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felicity
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felicity as in:  domestic felicity

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  • It is important to her future felicity.
  • ...my best wishes for your felicity ...   (source)
    felicity = happiness or luck
  • The real issue is how to find felicity within limits.   (source)
    felicity = happiness
  • Professing myself, moreover, convinced that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern.... Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey   (source)
  • Let us break the fatal charm that has seduced us from the paths of felicity and prosperity.   (source)
  • For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally.   (source)
  • Only let me assure you, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that I can from my heart most cordially wish you equal felicity in marriage.   (source)
  • You are obliged, by all that is just and good, to pursue only the felicity that you yourself have imagined.   (source)
  • "Oh, my dear, dear aunt," she rapturously cried, "what delight! what felicity!"   (source)
    felicity = happiness or good fortune
  • So often as she had heard them wish for a ball at home as the greatest of all felicities!   (source)
    felicities = sources of happiness
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show 30 more with this conextual meaning
  • Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?   (source)
    felicity = happiness
  • Till the next morning, however, she was not aware of all the felicity of her contrivance.   (source)
    felicity = good fortune
  • Mr. Phillips visited them all, and this opened to his nieces a store of felicity unknown before.   (source)
    felicity = happiness
  • She was disturbed by no fear for her felicity, nor humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.   (source)
  • To see the expression of her eyes, the change of her complexion, the progress of her feelings, their doubt, confusion, and felicity, was enough.   (source)
  • He has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity. He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything.   (source)
    felicity = good fortune
  • ...and it needed all the felicity of being again at home, and all the forbearance it could supply, to save Sir Thomas from anger on finding himself thus bewildered in his own house, making part of a ridiculous exhibition in the midst of theatrical nonsense, and…   (source)
    felicity = happiness
  • Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point, was not contemptible: Sir Thomas being happily able to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield; and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal felicity with very little less than a thousand a year.   (source)
  • Fanny soon learnt how unnecessary had been her fears of a removal; and her spontaneous, untaught felicity on the discovery, conveyed some consolation to Edmund for his disappointment in what he had expected to be so essentially serviceable to her.   (source)
  • He was in love, very much in love; and it was a love which, operating on an active, sanguine spirit, of more warmth than delicacy, made her affection appear of greater consequence because it was withheld, and determined him to have the glory, as well as the felicity, of forcing her to love him.   (source)
  • After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity, Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the arrival of Saturday.   (source)
  • Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman's affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him.   (source)
  • But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was.   (source)
  • Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort.   (source)
  • To be relieved from her, therefore, was so great a felicity that, had she not left bitter remembrances behind her, there might have been danger of his learning almost to approve the evil which produced such a good.   (source)
  • If therefore she actually persists in rejecting my suit, perhaps it were better not to force her into accepting me, because if liable to such defects of temper, she could not contribute much to my felicity.   (source)
  • So thought Fanny, in good truth and sober sadness, as she sat musing over that too great indulgence and luxury of a fire upstairs: wondering at the past and present; wondering at what was yet to come, and in a nervous agitation which made nothing clear to her but the persuasion of her being never under any circumstances able to love Mr. Crawford, and the felicity of having a fire to sit over and think of it.   (source)
    felicity = good fortune
  • Excepting the moments of peculiar delight, which any marked or unlooked-for instance of Edmund's consideration of her in the last few months had excited, Fanny had never known so much felicity in her life, as in this unchecked, equal, fearless intercourse with the brother and friend who was opening all his heart to her, telling her all his hopes and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting that long thought of, dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion; who could give her…   (source)
    felicity = happiness
  • It was consequently necessary to name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity—to have some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the present, and prepare for another disappointment.   (source)
  • In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them.   (source)
  • Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than possibility of the two young friends finding their natural consolation in each other for all that had occurred of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent which met Edmund's application, the high sense of having…   (source)
  • She saw her in idea settled in that very house, in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow; and she felt capable, under such circumstances, of endeavouring even to like Bingley's two sisters.   (source)
  • To be finding herself, perhaps within three days, transported to Mansfield, was an image of the greatest felicity, but it would have been a material drawback to be owing such felicity to persons in whose feelings and conduct, at the present moment, she saw so much to condemn: the sister's feelings, the brother's conduct, her cold-hearted ambition, his thoughtless vanity.   (source)
  • Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least.   (source)
    felicity = happiness or good fortune
  • He was engaged to dinner already both for that day and the next; he had met with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied; he should have the honour, however, of waiting on them again on the morrow, etc., and so they parted—Fanny in a state of actual felicity from escaping so horrible an evil!   (source)
    felicity = happiness
  • They shook hands with great cordiality; and then, till her sister came down, she had to listen to all he had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane's perfections; and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself.   (source)
  • I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and invariably silly.   (source)
  • Mrs. Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter, and impressive in her injunctions that she should not miss the opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible—advice which there was every reason to believe would be well attended to; and in the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard.   (source)
  • He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity; sensible that if such an idea had been suggested, his behaviour during the last day must have material weight in confirming or crushing it.   (source)
  • CONTAINING SCENES OF MATRIMONIAL FELICITY IN DIFFERENT DEGREES OF LIFE;   (source)
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felicity as in:  felicity of expression

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  • With her usual felicity of phrase, she said...
  • I remember a particularly felicitous rhyme between 'flaky bereft' and 'bakery theft.'   (source)
    felicitous = pleasing
  • She had even commissioned someone to write felicitous messages on red banners, as if my parents themselves had draped these decorations to congratulate me on my good luck.   (source)
  • He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream.   (source)
    felicity = pleasantness
  • On one level this was natural and something to which Ned had become accustomed, for both women were great beauties, Gertie slim and dark, Julia tall and felicitously proportioned.   (source)
    felicitously = pleasingly
  • I gave them companionship and felicitous union.   (source)
    felicitous = pleasing
  • Where his friend saw dappled light, the felicity of flight, the sadness of gravity, he saw the solid form of a common sparrow.   (source)
    felicity = causing of happiness
  • But be that as it may, Jefferson, with his "peculiar felicity of expression," as Adams said, was the best choice for the task, just as Washington had been the best choice to command the Continental Army, and again Adams had played a key part.   (source)
    felicity = pleasing and appropriate manner or style
  • Felicity, felicity—how shall I say it?   (source)
    felicity = fortunate or causing happiness
  • This specimen, written in haste as it was, had not a fault; and there was a felicity in the flow of the first four words, in the arrangement of "My very dear Fanny," which she could have looked at for ever.   (source)
    felicity = a pleasing style
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  • Occasionally he left Buenos Aires to travel with his friend Maraa Kodama, dictating to her his thoughts on the felicity of a hot air balloon ride or the beauty of the tiger.   (source)
    felicity = pleasantness
  • Some muttered allusions, which followed, to dogs and the smell of roast-meat, struck me as singularly felicitous.   (source)
    felicitous = fortunate or causing happiness
  • Although of course I made no deliberate attempt to overhear, I could not help but get the gist of what was being said, and was surprised by the extent of my employer's knowledge, which, despite the occasional infelicity, betrayed a deep enthusiasm for English ways.   (source)
    infelicity = awkwardness or inappropriateness
    standard prefix: The prefix "in-" in infelicity means not and reverses the meaning of felicity. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
  • He has traveled many hours from the south, from the mangroves, to be with us, to cleanse you of your infelicities.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "in-" in infelicities means not and reverses the meaning of felicities. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
  • The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity.†   (source)
  • This amazed and enraptured Tess, whose slight experiences had been so infelicitous till now; and in her reaction from indignation against the male sex she swerved to excess of honour for Clare.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "in-" in infelicitous means not and reverses the meaning of felicitous. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
  • While Isabel's host exerted himself to entertain her in this somewhat confidential fashion she looked occasionally at Madame Merle, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in which, on this occasion, there was no infelicitous intimation that our heroine appeared to advantage.†   (source)
  • Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon's words seemed to leave unsaid: what believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity?†   (source)
  • Mrs. Norris, most happy to assist in the duties of the day, by spending it at the Park to support her sister's spirits, and drinking the health of Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth in a supernumerary glass or two, was all joyous delight; for she had made the match; she had done everything; and no one would have supposed, from her confident triumph, that she had ever heard of conjugal infelicity in her life, or could have the smallest insight into the disposition of the niece who had been brought up under her eye.†   (source)
  • I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms.†   (source)
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  • 'We find mutual felicity in soaring together.†   (source)
  • With an American pencil, she wrote a word, a felicitous word such as "longevity" or "double joy," which is symmetrical.†   (source)
  • This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature.†   (source)
  • And it's almost too much for me, too felicitous perhaps, to imagine the fantastic idea of what Sunny Medical Supply might be instead of half-emptied and shut, what kind of vital, resplendent establishment could have been built, not for pride or for riches but a place to leave each night and glance back upon and feel sure would contain us.†   (source)
  • There was absolutely no sense of felicity or horseplay in thedark official room, with its formal leather chairs, its immaculately polished mahogany table, and its deeply grained walnut paneling.†   (source)
  • Existence becomes a grinding effort, guided by belly-hunger and the almost desperate need to divert awareness from the squalors to the pleasures, to lose oneself in sex or drink or dope or gut-religion or gluttony or the incoherence of falsity; and in some instances in the higher pleasures of music, art, literature, though these usually deepen perceptions rather than dull them, and can be unbearable; they present a world that is ordered, sane, disciplined to felicity, and the contrast of that world to theirs increases the pain of theirs.†   (source)
  • She was unable, in her terror, to utter anything more than some desperate commonplace, but for her small pains, received a compliment on the felicity of her German.†   (source)
  • MORE If it is felicity to be busy in the night.†   (source)
  • Last night these rough fragments had moved him to tears, and he himself had been surprised by some felicitous passages.†   (source)
  • For the wanderers who will tell it-it's where they must find their strange felicity.†   (source)
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  • She hung suspended in the Big Black River as she would know to hang suspended in felicity.†   (source)
  • Thus I was ready to bide my time and discover what might felicitously happen, see what Sundays like this—entwined amid the other promising days of the onrushing summer—would bring.†   (source)
  • Later at Gage & Tollner's, as Leslie and I dined beneath gaslight on littleneck clams and crabmeat imperial, I came as near to experiencing a pure amalgam of sensual and spiritual felicities as I ever would in my life.†   (source)
  • Possibly because this translation was felicitous and rich, or because Wolfe's lyrical, tragic though optimistic and sweeping vision of America was what Sophie's soul demanded at that moment—she being a newcomer to these shores, with only a rudimentary knowledge of the country's landscape and its gargantuan extravagance—it was Of Time and the River that excited her the most of all the books she read that winter and spring.†   (source)
  • Her nose was swollen with grief and the pink tear stains marred her extraordinary beauty, but not so much that the beauty itself (including the mole, felicitously placed near the left eye, like a tiny satellite) failed to melt me on the spot—a distinct feeling of liquefaction emanating not from the heart's region but, amazingly, from that of the stomach, which began to churn as if in revolt from a prolonged fast.†   (source)
  • Again he began to absorb my exhaustively worked-over prose, taking the manuscript upstairs with him to read after several days' work, when I had acquired twenty-five or thirty pages, and returning a few hours later, usually smiling, almost always ready to bestow upon me the single thing I needed most—praise—though hardly ever praise that was not modified or honestly spiced by a dollop of tough criticism; his eye for the sentence hobbled by an awkward rhythm, for the attitudinized reflection, the onanistic dalliance, the less than felicitous metaphor, was unsparingly sharp.†   (source)
  • From this broken state I passed into an almost abject felicity.†   (source)
  • Chere Madame, It is with infinite pleasure that I look forward to the felicity of meeting you again.†   (source)
  • But after a moment she suddenly felt the need to reread the whole letter, to surprise, if possible, the secret of so much felicity.†   (source)
  • After Man had been expelled from the Garden, some of these angels communicated the lessons to Adam, thinking to help him back to felicity thereby.†   (source)
  • He liked the prevalent mood in which feelings were sheathed in thoughts, and thoughts softened into felicity by their transference into language.†   (source)
  • In the short interval between the time that I got to know Maria and the Fancy Dress Ball I was really happy; and yet I never had the feeling that this was my release and the attainment of felicity.†   (source)
  • After that, as a background to the felicity of King Pellinore—who refused to bother with trivial problems—Grum-more and Palomides had to do their best "Well, you see," Sir Grummore was shouting, "when a hen lays an egg..."†   (source)
  • I argued (no less fallaciously) that my cowardly felicity proved that I was a man capable of carrying out the adventure successfully.†   (source)
  • When the sun was shining the two could be seen walking along those artificial terraces in silence, Camila wondering when the felicity would begin that she had always associated with social position, Don Jaime rejoicing merely in the sunlight and anxiously estimating the approach of a cloud.†   (source)
  • Whether it be the king's child about to be taken from the felicity of her established dual-unity with King Daddy, or God's daughter Eve, now ripe to depart from the idyl of the Garden, or again, the supremely concentrated Future Buddha breaking past the last horizons of the created world, the same archetypal images are activated, symbolizing danger, reassurance, trial, passage, and the strange holiness of the mysteries of birth.†   (source)
  • He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal felicity.†   (source)
  • A motor-drive, a form of felicity detested by Margaret, awaited her.†   (source)
  • They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.†   (source)
  • Again the felicity of the name he had given the valley struck him forcibly.†   (source)
  • "Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity; "if you are ready, I am."†   (source)
  • Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I sacrifice?†   (source)
  • She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey.†   (source)
  • I looked upon my future felicity as secured.†   (source)
  • Take another example of the felicity with which the savages of America have composed their words.†   (source)
  • He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety, their tact, their felicity of judgment.†   (source)
  • It was a great felicity to have been his daughter; Isabel rose even to pride in her parentage.†   (source)
  • In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant.†   (source)
  • A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one.†   (source)
  • Such felicity seems above all price—as a thing impossible and unattainable.†   (source)
  • A whole evening of back-gammon with her father, was felicity to it.†   (source)
  • Should he place his catastrophe as a third associate in their felicity?†   (source)
  • He soon became calmer and more happy, for only now did he begin to realize his felicity.†   (source)
  • had it, by any blessed felicity, occurred to her, to institute the comparison.†   (source)
  • That word: "Father," said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: supreme felicity.†   (source)
  • What years of felicity that man, in all human calculation, has before him!†   (source)
  • What felicity it is to hear a tune again which has made one happy!†   (source)
  • His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and of felicity.†   (source)
  • —Harriet is my superior in all the charm and all the felicity it gives.†   (source)
  • Necessarily he must absent himself from felicity a while—in dreams he saw her walking on the clinic path swinging her wide straw hat...One time he saw her in person; as he walked past the Palace Hotel, a magnificent Rolls curved into the half-moon entrance.†   (source)
  • A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!†   (source)
  • The silent organisation which held his little world together was determined to put itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska's conduct, or the completeness of Archer's domestic felicity.†   (source)
  • Freddy lit his bicycle lamp for him in the porch, and with his usual felicity of phrase, said: "This has been a day and a half."†   (source)
  • She presented her part with some felicity, though nothing like the intensity which had aroused the feeling at the end of the long first act.†   (source)
  • Now there's a few of 'em that seem to have some cultural background, some intelligence and a good deal of literary felicity but they just simply won't write honestly; they'd all claim there was no public for good stuff.†   (source)
  • He thought of the miserable portion which Providence had allotted to him; that woman and the pleasure of love, would pass forever before his eyes, and that he should never do anything but behold the felicity of others.†   (source)
  • He stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was swimming with felicity.†   (source)
  • She warned him that she could not dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of course, was willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be complimentary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a "great bore" that she couldn't waltz, he would have liked so much to waltz with her.†   (source)
  • You do not know what felicity from heaven, what joys from paradise, are comprised in a moment like that.†   (source)
  • So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes.†   (source)
  • So three months glided away; three months which, in the life of the most blessed and favoured of mortals, might have been unmingled happiness, and which, in Oliver's were true felicity.†   (source)
  • Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be insensible.†   (source)
  • The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world.†   (source)
  • The singular felicity, with which Ishmael had contrived to shift the responsibility of all that had passed, from his own shoulders to those of his prisoners, backed as it was by circumstances that hardly admitted of a very philosophical examination of any mooted point in ethics, was sufficiently embarrassing to the several individuals, who were so unexpectedly required to answer for a conduct which, in their simplicity, they had deemed so meritorious.†   (source)
  • Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like.†   (source)
  • By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr. Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity.†   (source)
  • By-and-by Celia would come in her quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through the next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given; all in continuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with the excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy ineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect.†   (source)
  • There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her believing it, which conduced to Isabel's awkwardness.†   (source)
  • "He is very handsome; he is very clever; he expressed himself with a great deal—a great deal of felicity," her aunt went on.†   (source)
  • That is just my idea of your situation, Davy; for I never supposed you expected any more felicity with either of your wives.†   (source)
  • Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and at this moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in women.†   (source)
  • The Delaware had also lively pictures of felicity in the prospect of so soon regaining his betrothed.†   (source)
  • He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.†   (source)
  • But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his felicity.†   (source)
  • The lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race.†   (source)
  • Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity.†   (source)
  • I hazard the supposition that she was saying to herself that to be able to drag such a train over a polished floor was a felicity worth any price.†   (source)
  • I could weep in the exquisite felicity of my heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever I had been in my strength.†   (source)
  • Henrietta's career, however, was not so successful as might have been wished even in the interest of her private felicity; that view of the inner life of Great Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus.†   (source)
  • And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.†   (source)
  • When a couple are fairly married, all is settled but the death, as one may say, which must finally part us all; and it seems to me awfu' irreverent to disturb the departed; whereas there is so much anxiety and hope and felicity in expectation like, with the lassie, that it keeps thought alive.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Maylie took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law, to enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest felicity that age and worth can know—the contemplation of the happiness of those on whom the warmest affections and tenderest cares of a well-spent life, have been unceasingly bestowed.†   (source)
  • Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which is forever on the wing.†   (source)
  • These considerations naturally gave Villefort a feeling of such complete felicity that his mind was fairly dazzled in its contemplation.†   (source)
  • "You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife."†   (source)
  • He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often—he would have admitted that—too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his spirit.†   (source)
  • Religions give men a general habit of conducting themselves with a view to futurity: in this respect they are not less useful to happiness in this life than to felicity hereafter; and this is one of their chief political characteristics.†   (source)
  • Her spring of felicity was in the glow of her spirits, as her friend Anne's was in the warmth of her heart.†   (source)
  • Isabel spoke in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle's outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view.†   (source)
  • Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.†   (source)
  • An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment.†   (source)
  • To touch their congregations, they always show them how favorable religious opinions are to freedom and public tranquillity; and it is often difficult to ascertain from their discourses whether the principal object of religion is to procure eternal felicity in the other world, or prosperity in this.†   (source)
  • Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Cafe Anglais, where his talent for ordering a dinner was a source of felicity to his companions and an object of admiration even to the headwaiter of the establishment.†   (source)
  • Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life—so it pleased her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages or historians to hold up—that this felicity was coming to an end.†   (source)
  • Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours.†   (source)
  • Then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it.†   (source)
  • He had not this good excuse for his somewhat aggressive impulse to promulgate his felicity; his sentiment was of another quality.†   (source)
  • But looking at the matter with an eye to private felicity, Newman wondered where, in so exquisite a compound, nature and art showed their dividing line.†   (source)
  • Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius; in other words, the man of wisdom should be made to emerge from the man of felicity.†   (source)
  • Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits.†   (source)
  • If in this character she should enjoy the felicity she expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make her hate him.†   (source)
  • Elizabeth arm in arm with Miss Carteret, and looking on the broad back of the dowager Viscountess Dalrymple before her, had nothing to wish for which did not seem within her reach; and Anne—but it would be an insult to the nature of Anne's felicity, to draw any comparison between it and her sister's; the origin of one all selfish vanity, of the other all generous attachment.†   (source)
  • It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.†   (source)
  • Exist boldly for each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot do the same, idealize each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny blades of felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves a nest for life.†   (source)
  • Madame de Cintre was calmly happy before the world, and Newman had the felicity of fancying that before him, when the world was absent, she was almost agitatedly happy.†   (source)
  • After a life of love, an eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God.†   (source)
  • She made a fresh series of mots, characterized with great felicity the Italian intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento, predicted the ultimate future of the Italian kingdom (disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule and complete reversion, throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of the Holy Father), and, finally, gave a history of the love affairs of the Princess X—.†   (source)
  • The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity.†   (source)
  • The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to herself.†   (source)
  • These men who grouped themselves under different appellations, but who may all be designated by the generic title of socialists, endeavored to pierce that rock and to cause it to spout forth the living waters of human felicity.†   (source)
  • It was not with Mrs. Suckling, it was not with Mrs. Bragge, but in felicity and splendour it fell short only of them: it was with a cousin of Mrs. Bragge, an acquaintance of Mrs. Suckling, a lady known at Maple Grove.†   (source)
  • At certain moments, all these beings of the past, returned and present, formed a circle around him, and overshadowed him; then he thought of Cosette, and recovered his serenity; but nothing less than this felicity could have sufficed to efface that catastrophe.†   (source)
  • —Assured of the love of such a woman—the disinterested love, for Jane Fairfax's character vouches for her disinterestedness; every thing in his favour,—equality of situation—I mean, as far as regards society, and all the habits and manners that are important; equality in every point but one—and that one, since the purity of her heart is not to be doubted, such as must increase his felicity, for it will be his to bestow the only advantages she wants.†   (source)
  • Candid reasons of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one's hand and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front of a reading-desk.†   (source)
  • He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his revery.†   (source)
  • Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were there, in every night, in that poor, neglected garden, beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid the shadows.†   (source)
  • "Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, "superior to this?†   (source)
  • —it did not appear to her that life could supply any greater felicity.†   (source)
  • A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.†   (source)
  • Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ?†   (source)
  • In chatting with Miss Tilney before the evening concluded, a new source of felicity arose to her.†   (source)
  • Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.†   (source)
  • "The History of Henry VII," by Lord Bacon: "King Charles had conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind of a felicity of a dream.†   (source)
  • I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to espouse the doctrine of separation and independance; I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of THAT is mere patchwork, that it can afford no lasting felicity, —that it is leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking back at a time, when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this continent the glory of the earth.†   (source)
  • Shining gifts at the gods' hands he had from birth: felicity, wealth overflowing, rule of the Myrmidons, a bride immortal at his mortal side.†   (source)
  • It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor ow'd the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year, in which this is written.†   (source)
  • Most unwilling was she to awaken from such a dream of felicity to comprehend all the unhappy truths which attended the affair; and for some time she refused to submit to them.†   (source)
  • I shall not lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity of improving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity.†   (source)
  • That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.†   (source)
  • I know no one more entitled, by unpretending merit, or better prepared by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy felicity.†   (source)
  • But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.†   (source)
  • His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.†   (source)
  • I grew convinc'd that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life; and I form'd written resolutions, which still remain in my journal book, to practice them ever while I lived.†   (source)
  • The letter, whence sprang all this felicity, was short, containing little more than this assurance of success; and every particular was deferred till James could write again.†   (source)
  • It was "dear John" and "dear Catherine" at every word; "dear Anne and dear Maria" must immediately be made sharers in their felicity; and two "dears" at once before the name of Isabella were not more than that beloved child had now well earned.†   (source)
  • Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.†   (source)
  • But when the second moment had passed, when she found every doubt, every solicitude removed, compared her situation with what so lately it had been,—saw him honourably released from his former engagement, saw him instantly profiting by the release, to address herself and declare an affection as tender, as constant as she had ever supposed it to be,—she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity;— and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.†   (source)
  • To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced that the general's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.†   (source)
  • The time of the two parties uniting in the Octagon Room being correctly adjusted, Catherine was then left to the luxury of a raised, restless, and frightened imagination over the pages of Udolpho, lost from all worldly concerns of dressing and dinner, incapable of soothing Mrs. Allen's fears on the delay of an expected dressmaker, and having only one minute in sixty to bestow even on the reflection of her own felicity, in being already engaged for the evening.†   (source)
  • Once or twice indeed, since James's engagement had taught her what could be done, she had got so far as to indulge in a secret "perhaps," but in general the felicity of being with him for the present bounded her views: the present was now comprised in another three weeks, and her happiness being certain for that period, the rest of her life was at such a distance as to excite but little interest.†   (source)
  • The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity.†   (source)
  • The suggestion that she was a limited artist and that certain felicities would be forever closed to her never failed to make Camila frantic.†   (source)
  • The Archbishop enclosed in his wonderful and almost wooden vestments perspired upon his throne, lending from time to time a connoisseur's ear to the felicities of Vittoria's counterpoint.†   (source)
  • But the Marquesa remained unaware of what had taken place; in fact she was quite pleased, for during the visit she had contrived a few felicitous phrases, phrases (who knows) that might bring a smile to her daughter's face and might make her murmur: "Really, my mother is charming.†   (source)
  • But except for the felicitous pretense of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything.†   (source)
  • This bay is felicitously laid out for their type of fishing.†   (source)
  • This arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite.†   (source)
  • He looked clever and ill—a combination by no means felicitous; and he wore a brown velvet jacket.†   (source)
  • The man glanced from the lady's face to the little egg-shaped head and back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found a felicitous moment: "I don't think, sir," he said, "that that's a fair question to put to me."†   (source)
  • Stillwell said the names cowboys bestowed were felicitous, and as unchangeable as the everlasting hills; Florence went over to the enemy; and Alfred, laughing at Madeline's protest, declared the cowboys had elected her queen of the ranges, and that there was no help for it.†   (source)
  • She also, by a felicitous thought, took a handkerchief from her bundle and tied it round her face under her bonnet, covering her chin and half her cheeks and temples, as if she were suffering from toothache.†   (source)
  • And with an easy, felicitous wave of his arm he lifted his little, yellowish hand toward the heavens and simultaneously cast an oblique glance in the same upward direction.†   (source)
  • It was one of the days when she was so handsome that to be handsome was enough, and all the rest—her grace, her quickness, her social felicities—seemed the overflow of a bounteous nature.†   (source)
  • But she remained seated, and he could think of nothing more felicitous than: "I presume you're tired after the long ride."†   (source)
  • First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it up again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America.†   (source)
  • Then Kate had the art of turning the conversation to subjects upon which the country girl, bashful at first in strange company, could feel herself at home; and if Mrs Nickleby was not quite so felicitous at times in the selection of topics of discourse, or if she did seem, as Mrs Browdie expressed it, 'rather high in her notions,' still nothing could be kinder, and that she took considerable interest in the young couple was manifest from the very long lectures on housewifery with which she was so obliging as to entertain Mrs Browdie's private ear†   (source)
  • The idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three small coins his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass.†   (source)
  • The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew.†   (source)
  • —your felicitous comparison, he-he!†   (source)
  • In Colonel Pyncheon's funeral sermon, which was printed, and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumerates, among the many felicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly career, the happy seasonableness of his death.†   (source)
  • Then I caught a distant view of a herd of quadrupeds, rushing up and down the swells—animals, which would have still remained unknown and undescribed, had it not been for a most felicitous accident!†   (source)
  • The felicitous word "demise," which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits even above their usual evening pitch.†   (source)
  • For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction.†   (source)
  • Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)—who does not know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the Black Hole, in a word?†   (source)
  • It expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously worded—surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he had never before thought of.†   (source)
  • The gallant young fellows treated the company round to champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hired horses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the play or the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire about their felicitous introduction to foreign society.†   (source)
  • The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to establish themselves with great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances.†   (source)
  • "Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, "to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours.†   (source)
  • She had discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could; what business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above all with such tones of reparation—preparation?†   (source)
  • She retired to rest with a sense of good fortune, with a quickened consciousness of possible felicities.†   (source)
  • He had remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her engagement with Benwick.†   (source)
  • The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a "property"—a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, where the tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk—these things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions.†   (source)
  • But even without the aid of Tom Tristram's conversational felicities, Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again.†   (source)
  • He was steady, observant, moderate, candid; never run away with by spirits or by selfishness, which fancied itself strong feeling; and yet, with a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely, and a value for all the felicities of domestic life, which characters of fancied enthusiasm and violent agitation seldom really possess.†   (source)
  • This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a goose as she seemed.†   (source)
  • The Countess gave rise indeed to some discussion between the mistress of the house and the visitor from Rome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing with them) availed herself felicitously enough of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely as she practised it.†   (source)
  • She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony.†   (source)
  • High in the rank of her most serious and heartfelt felicities, was the reflection that all necessity of concealment from Mr. Knightley would soon be over.†   (source)
  • Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;—but when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.†   (source)
  • These felicities are the true ones.†   (source)
  • He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his revery.†   (source)
  • and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,—few felicities equal this.†   (source)
  • This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it.†   (source)
  • She knew enough to feel secure of an honourable and speedy establishment, and her imagination took a rapid flight over its attendant felicities.†   (source)
  • There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity.†   (source)
  • We seeke fast after felicity,
    But we go wrong full often truely.†   (source)
  • To praise, magnifie, or call happy, is to Honour; because nothing but goodnesse, power, and felicity is valued.†   (source)
  • A wife of such wood were felicity.†   (source)
  • But it was decreed by fortune, my perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share.†   (source)
  • A father's love brings true felicity.†   (source)
  • This estimate does not include two famous translators, Doctor Cristobal de Figueroa, in his Pastor Fido, and Don Juan de Jauregui, in his Aminta, wherein by their felicity they leave it in doubt which is the translation and which the original.†   (source)
  • If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.†   (source)
  • And what made me think my happiness the greater was, that I was in the middle state of life, which my father had so often recommended, much resembling the felicity of a rural retirement, which is elegantly described by the poet in these lines: Free from all vices, free from care, Age has no pain, and youth no snare.†   (source)
  • Their former sufferings and fears gave such a relish to their felicity as even love and fortune, in their fullest flow, could not have given without the advantage of such a comparison.†   (source)
  • Let us at last break the fatal charm which has too long seduced us from the paths of felicity and prosperity.†   (source)
  • On, what a felicity is it to mankind, said I to myself, that they cannot see into the hearts of one another!†   (source)
  • And thus my thought would speak : that she Who ne'er hath borne a child nor known Is nearer to felicity : Unlit she goeth and alone, With little understanding what A child's touch means of joy or woe, And many toils she beareth not.†   (source)
  • He was then past his prime, being twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had reigned about seven in great felicity, and generally victorious.†   (source)
  • This peculiar felicity of situation has, in a great degree, contributed to preserve the liberty which that country to this day enjoys, in spite of the prevalent venality and corruption.†   (source)
  • A short sketch of that felicity which prudent couples may extract from hatred: with a short apology for those people who overlook imperfections in their friends.†   (source)
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meaning too rare to warrant focus:

show 2 examples with meaning too rare to warrant focus
  • "Of all the nights to see Rosewood's hottest boys without their shirts on ...They're all so gorgeous," murmured Felicity McDowell, who was mixing tequila with Fanta Grape, next to her.   (source)
    felicity = a name in this novel
  • Dear St. Felicity, patron saint of those who've suffered the death of a child, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will help this woman find peace ....   (source)
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