, capacity for, genius for; felicity, capability, curiosa felicitas[Lat], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fifteen.' They lived in tents near the large towns, and seem only to have worked as much as was requisite to keep body and soul together. But, he adds, 'they possess a natural facility and quickness in acquiring the knowledge of the arts,' and musical performance was their forte. They were also employed as slaves in the households of the boyards, especially in the kitchens, which they made 'not less disgusting than the receptacles of swine.' They were bastinadoed, often in the presence of the master or mistress, and 'the ladies of quality, however young and beautiful, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... pas forte; j'ai contracte une toux opiniatre, il y a plus de deux ans, qui ne me quitte point. Cependant j'espere mettre la main a l'oeuvre bientot. Je ne peux dire, mademoiselle, combien votre affection—car vous les ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... crimson light of the canopied lamp, and where he presently falls silent, perfectly happy to be near her. The drawing-room is of a good size itself, and it has a room opening out of it called the library, with a case of books in it, and Mrs. Makely's piano-forte. The place is rather too richly and densely rugged, and there is rather more curtaining and shading of the windows than we should like; but Mrs. Makely is too well up-to-date, as she would say, to have much of the bric-a-brac about which she ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... inform me by what name I might mention them without shocking the company. Her reply was, that the word limb was used; "nay," continued she, "I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte." ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... engraved with heraldic devices, seen at the house of Mr. Tomkisson, the famous piano-forte-maker, is said to have first inspired the boy Turner with a love for art. He commenced to imitate the drawing of a certain rampant lion that especially took his fancy. Very soon after this the father announced that his son William was going to be a painter. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... said one of his friends to the musician, one day; "all the world admires you; money drops from the keys of your piano-forte; and a princess is in love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... exclude the possibility of easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room—"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"—but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... phantasmatum Extra systematis nostri fines lucentium Naturam indagaverit Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. CI[C]I[C]CCCXXII ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... his adventures at length to this casual acquaintance. This communicative gentleman is, of course, Clitophon; but before we proceed to the narrative of his loves and woes, we shall give a specimen of the author's powers in the line which appears to be his forte, by quoting his description of the painting above referred to:—"On entering the temple, my attention was attracted by a picture representing the story of Europa, in which sea and land were blended—the Phoenician ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Aeneas;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;—'tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... leant and kissed the maid's pink-palmed hands as they lay upon the coverlet, and taking them within her own fondled them, saying,—"And thou wilt surprise my lord and his friends by thy rare playing of the clavichord, and 'tis possible so great and wealthy a man will own a piano-forte of which we have heard so much; and mayhap thou will be presented at Court, and in great London town thou mayest see many musicians from France, for 'tis not improbable they are brought over the channel at the instance of his Majesty. Is ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "The Philharmonic Society in London presented to him.....a magnificent grand-piano forte of Broadwood's manufacture." Schindler says expressly, "Presented by Ferd. Ries, John Cramer, and Sir George ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of the soft voices singing the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," while the strings gently pulse; and the fortissimo C major chord on the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzo-forte minor chords, is as dazzling in its brilliancy to-day as when it was first sung. The number of unisons, throwing into relief the two minor chords on C and F, should be especially noted. The chorus ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Iul. 55). For encomiums on his style see Cic. Brut. 252, and Quintilian, x. 1, 114, who considered him second only to Cicero, and remarkable for vis, acumen, concitatio, and elegantia. The language of Tac. Dial. 21 is less complimentary, 'Nisi forte quisquam aut Caesaris pro Decio Samnite aut Bruti pro Deiotaro rege ceterosque eiusdem lentitudinis ac teporis libros legit, nisi qui et carmina ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... and from thence to one or two other houses on the Green, after which the rest of the day was devoted to his favourite exercises. The evenings he usually passed with the same family, among whom he began his morning, either in conversation, or in hearing Miss Pigot play upon the piano-forte, and singing over with her a certain set of songs which he admired,[59]—among which the "Maid of Lodi," (with the words, "My heart with love is beating,") and "When Time who steals our years away," were, it seems, his particular favourites. He appears, indeed, to have, even thus early, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... now a little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, at totus in illis: Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum; Arreptaque manu, Quid agis, dulcissime rerum? Suaviter, ut nunc est, inquam: & cupio omnia quae vis. Cum affectaretur, Num quid vis? occupo. ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... as you know, was never my forte; some of my best friends have not had a letter from me in years. I live only in my notes (compositions), and one is scarcely finished when another is begun. As I am working now I often compose three, ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.' ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and breeches, who, no doubt, had something to do with the ceremonial of the Sessions. I saw, too, a procession of a good many old cabs and other carriages, filled with people, and a banner flaunting above each vehicle. These were the piano-forte makers of York, who were going out of town to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... longer go about among the country houses, but has to remain in the town and pass the night at different houses, especially of those gentlemen who take pleasure in tapping him on the nose. Anton Prokofievitch is very fond of good eating, and plays a good game at cards. Obeying orders always was his forte; so, taking his hat and cane, he set out at ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... affecting. We have observed that the critics are not decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that we are strongest in humour—others, that our power is in pathos. The judicious declare that our forte lies in both—in the two united, or alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... angle was a square inclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, 'during hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the 'English and mathematical.' Interspersed about the room, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... think so? (He says "Yes" with his eyes, bows, and moves up C. The piano is now forte. BELINDA accompanies him up a little, then stops. He turns in entrance up C., and they exchange glances. TREMAYNE exits to R., behind yew hedge. BELINDA stays looking after him, then moves down to back of table and picking up the book of poems, gives that happy sigh of hers, only even ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... surprise is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the threshold of this ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case, a lady was in the very act of being run over, immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know; but he was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... At a meeting at Apsley House the Tory Lords came to an unanimous resolution to throw out the Bill, and at one or two meetings at Lambeth the bishops agreed to do the same. The debate was heavy; Melbourne very unlike Lord Grey, whose forte was leading the House of Lords and making speeches on such occasions. Ellenborough spoke the best, I think. I hardly ever heard such unbroken fluency, and a good deal of stuff, too, in his speech. Ellice and Spring Rice both told ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... play for you gladly, Miss Travers, but waltz-music is not my forte. Let me see what else there is here." And he began turning over the sheets ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... than loud talkers. I resolved to try my utmost to be quiet and interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are not, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... marina, dove il Po discende Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, Prese costui della bella persona Che mi fu tolta, e il modo ancor m' offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte: 10 Caino attende chi vita ci spense.' Queste parole da lor ci fur porte. Da che io intesi quelle anime offense Chinai 'l viso, e tanto il tenni basso, Finche il Poeta mi disse: 'Che pense?' Quando ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... raised having subsided, Mademoiselle Cormon asked the reason of her success. Then began the /forte/ of the gossip. Du Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a monster, who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling Hospital supplied. His immoral habits were at last revealed! these Parisian saturnalias ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... plantation no sweet or easy thing; the political and ecclesiastical offenders enjoyed it still less, while the small criminal class found their punishment quite sufficiently severe. To this man the life must be a slow peine forte et dure, breaking his body with toil, crushing his soul with a hopeless degradation. The thought of escape must be ever present with him. But escape in the conventional manner, through pathless forests and over broad streams, was a thing rarely attained to. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... sung one of the "Irish melodies," somebody said, "Everything that's national, is delightful." "Except the National Debt, ma'am," says Poole. Took tea at Vilamil's, and danced to the piano-forte. Wrote thirteen or fourteen lines before I went out. In talking of the organs in Gall's craniological system, Poole said he supposed a drunkard had ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... The Entertainment is written; and the rehearsals are in steady progress. All difficulties are provided for, but the one eternal difficulty of money. Miss Vanstone's resources stretch easily enough to the limits of our personal wants; including piano-forte hire for practice, and the purchase and making of the necessary dresses. But the expenses of starting the Entertainment are beyond the reach of any means we possess. A theatrical friend of mine here, whom I had hoped ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and by-and-by busy painting his great fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the "Last Judgment," which occupied him eight years; in 1542 he was appointed architect of St. Peter's, and he planned and built the dome; sculpture was his great forte, but his genius was equal to any task imposed on him, and he has left poems to show what he might have done in the domain of letters as he has done in those of arts, with which his fame ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... home at once, I wandered about the neighborhood, through street after street, until I found myself in another square, with a number of business-signs in it,—one of them that of a piano-forte firm, at sight of which, a thought came into my head. The next morning I went in, and requested to see the master. The man to whom I spoke stared, no doubt; but he went, and returning after a little while, during ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney becoming one ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... ils le vouloient. Pour nous, a force de rafiner, nous avons appauvri la notre, & n'ayant souvent qu'un terme propre a rendre une idee, nous aimons mieux affoiblir l'idee que de ne pas employer un terme noble.[3] Quelle perte pour ceux d'entre nos Ecrivains qui ont l'imagination forte, que celle de tant de mots que nous revoyons avec plaisir dans Amyot & dans Montagne. Ils ont commence par etre rejettes du beau style, parce qu'ils avoient passe dans le peuple; & ensuite rebutes par le peuple meme, qui a la longue est toujours ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... at Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) with terrible slaughter. "But the stout heart of the American nation quickly rallied, and inspired by the loyal determination of Abraham Lincoln the United States turned once more to their apparently hopeless task" (Colonel G. F. R. Henderson). McClellan's forte was organisation, and although at first slow in the field, he had assembled and trained a magnificent fighting force, with which he was "feeling his way to victory." He suffered defeat indeed at Gaines's Mill (June 27, 1862), the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... and her before us all. There will be no one present you can not trust. Your guardian, Sir Roger, and myself know already. Sardonyx is Mr. Walraven's lawyer, and silence is a lawyer's forte." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... later, when the Colonel appeared in the drawing-room, the violin was fetched, and Stella played it and sang afterwards to a piano-forte accompaniment. The performance was not of the same standard, by any means, as that which had delighted Thomas, for Stella did not feel the surroundings quite propitious. Still, with her voice and touch she could not fail, and the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... matter be needed, here we have it—Mr. B. was an editor. Irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. It was his strong point—his virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a Brownson to convince him that it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... their load's too great. "If I mistake not," he begins, "you'll find Viscus not more, nor Varius, to yoar mind: There's not a man can turn a verse so soon, Or dance so nimbly when he hears a tune: While, as for singing—ah! my forte is there: Tigellius' self might ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get piano-forte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published. By the time he had quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. His special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... and did not wish to be disturbed; also, that Mag had gone down to the village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she must ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf the noble ship and all on board ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it was the Southern Cross. Take the cross as a symbol inclusive of more than Christian symbolism. Take it as a symbol signifying peine forte et dure. Is it not peculiarly characteristic of Africa to deal with us as she is doing? Does she not truly follow her star in banishing you, and shifting you, and ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... de Pontoise.—J'ai ordonne qu'on vous fasse prisonnier, parceque, ayant envoye une requisition a Pontoise pour des vivres, vous avez repondu que vous ne les donneriez pas, sans qu'on envoie une force militaire assez forte pour les prendre. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... answer to the question she had put, "Bones has some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his forte." ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... n'y ai cependant pas vu de granit en masse; seulement des granits feuilletes, des roches feuilletees, melangees de quartz et de mica; des fragmens meme de quartz pur; mais absolument aucun schiste purement argileux, ni aucune pierre calcaire, rien qui fit effervescence avec l'eau-forte, et la pate meme qui renferme ces cailloux n'en fait aucune. Leur forme varie; les uns sont arrondis et ont manifestement perdu leurs angles par le frottement; d'autres ont tous leurs angles vifs, quelques uns meme ont la forme rhomboidale qu'affectent si frequemment les roches de ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... in my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as every body did, eagerly to the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... meted out that "peine forte et dure," that acme of humiliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible that many a little girl in that room solemnly averred and believed she would kill herself before submitting to it. Pupasse's voluminous ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with which it came, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Monsieur le Directeur—and reincarcerated in the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon one woman. She was beaten badly, I tell you, before ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... sweet and sour, that were served, according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... Oh, no; it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed in the Burnham case at the opening of ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... may be talked of in England, but to possess the very soul of harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... a personal affront, in a way of which the Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected on the slate, before she "seized the half- hour just previous to post-time to assure" her friends of this or of that; and Dr Johnson was, as she said, her model in these compositions. ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much, even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely one and the ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... had preceded it, in that the entire expense was to be borne by herself; and Mrs. Mills therefore only offered a feeble objection when the girl arranged that the front room upstairs was to be turned out, rout seats hired, and a few articles of furniture, including the piano-forte (which, at one perilous moment, threatened to remain for the rest of its life at the turn of the staircase), transferred from the shop parlour. Bulpert announced his intention of taking charge of the musical and dramatic part of the entertainment. Bulpert no longer considered himself a visitor ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... lucentium Naturam indagaverit Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... So doth the semly sonne bryht. When briddes singeth breme; Deowes donketh the dounes, Deores with huere derne rounes Domes forte deme; Wormes woweth under cloude, Wymmen waxeth wounder proude, So wel hit wol hem seme, Yef me shal wonte wille of on, This wunne weole y wole forgon Ant ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the Marquis who made the game. Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... a tutor—Cirindey of Corpus—whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean's niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quest of thee, valiant Roque, to find in thee if not a remedy at least relief in my misfortune; and not to keep thee in suspense, for I see thou dost not recognise me, I will tell thee who I am; I am Claudia Jeronima, the daughter of Simon Forte, thy good friend, and special enemy of Clauquel Torrellas, who is thine also as being of the faction opposed to thee. Thou knowest that this Torrellas has a son who is called, or at least was not two hours since, Don Vicente Torrellas. Well, to cut short the tale of my misfortune, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... far, the organist wipes his palms upon his trousers legs, squares his shoulders, and plunges into the program that he has played at all weddings for fifteen years past. It begins with Mendelssohn's Spring Song, pianissimo. Then comes Rubinstein's Melody in F, with a touch of forte toward the close, and then Nevin's "Oh, That We Two Were Maying" and then the Chopin waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, and then the Spring Song again, and then a free fantasia upon "The Rosary" and then a Moszkowski mazurka, and then the Dvorak Humoresque ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... Mofletus Panis delicatioris species, qui diatim distribui solet Canonicis praebendariis; Tolosatibus Pain Moufflet, quasi Pain molet dictus; forte quod ejusmodi panes singulis diebus coquantur, atque recentes et ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... surprise, certainly, for it was the forte of the cardinal to prepare surprises for the agreeable entertainment of his guests. The ladies and gentlemen, the cardinals and princes of the Church, crowded around him begging for an explanation of the mystery, a ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve the preservation ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... are great square edifices of a grand and gloomy aspect, built of dark blue stones (pietra forte) measuring from 3 to 4feet. The bases, to the height of from 20 to 30 feet, consist of coarsely chiselled rubble work, which lessens the baldness, and contributes character and effect to the from 200 to 300 feet of plain wall. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... fare best among the priests are the Jesuits, who returned from repeated banishment with the Austrians in this century. Their influence is very extended, and the confessional is their forte. Venetians say that with the old and the old-fashioned these crafty priests suggest remorse and impose penances; that with the young men and the latter-day thinkers they are men of the world, and pass off pleasant sins as trifles. All the students of the government ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... this forbearance misplaced—as was seen when, along in March, Jared's father ended his fifty unprofitable years of farm routine by dying suddenly and leaving things more or less at loose ends. Farming was not his forte—perhaps it is nobody's. He had never been able to make it pay, and he had gone in seeming willingness to shuffle off the general unsatisfactoriness of it all on to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... house and I EXPECT your honour will be after doing the same this year.' In this manner gifts are frequently turned into tributes. The high and low are not always dissimilar in their habits. It is said, that the Sublime Ottoman Forte is very apt to claim gifts as tributes: thus it is dangerous to send the Grand Seignor a fine horse on his birthday one year, lest on his next birthday he should expect a similar present, and should proceed to demonstrate the reasonableness of ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... course of the nerves, using gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Dominus, et famuli, et ancillae, a domo properantes, forte obliti, infantem in cunis jacentem secum non auferent, Daemones incipiunt commessari et vociferari, prospicereque per fenestras formis ursorum, luporum, felium, et monstrare pocula vino repleta. Ah, inquit pater, ubi infans ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... adapted to the didactic style, nor was it much to her taste. When writing in that style her pen did not seem to be entirely at ease, or to move quite at its own sweet will. Careful statement and nice theological distinctions were not her forte. And yet her mental grasp of Christian doctrine in its vital substance was very firm, and her power of observing, as well as depicting, the most delicate and varying phenomena of the spiritual life was like an instinct. A purer or more whole-hearted love of "the truth as it is in Jesus," ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... frontiers of Tunis and Tripoli. He is paid about eighteen-pence a day, cheap enough for his high political mission. The French are mighty fond of planting spies all over Barbary; but espionage is their forte. In the evening we arrived at the Salinæ[8], "salt pits," on the coast, where we found several small coasters loading with salt for Tripoli. Salt is also exported from this place to Europe. Here we brought up for the night, creeping ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... hasten with her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... revolver was empty, Dennis drew the sword attached to the saddle, and though he could not distinctly remember what happened, he saw that the blade was red from point to forte, when a parapet stopped the charge, and voices ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... to lose, and happy in the knowledge that no amount of bruises could do him any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer. Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action. Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... value was not to be despised, but thirst of fame and the desire of a more public position were the chief inducements to a man of Mr. Bridges' temperament, in which ambition and patriotism formed so prominent a part. Latin, however, was not Mr. Bridges' forte; he excelled rather in the higher branches of arithmetic and the abstruse sciences. His attainments, however, in the dead languages were beyond those of most of his contemporaries, as the letter he sent to the Master and Seniors will abundantly prove. It was chiefly owing to the great reverence ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... Alphabet Precis. Mr. Precis' peculiar forte was a singular happiness in official phraseology. Much that he wrote would doubtless have been considered in the purlieus of Paternoster Row as ungrammatical, if not unintelligible; but according to the syntax of Downing Street, it was equal to Macaulay, and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried in the courts of an orthodox morality and found lamentably wanting; or else, by way of giving them another chance, they are being subjected to the peine forte et dure of modern analysis, and are revealing hideous and melancholy meanings in the process. I have always believed that Hudibras owes its chilly treatment at the hands of critics—with the single and most genial exception ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... great forte is character-painting. This portraiture is accomplished with remarkable skill, the traits both individual and national being marked with great nicety ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... shortly after my coming to Llangollen. He said that he had been well acquainted with him, and had helped to carry him to the grave, adding, that he was something of a poet, but that he had always considered his forte lay in strong good sense rather than poetry. I mentioned Thomas Edwards, whose picture I had seen in Valle Crucis Abbey. He said that he knew him tolerably well, and that the last time he saw him was when he, Edwards, was about seventy ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in glass cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried them; they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in perfect time. Thereat he wondered. But the truth is, it was a house wherein precision reigned: a tuner and a clockmaker ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... DEPARTMENT,—Though I enjoy reading the Home Department, I have never before written anything for it, as writing is not my forte, but I feel almost compelled to send this to express my indignation at the light sentence passed on those three men in the Smith assault case. I think it perfectly outrageous that they should get ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... with a sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the Chateau of La Roche Jagu, on the summit of a hill overhanging the river Trieux and defending the entrance. It has more of the character of a "maison forte" than of a "manoir," as was termed the habitation of a knight, and of those who holding a fief, yet did not possess the seignorial right to a castle with towers and donjon. The manoir might be ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... manner to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these, however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have heard a whole ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Adelaide, solicitors, attorneys, conveyancers, proctors, barristers, are all united, and this reform, which works admirably, will probably soon be extended to the other colonies. What generally happens is, that one man with a penchant for the forum goes into partnership with another whose forte lies in the office; and thus, though all lawyers meet on an equality, the two branches of the profession practically remain apart. But the new regime offers great advantages to juniors, who are thus no longer ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... which exists, or did exist, in the popular mind; and fire, in an insurance sense, as distinct from explosion, was accurately defined by Justice McIlvaine, of the Supreme Court of Ohio (1872), in the case of the Union Insurance Company vs. Forte, i.e., an explosion was a remote cause of loss and not the proximate cause, when the fire was a burning of a gas jet which did not destroy, though the explosion caused by the burning gas-jet did destroy. Earlier than this decision, however (in 1852), Justice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Music at Leipsic, which, under his management, became so celebrated. Mendelssohn produced works in almost every department of musical composition, a great variety of chamber music, symphonies, overtures, one opera, and a very large collection of music for the piano-forte and organ. Probably his fame will last longer through the influence of three works—viz., the "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, which opened the new world of the romantic; the oratorio of "Elijah," which is in very many respects one ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... and he cast the pen aside with a sigh. "It is abominable work to write letters," he said; "I cannot comprehend why you, Gneisenau, who are so good a soldier, at the same time know so well how to wield the pen. It is not my forte, although I had a notion once to be a savant, and really become a sort of writer. In those calamitous days, subsequent to 1807, despair and ennui sought for some relief to my mind, and made me write a book, and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... short time it was really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to undergo the peine forte et dure as the condition of our presence! We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness itself, would have had us stay and sit down in comfort at the supper-table, after the crowd had ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... such occasions were adopted, the prisoner was three times brought before the Court, and called to plead; the consequences of persisting in standing mute being solemnly announced to him at each time. If he remained obdurate, the sentence of peine forte et dure was passed upon him; and, remanded to prison, he was put into a low and dark apartment. He would there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked for the most part. A weight of iron would be placed upon him, not quite enough to crush him. He would have ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... della spada mirando al segno; e la sua rossa strada ne brilla insino alle sue alpine porte. Tu tendi la potenza della morte come un arco tra il Vodice e l'Hermada; varchi l'Isonzo indomito ove guada la tua Vittoria col tuo pugno forte. Giovine sei, rinato dalla terra sitibonda, balzato su dal duro Carso col fiore dei tuio fanti imberbi. Questo, che in te si compie, anno di guerra splenda da te, avido del futuro, e al ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... simple et forte, Simbol de glorie et de piete, Tour de pauvres femmes mortes Pour leur Dieu et ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... one of the most prominent and interesting of all the sights of Boston, and the visitor is surprised to learn that it is due entirely to the energy and genius of one who, but thirty-four years previous to its erection, came to Boston a penniless stranger. The building is the famous piano-forte manufactory of Chickering & Sons, and its founder was Jonas Chickering, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... stepping-stones to success, you know." "That's good of you to say as much, Jack, old chap, when I do think up some of the greatest fool notions ever heard of," acknowledged Toby; "but it's my plan to keep right on, and encourage my brain to work along that groove. I feel it's going to be my forte in life to invent things. I'd rather be known as the man who had lightened the burdens of mankind than to be a famous general who had conquered ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... alma bem aconselhada, que dais o seu a cujo he, o da terra ha terra: agora yreis despejada polla estrada, porque vencestes com fee forte guerra. ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... just been talking to Sir Thomas, my dear," he said. He tried to speak casually, and, as a natural result, infused so much meaning into his voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern coughed confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He abandoned it in favor of directness. "He was telling me that you had ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... and threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except on business," confronted ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... promoturus; verisimile esse putavi, me turbulento hoc, suspicioso ac difficillimo tempore, sive citius, sive aliquanto tardius, in medio cursu abreptum iri. Quapropter ignarus quid de me futurum sit, quum Dei permissu in carceres et vincula forte detrudendus sim, ad omnem eventum scriptum hoc condidi: quod ut legere, et ex eo causam meam cognoscere velitis, etiam atque etiam rogo. Fiet enim, ut hac re non parvo labore liberemini, dum quod multis ambagibus inquirere vos audio, id totem aperta confessione ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... abstulimus, in navem conscendimus, domi cupientes. forte ut adsedi in stega, dum circumspecto, atque ego lembum conspicor longum. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... and seem only to have worked as much as was requisite to keep body and soul together. But, he adds, 'they possess a natural facility and quickness in acquiring the knowledge of the arts,' and musical performance was their forte. They were also employed as slaves in the households of the boyards, especially in the kitchens, which they made 'not less disgusting than the receptacles of swine.' They were bastinadoed, often in the presence ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... nisi forte insanit, neque in solitudine, neque in convivio honesto." That is, "No man dances, in private, or at any respectable entertainment, except he be drunk ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... had but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was entitled to peace he still had to fight ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... some forte—like huntin' an' such, But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much; Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me; Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!" When I tickled the back ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... little one was or was not affected by the evil eye of a secret enemy. If a pig was stolen, she was shrewd in her conjectures as to the direction its wrathful owner must take in the search. But her forte lay in bringing about love-matches. Many were the charms at her command for this purpose, and equally numerous the successes with which she was accredited. Some particulars of her doings in this direction were furnished by Jerry Magwire, a jolly car-man ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... wish I could. But it's not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for her sister. In fact, she was always blushing for her sister. She considered it to be her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... like Sir Jarvy to hear that, my man of books," cried the fourth, who had satisfied himself that a book was not his own forte—"I fancy your instinct, doctor, will prevent you from whispering this in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... some difficulty in justifying Washington's course by the opinion of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologics, 1 ma., 2 dae., Quaest. XCVI, Art. 4), who says that an unjust law is not binding in conscience "nisi forte propter vitandum scandalum vel turbationem." Aquinas is speaking of an unjust law which may be resisted unless scandal or tumult would result from resistance. Washington is speaking of a law which he considers right, but which he would not enforce if it should ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of the most singular form you can imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every room ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... meant by the word 'Lord' his divinity or at least essential superhumanity. But the Socinian will not allow this; or, allowing it, denies St. Paul's authority in matters of speculative faith. As well then might I say, it is sufficient for you to believe and repeat the words 'forte miles reddens'; and though one of you mean by it "Perhaps I may be balloted for the militia," and the other understands it to mean, that "Reading is forty miles from London," you are still co-symbolists and believers! While a third person may say, I believe, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... campo quod forte jacebat, Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis. Vix illud lecti bis sex cervice subirent, Qualia nunc hominum producit ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... his impregnable tower before the fiend returns from the end of the world. When he comes to the tower he finds all his skill is naught, so he has recourse to artifice, which indeed has always been his forte. He begs piteously to be allowed one last look of his beloved princess. They can't refuse him so slight a favour, and make a tiny hole in the tower wall, but, tiny as it is, the Devil is able to pull the princess through it and instantly mounts on high with her. Now is the marksman's opportunity: ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... stage-clothes, and pushed towards the lamps, he would rub his eyes for a moment, and then consciousness and extraordinary humour returned to him together, and his acting suffered in no way from the excesses which had overwhelmed him. Eccentricity was his forte, and it was usually found necessary to have characters expressly written for him; but there can be no doubt that he was very highly esteemed by the playgoers of his time, who viewed his loss to ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... this novel is that most extraordinary of all punishments known to English criminal law, the peine forte et dure. The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic, and, perhaps, in some degree psychological. Around a pathetic piece of old jurisprudence ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... to interrupt this perilous business, hastily rang for wine and water; and as the gentlemen went to help themselves she gave them a general toast, as sitting down to the piano-forte, to the tune of— "Here's to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... disregarding him, "being very poor at present I am contemplating socialism as possibly my forte." ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... his forte. He had prepared himself well in advance; but though he kept coughing: hum! broum! though he kept running his finger around his shirt-collar to facilitate his delivery, the beginning of his speech stuck ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... die ueber ihrer Zeit standen und von ihren Gegensaetzen nicht beruehrt wurden.—BACHMANN, Hengstenberg, i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, aut solus non insanio; tertium enim non est, nisi (quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes.—HOBBES, quoted by DE MORGAN, June 3, 1858, Life of Sir W. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... Flossy, it so happened that Charlie Flint, after Marion had startled and disgusted him, sought refuge with her. She was pretty and dainty, and did not look strong-minded; not in the least as if her forte was to preach, so he made ready to have a running fire ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... : Manid[-o](s) [throughout text] Bois Forts [modern name Bois Forte, but "Forts" is common in early texts] INDEX: [all spellings unchanged] [Note 11] History of the Ojebway Indians, London [1843(?)] [question mark and brackets in original] sacred objects which Minab[-o]zho had deposited [word is ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of pane santo, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of pan forte da Siena, compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,—a mixture as pernicious as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... impression of reserve which these three mighty spirits, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Machiavelli, at moments convey. "Sed mihi haec ac talia audienti in incerto judicium est, fatone res mortalium et necessitate immutabili an forte volvantur; quippe sapientissimos veterum, quique sectam eorum aemulantur, diversos reperias, ac multis insitam opinionem non initia nostri, non finem, non denique homines dis curae; ideo creberrime tristia in bonos, laeta apud deteriores ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Alberti's or Galuppi's, I forget which. His voice went like the wind, and his fingers leapt over the imaginary keys. The various passions succeeded one another on his face; you observed on it tenderness, anger, pleasure, sorrow; you felt the piano notes, the forte notes, and I am sure that a more skilful musician than myself would have recognised the piece by the movement and the character, by his gestures, and by a few notes of airs which escaped from him now and again. But the absurd thing was to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... and bewildered herself among the multitude of leaves that formed the cup of the rose, Mr. Gummage snatched the pencil from her hand, rubbed out the whole, and then drew it himself. It must be confessed that his forte lay in flowers, and he was extremely clever at them, "but," as he expressed it, "his scholars ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... with a Pathetic Drama, in One Act, called The Sorrows of Werther. (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) [Caste follows.] Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims got for the occasion. Orchestra. Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an ORDER can possibly be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to say that both arrangements were found, in course of time, to answer admirably? Miss Pritty discovered that housekeeping was her forte, and that she possessed powers of comprehension, in regard to financial matters connected with the payment of debts and dividends, such as she had all her previous life believed to be unattainable anywhere, save in the Bank of England or on ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Music and painting are not our forte. Cf. Hazlitt's review of the "Life of Reynolds" (X, 186-87): "Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind's eye: ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... know her, for although you are a Papist you are a brave man, and a gentleman. Still, sir, a Papist is not—curse it, this isn't handsome of me, Willy. I beg your pardon. Confound all religions if it goes to that. Still at the same time I'm bound to say as a loyal man that Protestantism is my forte, Mr. Reilly—there's where I'm strong, a touch of Hercules about me there, Mr. Reilly—Willy, I mean. Well, you are a thorough good fellow, Papist and all, though you—ahem!—never mind though, you shall see my daughter, and you shall hear ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 3. Would a piano-forte, which two years ago cost three hundred and fifty dollars, be taken at its present value in ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
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