"Cheerfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sure there are many cases in which an assumed cheerfulness and courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man. The forces of the personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and interacting upon one another. Surface habits do influence the forces below the surface. William James's advice, "Square your shoulders, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... more a psychologist—a born, an unavoidable psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one's eyes. The manifold torment ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and gentlemen!" Packer called immediately, with brisk cheerfulness. "Please notice: to-morrow's rehearsal is in the morning. ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... you is this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take 'Walter Lorraine' in your carpet-bag—give him a more modern air, prune away, though sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we'll take him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but it ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had refreshed his soul and restored him to cheerfulness of spirit. He began to reflect what conduct he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had the hope, and it was a sanguine hope, of saving life, nothing had disturbed his mind from its serenity. His gayety had never forsaken him; and his cheerfulness and fortitude had been the theme of every one admitted to his presence. But when this hope was abruptly and finally closed; when Death, immediate and unavoidable,—Death, the extinction of existence, the cessation of sense,—stood bare and hideous ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was closed again all three drew up to the table and had a little feast. The cake was of a kind peculiar to its maker, who prided herself upon never being without it; and there was some trick of her hand or a secret ingredient which was withheld when she responded with apparent cheerfulness to requests for its recipe. As for the apples, they were grown upon an old tree, one of whose limbs had been grafted with some unknown variety of fruit so long ago that the history was forgotten; only ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... politicians grow faint-hearted, the army fights on with cheerfulness. It would be a cure for pessimism of the deepest black to go to the trenches for a while. There all is cheery optimism, no doubt at all about the final outcome, and no talk of peace. I have never heard one man in the army talk or hint of peace or dream of it, for they know that it cannot ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... them onward. Aunt Lisbeth was not to be moved. She alone held down her head. She looked not Gottlieb in the face as he embraced her. Nor to any questioning would she vouchsafe reply. From that time forth, she was charity to woman; and the exuberant cheerfulness and familiarity of the men toward her soon grew kindly and respectful. The dragon in Aunt Lisbeth was destroyed. She objected no more to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of an old family—and in its horrors a lady of the house perished miserably. So the sight of its cold cluster of chimneys, wind-rocked walls, and scorched and crumbling vestiges of sudden destruction, far from adding to the cheerfulness of the landscape, was a blot ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... corps of the army, and they were often in so much danger of being surprised that they had to sleep in their clothes. Once the Aclands' tent and all that was in it was burned, but this accident 'neither altered the resolution nor the cheerfulness of Lady Harriot, and she continued her progress a partaker of the fatigues of the advanced corps. The next call upon her fortitude was more distressful. On the march of the 19th, the Grenadiers being liable to action at every step, she had ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the laborers on the plantation during the four seasons of the year. It is beyond question that they do their work thoroughly. It makes no difference how deep the low-ground mud is, or how rough the surface, or how lowering the weather, they go forward with cheerfulness and alacrity. Nothing can repress or dampen their spirits. How often I have heard them as they returned through the dusk, after hoeing or ploughing the whole day, singing in a strain as gay and spontaneous as if they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... this affair restored me, not to cheerfulness, but to that honourable calm which had fled far away from me. I made a reflection this time on my extreme imprudence, and understood that all the generosities of love are often no more than loans. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... hopes of making it an agreeable habitation for her; but she seemed to take no interest in any thing. She would stand beside him immoveable, in a deep reverie; but when he inquired whether she was ill, she would answer no, and endeavour to assume an air of gaiety: but this cheerfulness was transient; she soon relapsed into despondency. At length, she endeavoured to avoid her lover, as if ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Rhoda grew perceptibly weaker, and her friends went about with aching hearts under an assumed cheerfulness of manner that deceived Rhoda least of any one. Rhoda herself did not complain and this of itself added a hundredfold to the pathos of the situation. Her unfailing sweetness and patience touched the healthy, hardy young people who were so devoted to her more than the most justifiable ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... amusements was provided by races round the mess table of the weevils knocked out of the biscuit which was a part of their daily fare. Young Yorke, however, accepted this life and its hardships with all cheerfulness; and the spirit with which he entered the service and the interest he took in his profession from the first are, I think, abundantly clear from a letter he wrote home to his father on July 15, 1815 from the Mediterranean, off Celebrina, after he had been a little more than ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... which, for no obvious reason, Lola received me with anxious frightened diffidence, and spoke with constraint. The cheerfulness which she had hitherto exhibited gave place to dull depression. She urged me continually to leave Berlin, where, as she said, I was wasting my time, and return to my ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... to Vienna, however, he seemed to be a little better, and had apparently regained his health and cheerfulness. But to his own astonishment he had become, as he says in a letter to Faisst, a quiet, sedate, and silent man, who wished more and more to be alone. He did not compose anything fresh, but revised his Michelangelo Lieder, and had them published. He made plans for the winter, and ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... intentions of running off. In fact, the exhortation seemed rather a superfluous one to a man with a great pair of iron fetters on his feet. But Mr. Haley had got in the habit of commencing his relations with his stock with little exhortations of this nature, calculated, as he deemed, to inspire cheerfulness and confidence, and prevent the necessity of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Procter's poems who should suppose from their tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast, would be curiously mistaken. She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great delight in humour. Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very ready at a sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected: as modestly silent about ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... time, the shadow cast across her youth would, I understood, be altogether removed, and leave her free to begin a new and beautiful life, unalloyed by that hideous, haunting memory of suicide, which had changed into melancholy the gay cheerfulness of her ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... about as large a basin as Loch Lomond; the latter is covered with water; but in the former instance, we have two lakes with a charming river to connect them, and lovely villages at the foot of the mountain, and other habitations, which give an air of life and cheerfulness to ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... that, notwithstanding the inconveniences and annoyances of such a mode of traveling, the hope that the change might benefit all, and the fact that they were making the last stage of a very wearisome journey, inspired them with fresh courage, and a general cheerfulness prevailed throughout ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... have obtained and continue to obtain daily, by the use of the excellent method you have taught me of conscious autosuggestion. I was ill mentally and physically. Now I am well and am also nearly always cheerful. That is to say that my depression has given way to cheerfulness, and certainly I do not complain of the change, for it is very preferable, I assure you. How wretched I used to be! I could digest nothing; now I digest perfectly well and the intestines act naturally. I also used to sleep so badly, whereas now the nights are not long enough; ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... speech living in an atmosphere of liberty and carrying on the dear domestic traditions of the British Isles. He saw justice firmly planted there, industry and invention hard at work unfettered by tyrants of any kind, domestic life prospering in natural conditions, and our old English kindness and cheerfulness and broad-minded tolerance keeping things together. But he also saw room under that same flag, ample room, for millions and millions more of the human race. The Empire wasn't a word to him. It was a vast, an almost boundless, home for ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... feignedly, or hypocritically: wholly to depend from himself and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentedly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by this their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... BOOK Sylvia Arden proved herself a messenger of joy and cheerfulness to thousands of readers. In this new story she plays the same role on Arden Hill during her summer vacation and is the same wholesome, generous, cheerful young lady who made such a success of the Christmas Party. She befriends sick neighbors, helps "run" a tea-room, brings ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... England family, named Collins. This, at that time, was the most comfortable way of living, for in no part of the United States did restaurants furnish such good and liberal fare at such reasonable rates. The characteristic cheerfulness of California became intensified in San Francisco, where every face looked radiant and happy as if all who entered the Golden Gate found ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Drake, with strange cheerfulness, in spite of his disappointment. "They're far too ready to receive us. We've ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... the hope that I would soon get home. Although he never admitted it I found out for a fact that he had been primarily responsible for my release. It certainly was characteristic of him. He cracked a parting joke, which restored the good humour and cheerfulness of the camp, and with my few parcels under my arm I left ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... men would, I am convinced, be confirmed by the unanimous opinion of the army at Lucknow. Poor Adrian Hope and I often talked together on the subject; and many a time I expressed to Peel the high opinion I had of his men, and my admiration of their cheerfulness, and happy, contented looks, under all ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... aerodrome once again. We sit in a group and censor letters. The countryside is quiet, the sun radiates cheerfulness, and the war seems very remote. But the mechanics of B Flight stand outside their sheds and look east. It is time the offensive patrol party ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... and that was, if I were to Barbara what Barbara was to me. She was too friendly, and yet I would have her friendly: she was too cheerful, and yet I would have her cheerful. I bethink me that I would rather that her friendliness and cheerfulness might in a measure depend upon me for existence. I think I came too often to friend Hicks's house, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... never been disposed to be niggard of cheerfulness; for it has always seemed to me that one of the duties of a writer is to supply solace in a world where, amid all the beauty, so many things seem to go wrong. But, while I would fain banish cankered melancholy, sour ill-humour, cynicism, and petty ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... as she had left, I counted my money. But five dollars remained. If I had been dependent upon money for cheerfulness, I should certainly have been discouraged. I went to John Street, and, entering a large worsted store, inquired of a cheerful-looking girl the wholesale price of the best Berlin wool; how many colors could be had in a pound; &c. The pleasant and ready answers that I received in my native ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... good to hear from daddy and to know that—up to the time the letter was written, at least—he was all right. She went down to supper with some cheerfulness, and took the letter to read aloud, by ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... and the palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar, and colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant cannot sail the sea without it; no ships of war go to the conflict, but the Bible is there. It enters men's closets; mingles in all their grief and cheerfulness of life. The affianced maiden prays God in Scripture for strength in her new duties; men are married by Scripture. The Bible attends them in their sickness, when the fever of the world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies underneath. The mariner ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless— Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... sometimes are excluded from the happy outcome, but in both cases the scheme of the world is regarded as good. Leaving out of view the question as to the exact interpretation of the facts of life, this optimism is ethically useful as giving cheerfulness and enthusiasm to moral life, with power of enduring ills through the conviction of the ultimate triumph of the right. It may pass into a stolid dogmatic ignoring or denial of the existence of evil, and then tends to become inhuman and therefore ethically bad.[2118] It is, however, commonly ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... them forcibly, however, was the cheerfulness of the peasantry. At the little roadside stations the people crowded around the trains ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... such a melancholy mood, and indulging in all these moans? When Yue-ts'un came just now and he asked to see you, you only put in your appearance after a long while. But though you did come, you were not in the least disposed to chat with anything like cheerfulness and animation; you behaved, as you ever do, like a regular fool. I detected then in your countenance a certain expression of some hidden hankering and sadness; and now again here you are groaning and sighing! Does all you have not suffice to please you? Are you still dissatisfied? ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and this would free the expression from any shade of tautology, when compared with the previous clause, and would afford a natural transition to the description of His rule. It might, on the other hand, continue the description of His personal character, and describe the inward cheerfulness of His obedience, like 'I delight to do Thy will.' In any case, the 'fear of the Lord' is represented as a sweet-smelling fragrance; and, if we adopt the former explanation, then it is almost a divine characteristic which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the father's strength, his happy cheerfulness, his quick-to-anger and quicker-to-repent propensity, but the mother's gentleness also dwelt in them. Laughing, merry, they sang their way through the days, protesting vehemently when things went contrary to their desires, but laughing ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... very gay and pleasing. But why does Shakespeare give Romeo this involuntary cheerfulness just before the extremity of unhappiness? Perhaps to shew the vanity of trusting to those uncertain and casual exaltations or depressions, which many consider as certain foretokens of ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... being now the right man in the right place this many years, loving his parishioners, and beloved by them, and occupied from morn till night in good works, recovered the natural cheerfulness of his disposition. To tell the truth, a part of his jocoseness was a blind; he was the greatest peace-maker, except Mr. Harmony in the play, that ever was born. He reconciled more enemies in ten years than his predecessors had done in three hundred; and one of his manoeuvres in the peacemaking ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cheerfulness, and kindness Hursley Park was in those days can hardly be described, though remembered by many as a sort of golden age ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... enough of the truth to know that it is not always those who flourish in this world who are most favoured by God. Look at me, Master Verner, I am not happy; and when I pass them, and observe their countenances, there is little contentment and cheerfulness to be ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... suffered greatly in health. He put himself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good results. Constant and poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and though he preserved the appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our wanderings in the environs of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny sea, yet many hours were passed when his thoughts, shadowed by illness, became gloomy,—and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... him. Billy Jordan had looked out as Jocelyn and her two escorts came by, and now was back at his typewriter, pounding the keys for dear life, the ticking and clicking of his machine keeping time to "Yankee Doodle," which he was whistling softly. He, too, shook hands, but his cheerfulness was of a grade noticeably inferior to Garton's. And immediately he went back to his ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Anglomania. Their mechanics certainly exceed all others in some lines. But be just to your own nation. They have not patience, it is true, to set rubbing a piece of steel from morning till night, as a lethargic Englishman will do, full charged with porter. But do not their benevolence, their cheerfulness, their amiability, when compared with the growling temper and manners of the people among whom you are, compensate their want of patience? I am in hopes that when the splendor of their shops, which is all that is worth looking at in London, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... first, and a woman afterwards. I understand how unselfishly you meant, and indeed, indeed, I thank you. But don't let's talk of it any more. It couldn't have been, and there is nothing but misery in thinking of it. "Come," she said, with a struggle for cheerfulness, "let us forget it. Let it be just as if you hadn't spoken to me; I know you did n't intend to do it; and let us go on as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... shoulders of the dog, leant firmly thereon, and murmured stimulating words. Whilst she sorrowed in her heart she cheered with her voice, and what was stranger than that the strong should need encouragement from the weak was that cheerfulness should be so well stimulated by such utter dejection. Her friend moved forward slowly, and she with small mincing steps moved forward beside him, half her weight being thrown upon the animal. Sometimes she sank as she had sunk from walking erect, from the crutches, from ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... He looked at Demetrios very hard, and Bracciolini pursed his lips as if to whistle. The gaoler scented from afar a bribe, but the face of Demetrios was all vacant cheerfulness. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... and victory. For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... Helen said, assuming that air of cheerfulness which is one of the first accomplishments that women are forced by life to learn. "I should know she would be devoted to ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Queen" enabled him, not to appreciate (for he never could have done that), but to tolerate or pass over the deep melancholy and the occasional philosophisings of the poet. But the attraction of Dryden and Chaucer for him is very easily understood. Both are eminently cheerful poets, Dryden with the cheerfulness born of manly sense, Chaucer with that of youth and abounding animal spirits. Leigh Hunt seems to have found this cheerfulness as akin to his own, as the vigour of both was complementary and satisfactory to his own, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... was not of these. On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage. Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... face that I ever beheld. As I came near, she burst into tears, and cried, "Sir, do not you know the unhappy Teraminta?" I soon recollected her whole person: "But," said I, "madam, the simplicity of dress, in which I have ever seen you at your good father's house, and the cheerfulness of countenance with which you always appeared, are so unlike the fashion and temper you are now in, that I did not easily recover the memory of you. Your habit was then decent and modest, your looks serene and beautiful: whence then this unaccountable change? Nothing can speak so deep ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... rule. But the husband ought to rule his wife, not as a master does a chattel, but as the soul governs the body, by sympathy and goodwill. As he ought to govern the body by not being a slave to its pleasures and desires, so he ought to rule his wife by cheerfulness and complaisance. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... begin on the sermon, and it was the best the pastor had ever written. Something of the sweet cheerfulness and loving gratitude of the wife had made its way among the sound theological quotations and the judicious condensations. There was new life in the whole, which now came really from the pastor's uplifted ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... vanished, its rude and wild construction, its stone floor and vaulted roof, and even its yawning and dark recesses for the different operations which, in other days, had made it a scene of busy cheerfulness, now gave it a look of dreariness in the extreme. I could have easily imagined it to be a chamber of the Inquisition. But men in my circumstances have not much time for the work of fancy; and I was instantly called on for my name, and business ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... his cheerfulness and thought him insensible. He told Carl to come to the study after supper, and when the boy had gone out he flung himself into his chair and groaned again. He dreaded the evening sevenfold more than Carl did. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... small and low that it seemed a couple of sizes too small for him, and bestowed a kiss first upon the cheek of his old mother, who sat cowering over the fire, but brightened up on hearing his voice, and then upon the forehead of his daughter Nora, the cheerfulness of whose greeting, however, was somewhat checked when she observed the intoxicated state ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... fitness of things? These doubts have been with us from the beginning, but they are already being resolved by the discovery—another of the wonders of the time—that on the very fringes of tragedy there is room for cheerfulness. When our fighting men refuse to be downhearted in the direst peril, we at home should follow their high example, note where we can the humours of the fray, and "bear in silence though our ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... on the road groans and tosses in the clutches of a dreadful dream, it is, strangely enough, never of canceled orders, maniacal train schedules, lumpy mattresses, or vilely cooked food. These everyday things he accepts with a philosopher's cheerfulness. No—his nightmare is always a vision of himself, sick on the road, at a country hotel in the middle of a ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... boy. He had already distinguished himself in a frontier skirmish, and presently, for gallantry in some other little expedition, his name was mentioned in despatches. Colonel Parsons regained entirely his old cheerfulness; Jamie's courage and manifest knowledge of his business made him feel that at last he could again look the world frankly in the face. Then came the Boer War; for the parents at Little Primpton and for Mary Clibborn days ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... however on the 25th and allowed us to keep our Christmas with cheerfulness; but the following day it blew a severe storm of wind from the eastward, which continued till the 29th, in the course of which we suffered greatly. One sea broke away the spare yards and spars out of the starboard main chains. Another heavy sea broke into the ship ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... year, inasmuch as by the time the ship was ready to be launched the river would be nearly at its lowest, and there would be no resource but to wait for the next rainy season. Yet, in the face of discouragement, he maintained his cheerfulness, and, after sunset, still enjoyed many an hour of prolonged talk about current events at home, about his old College days in Glasgow, and about many of those who were unknown men then, but have since ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... superfluity to her night attire, and was carried out—but not up the main staircase. Thus ends this sordid tragedy that so well illustrates that quality in Herr Strauss to which my guide refers when he speaks of his realization of a "poignant longing for divine cheerfulness." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... working in the garden. He was a rather infirm man, but could scarcely be called old yet, with an agreeable face and a promising air of making the best of things. The conversation began on his side with great cheerfulness and good humour, but soon became distrustful, and soon angry. That was the captain's cue for striking both into the conversation ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... sloping down to the ancient village of St. Symphorien and the river Loire. Just across the river, so near that she could hear the ringing of the cathedral bell, lay the famous old town of Tours. There was something in these country sights and sounds that soothed her with their homely cheerfulness. The crowing of a rooster and the barking of a dog fell on her ear ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... these measures was very remarkable. Awkward as the people were, they were not stupid, and learned to work with unexpected rapidity. More wonderful was the change in their manners, appearances and the very expression of their countenances. Cheerfulness and gratitude replaced the gloom of misery and the sullenness of despair. Their hearts were softened; they were most grateful to their benefactor for themselves, still more for their children. These worked with their parents, forming little industrial groups, whose affection excited the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... assumes a cheerfulness he is far from feeling, and assures Ben Taleb he will always be indebted to him for his kindness. After this he begs for a piece of paper, and the sheik sends one of his slaves for it. John writes a line upon it, a line ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... always little wisps that curled about the ears and forehead. These wisps were at once the woman's despair and the child's freely expressed delight. However, through all the rigid discipline the little girl retained her natural buoyancy of childhood, the spontaneous interestedness, the cheerfulness and animation, which were a part ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... up, and made us eat cakes and drink chocolate in bed; and then left us again, and bid us take a nap upon it, which I believe we did. In short, she treated us so handsomely, and with such an agreeable cheerfulness, as well as plenty, as made it appear to me that Quakers may, and that this Quaker did, understand good manners as well ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightway my mercury went up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thing, it is true, as far as it goes; but I should prefer to the laboratory a naturalists' field club, such as are prospering now at several of the best public schools, certain that the boys would get more of sound inductive habits of mind, as well as more health, manliness, and cheerfulness, amid scenes to remember which will be a joy for ever, than they ever can by bending over retorts and crucibles, amid smells even to remember which ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... at his second best, or less, His graceful manner still redeems With easy charm and cheerfulness More hackneyed, less seductive themes; Each page has something witty, wise, Well-turned, fantastic or jocose— Each page of Breadandbutterflies, From Mills ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... friend's conception, as from the ordinary conduct of his life. They were passing, for instance, one morning down the village street, when an old woman, very bent and decrepit, but with an extraordinary cheerfulness of face, hobbled out from her cottage. Frank instantly stopped when he ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... breakfast had been forgotten; dinner and breakfast were consolidated into one meal. This being dispatched with their usual cheerfulness, they retired to their seat by the window. To-day there was no frost upon the glass; and the sky—all that could be seen of it—was clear as crystal. It was a curiously simple prospect which this window presented. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... I am overcome!" said M. Nioche, throwing out his hands. "But you have cheerfulness and happiness ...
— The American • Henry James
... but I feel that he deserves it, in spite of what I've been told about him," she answered with a blush. "It is very sad that he should have to give up all he valued; and I thought there was something gallant in his cheerfulness—he was always ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the period trained young men to submit with cheerfulness to a parental discipline that would be deemed intolerable by our own youngsters. During the first terms of their eight, seven, or at least six years of pupilage, until they could secure quarters within college walls, students frequently lodged in the houses or ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... way that the making of many shoes would have done him good had he been a shoemaker. In catching fishes and riding after foxes he could not give his mind to the occupation, so as to abstract his thoughts. But Cicero's de Natura Deorum was more effectual. Gradually he returned to a gentle cheerfulness of life, but he never burst out again into the violent exercise of shooting a pheasant. After that his mother died, and again he was called upon to endure a lasting sorrow. But on this occasion the sorrow was of that kind which is softened ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... air to compose himself. His thoughts were always tending to revert to the almost worshipped companion from whom death had parted him a few months before. Yet he could often be led away to other topics, and in talking of them could be betrayed into momentary cheerfulness of manner. His long-enduring and all-pervading grief was not more a tribute to the virtues and graces of her whom he mourned than an evidence of the deeply affectionate nature which in other relations endeared him to so many ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... can conceive no state of mind, or rather of mind and body operating upon each other; you cannot even pity it; you can only despise it. Good God. If it be possible, do not betray me. I may recover. I try to disguise my feelings. I write to my wife with affected cheerfulness. She would not survive. For heaven's sake, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... any of us, could take upon ourselves the responsibility of omitting a measure, stated to be clearly within the law, and in which so large a proportion of the Militia officers are disposed to acquiesce with cordiality and cheerfulness. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... have a theatre, and many pleasures of refined life. I was yesterday at a ball, where they danced through the whole night, till—daylight. The good music, the tasteful dresses and lovely dancing of the ladies; but above all, the tone of social life, the cordial cheerfulness, astonished several foreigners who were present, and caused them to inquire whether they were really here under the seventieth degree ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... caught a glimpse of the papers of Friday night. "Thank God, the country is saved," is written on every face and echoed by every voice. Even the symptoms of popular violence, three days ago so terrific, are now displayed with good humour and received with cheerfulness. Instead of curses on the Lords, on every post and every wall is written, "All is as it should be;" "Justice done at last;" and similar mottoes expressive of the sudden turn of public feeling. How ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... at his mother or Sarah; for, truth to tell, he felt very uncomfortable. This cheerfulness on the part of his father boded no good. But he asked no more questions, and talked about the sport he had ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... none of the bystanders could perceive that the letter which he perused had brought him news of any consequence. The English commissioners, who, some days after, came to take him under their custody, were admitted to kiss his hands; and he received them with the same grace and cheerfulness as if they had travelled on no other errand than to pay court to him. The old earl of Pembroke, in particular, who was one of them, he congratulated on his strength and vigor, that he was still able, during such a season, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... up her hands in delight over it; had even been caught whispering fiercely to a friend, "Praise it, praise it, praise it!" This was when the painter was sunk in gloom. Never, as I could well believe, was such a one as Mary for luring a man back to cheerfulness. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... should be rated largely for things that don't count—looks, cheerfulness, silliness, sympathy, softness of hand, willingness to ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... be owing to the pleasing serenity that reigned in my own mind, that I fancied I saw cheerfulness in every countenance throughout the journey. A stage coach, however, carries animation always with it, and puts the world in motion as it whirls along. The horn sounded at the entrance of a village, produces ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... herself, both in writing and in conversation, with epigrammatic force and point. She lived, like many of her family, to an advanced age. During the last years of her life she endured continual pain, not only patiently but with characteristic cheerfulness. She once said to me, 'Ah, my dear, you find me just where you left me—on the sofa. I sometimes think that God Almighty must have forgotten me; but I dare say He will come for me in His own good time.' She died and was buried at Chawton, January ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... 'Cultivate cheerfulness and content, if nothing else. But there are so many little odd jobs waiting to be done that nobody need "sit idle and look on", unless she chooses,' said Mrs Meg, with a smile, laying on the girl's head the new hat she ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... he was entitled to better quarters than the filthy pen where the poor privates were, but Mark Ray had a large, warm heart, and he would not desert those who had been so faithful to him, and so he took their fare, and by his genial humor and unwavering cheerfulness kept many a heart from fainting and made the prisoners' life more bearable than it could have been without him. To young Tom Tubbs, who had enlisted six months before, he was a ministering angel, and many times the poor, homesick boy crept to the side of his ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... retired to rest that night with a mind greatly relieved. He had not doubted the affection of his children, and he was assured that it would enable them to bear their reverse of fortune with cheerfulness. When he rose in the morning he prayed earnestly for strength to go through the work required of him, and that is never denied to those who seek it from Him who can alone afford it. In all the work he received ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... of landed property are, Colonel Quaritch," said Ida, turning towards him with a smile which did not convey a great sense of cheerfulness. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... much of Mr. Southey at this time; of his constitutional cheerfulness; of the polish of his manners; of his dignified, and at the same time, of his unassuming deportment; as well as of the general respect which his talents, conduct, and conversation excited.[3] But before reference be made to more serious publications, some notice will ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... revere Steinitz and Lasker, it is Bird we love. His victories glitter, his errors are magnificent. The true sweetness of chess, if it ever can be sweet, is to see a victory snatched, by some happy impertinence, out of the shadow of apparently irrevocable disaster. And talking of cheerfulness reminds me of Lowson's historical game of chess. Lowson said he had been cheerful sometimes—but, drunk! Perish the thought! Challenged, he would have proved it by some petty tests of pronunciation, some Good Templar's shibboleths. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... a magnificent example of devotion and dogged fortitude; and withal, the outstanding feature of the whole affair was the incorrigible cheerfulness of everybody, rising superior to ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... rolling cigarettes, lounged against doorways. The place had a quaint foreign flavour. Tiny cafes, filled with smoke and noise, and clean, inviting restaurants abounded. She was feeling hungry, and, choosing one the door of which stood open, revealing white tablecloths and a pleasant air of cheerfulness, she entered. It was late and the tables were crowded. Only at one, in a far corner, could she detect a vacant place, opposite to a slight, pretty- looking girl very quietly dressed. She made her way across and the girl, anticipating her request, welcomed her with a smile. They ate for a while in ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... said Mrs. Lessways, with a certain grim, disdainful cheerfulness, from which benevolence was not quite absent. The drastic treatment accorded to her cold seemed to have done it good. At any rate she had not resumed the flannel petticoat, and the nasal symptoms were much ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Mark, in spite of his assumed cheerfulness, could not master a slight feeling of discomfort. It was evidently going to be a cool, dark night. The very sound of it was startling to the lad—the announcement that he was to keep the full watch over their little camp of two waggons in a country where lions were ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... the effect which they might produce; but she was doomed by her own habits of insincerity to have perpetually the irksome task of assuming an appearance contrary to her real feelings. Amelia was better, and Mr. Palmer's determination to stay in England had spread a degree of cheerfulness over the whole family, which had not been felt for some time at Beaumont Park. In this general delight Mrs. Beaumont was compelled seemingly to sympathize: she performed her part so well, that even Dr. Wheeler and Captain Lightbody, who had been behind the scenes, began to believe that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... can't call your employer a tyrant and an extortioner after he has shared his rations with you and never spared himself over your welfare and comfort through weary months of trench-warfare; neither, when you have experienced a working-man's courage and cheerfulness and reliability in the day of battle, can you turn round and call him a loafer and an agitator in time of peace—can you? That is just what the Bandar-log overlook, when they jabber about the dreadful industrial ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... spectators, whom duty, or friendship, or curiosity, had assembled round his couch, listened with respectful grief to the funeral oration of their dying emperor. [95] "Friends and fellow-soldiers, the seasonable period of my departure is now arrived, and I discharge, with the cheerfulness of a ready debtor, the demands of nature. I have learned from philosophy, how much the soul is more excellent than the body; and that the separation of the nobler substance should be the subject of joy, rather than of affliction. I have learned from religion, that an early ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... her great credit, and what is better for her, is extremely fond of her: he seems the darling of his mother, Francois mon fils she calls him every minute. In his countenance and manners he is something like Henry; he has that sober kind of cheerfulness, that ingenuous openness, and that modest, gentlemanlike ease which pleases without effort, and without bustle. Madame Gautier does not live at Paris, but at a country house at Passy, the Richmond of Paris, about two miles out of town. She invited us to spend a day there, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... anxieties, freely to you. I blame nobody for seeing things in a different light. I am sure that all act conscientiously, and that all will be done honestly and wisely which can be done. I yield the concerns of the world with cheerfulness to those who are appointed in the order of nature to succeed to them; and for yourself, for our colleagues, and for all in charge of our country's future fame and fortune, I offer up ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... had the trick of repeating in all his sentences, "Never mind me." It would not be strange if I began to do the same. For when I feel, as I do sometimes, a desire to get rid of some words that almost burn my tongue, the sudden thought that I might mar her cheerfulness, drive away the smile, and change her good disposition, renders me mute. Ah me! ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to a conclusion, Socrates proposes to bathe himself, in order not to trouble others to wash his dead body. Crito thereupon asks if he has any commands to give, and especially how he would be buried, to which he, with his usual cheerfulness, makes answer, "Just as you please, if only you can catch me;" and then, smiling, he reminds them that after death he shall be no longer with them, and begs the others of the party to be sureties to Crito for his absence from the ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... comforts and even luxuries of life; his melancholy was diverted, and his irregular habits lessened[1450] by association with an agreeable and well-ordered family. He was treated with the utmost respect, and even affection. The vivacity of Mrs. Thrale's literary talk roused him to cheerfulness and exertion, even when they were alone. But this was not often the case; for he found here a constant succession of what gave him the highest enjoyment: the society of the learned, the witty, and the eminent ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... more genuinely amiable man never lived. His sunny temper, his quick sympathy, his inexhaustible fun, were natural gifts. But something more than nature must have gone to make his constant unselfishness, his manly endurance of adverse fate, his noble cheerfulness under discouraging circumstances, his buoyancy in breasting difficulties, his unremitting solicitude for the welfare and enjoyment of those who stood nearest to his heart. The secret of his life was that he had taken pains with his own character. While he was ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... fault only of despots, and cannot be committed under a republican form of government; they think that the maxim that the majority must govern justifies the majority in governing as it pleases, and requires the minority to acquiesce with cheerfulness in legislation of any character, as if what is called self-government were a scheme by which different parts of the community may alternately enjoy the privilege of tyrannizing ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... their attempts at cheerfulness, the gloom of their disappointment hung heavy upon them, and it was rather a silent group that gathered in the wigwam after supper. Chris and the captain soon sought their beds and ere long their loud, regular breathing told that they had found solace for the disappointment ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... arose, but not with spirit. It was one of those efforts at forced mirth, by which, above all other modes of expressing it, the absence of real cheerfulness is most distinctly animated. Charles stopt the song, and upbraided ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... why are the children worse than their fathers? Because of their freedom, yes. That's why they drink and lead depraved lives with women. They have less strength because they have less work, and they have not the spirit of cheerfulness because they have no worries. Cheerfulness comes in time of rest, while nowadays ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... physical geography and resources. For two years, he was intimately associated with me; and I saw him under various circumstances of fatigue and trial in the wilderness, but always preserving his equanimity and cheerfulness. He was a zealous botanist, and a discriminating geologist. Assiduous and temperate, an accurate observer of phenomena, he accumulated facts in the physical history of the country which continually increased the knowledge of its features and character. He ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... soul like a long draught of clear spring-water; shone upon me like essential sunlight; soothed me like a mother's voice and hand. Yet, as the clearest forest-well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of decayed leaves, so to my weary, prisoned heart, its cheerfulness had a sting of cold, and its tenderness unmanned me with the faintness of long-departed joys. I wept half-bitterly, half-luxuriously; but not long. I dashed away the tears, ashamed of a weakness which ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... less absurd for being grim. To husband a favourite claret until the batch turns sour, is not at all an artful stroke of policy; and how much more with a whole cellar - a whole bodily existence! People may lay down their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematical, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much as cheerfulness—an indecent, extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture; and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and see ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... who was my enemy without cause. I submitted my cause into the hands of Him who doeth all things well, and prayed for entire submission to his will. My anxiety subsided; my fear was removed, and I commenced the duties of the day with usual cheerfulness. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... an elevation of 16,500 feet, which seemed quite low after our colder and loftier camping-grounds. The reaction was pleasant, and, as far as I was concerned, the outlook had changed from one of deepest depression to a condition of comparative cheerfulness and contentment. ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... convincing the brave clans, that I can hazard my life in that service as freely as the meanest of them. Ye know their temper, gentlemen; and if they do not think I have personal courage enough, they will not esteem me hereafter, nor obey my commands with cheerfulness. Allow me this single favour, and I here promise, upon my honour, never again to risk my person while I have that ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now! Come, that's capital. He thinks it means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with that cheerfulness which is usually sustained by ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... but a virtuous, chaste wife, fixing her entire love upon her husband, and submitting to him as her head and king, by whose directions she ought to steer in all lawful courses, will, like a faithful companion, share patiently with him in all adversities, run with cheerfulness through all difficulties and dangers, though ever so hazardous, to preserve and assist him, in poverty, sickness, or whatsoever misfortunes befall him, acting according to her duty in all things; but a proud, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... marching on, and would march again to-morrow; the drill cries would begin again, the dull wrestle through swamps and thickets; and in due time the men would press down upon the French forts and take them. But where would be the morning's cheerfulness, the spirit of youth which had carried the boats down the lake amid laughter and challenges to race, and at the landing-place set the men romping like schoolboys? The longer John considered, the more he ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... experienced in other occurrences, that, as Caesar says, things often appear greater to us at distance than near at hand, I have found, that being well, I have had maladies in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigour wherein I now am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition, that, by imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by one-half, and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... years. The church was rather cold and damp, and General Lee, during the meeting, sat in a pew with his military cape cast loosely about him. In a conversation that occupied the brief space preceding the call to order, he took part, and told with marked cheerfulness of manner and kindliness of tone some pleasant anecdotes of Bishop Meade and Chief-Justice Marshall. The meeting was protracted until after seven o'clock by a discussion touching the rebuilding of the church edifice and the increase of the rector's salary. General Lee acted ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... mistake for us to mistake ourselves for the President of the company. Let us do our little bit with cheerfulness and not take the responsibility that belongs to God. None of us can turn the earth around; all we can ever hope to do is to hit it a few whacks on the right side. We belong to a great system; a system which can convince even the dullest of us of its greatness. Think of the miracle ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... quite see what difference the fact of tea being served in one place or another can make to apocryphal visitors, so, with what cheerfulness she can muster, she asks the others which they would prefer. And at once, a little to her surprise, Nancy and Gerald answer simultaneously, "Oh, let us have tea on the lawn, not—not ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the tone. It meant business in spite of the aggressive cheerfulness. He turned moodily and stamped out of the room. As the door closed, he found an outlet for the disappointment ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... than not, the food set before him had undergone a process which left it masticable indeed, but void of savour and nourishment. Many little attentions of which he had never dreamed kept him in a wondering cheerfulness. And at length he said to himself: ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... In taking thought for the East, whilst in England, I had made one capital hit which you must not forget—I had brought with me a pair of common spurs. These were a great comfort to me throughout my horseback travels, by keeping up the cheerfulness of the many unhappy nags that I had to bestride; the angle of the Oriental stirrup is a ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... them,—and to esteem the powers and riches of this world as dross, weighed against this rare and fiery talisman. For it is a jewel which doth light up the heart, and make it strong to support all sorrow and ill fortune with cheerfulness, knowing that it is in itself of so lasting a quality as to subjugate all things and events unto its compelling sway.' What think you of this? Sir Roger, there is a whole volume of comprehension in your face! Give some word ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... would set his character in some impossible situation, and Miss Vanbrugh would make us, for the moment, forget its impossibility. He would give her a trivial or a grotesque or a vulgar action to do, and she would do it with distinction. She had force in lightness, a vivid malice, a magnetic cheerfulness; and she could suffer silently, and be sincere in a tragedy which had been conceived without sincerity. If acting could save a play, "The Princess's Nose" would have been saved. It ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... bell began to toll, and the party broke up with a cordiality and cheerfulness which contrasted strangely with the solemnity with which it had begun. My mother was politely requested to become an honorary member of the club, and as politely consented, expressing a hope that she might meet with its honourable members many ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... months before had been a hunted fugitive with only three followers, without hope for himself or his people, was again a powerful war chief. With a brighter outlook his natural cheerfulness of disposition returned, and he hoped and planned great ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... of Patience. That's one of the hardest studies. You can't learn much of it at a time, but every bit you get by heart, makes the next bit easier. And there's the lesson of Cheerfulness. And the lesson of Making the Best ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... a smiling face that she awaited Bower on the steps of her carriage. She shook hands with him cordially, did not object in the least degree when he seized her arm to pilot her through a noisy crowd of foreigners, and laughed with utmost cheerfulness when they both failed to drink some extraordinarily hot coffee served in glasses that ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... have found it!" exclaimed Douglas with sudden cheerfulness. "If they don't hurt my old sky pilot, I don't care. Come on, Jude, a little more pep, if ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... from his wounds, he never regained his former cheerfulness and good fortune seemed to desert him, and in a second battle with Gustavus on the Lech he was mortally wounded, dying a few ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... try to persuade him to stay, and he felt faint-hearted when he thought of her. "She would sit up early and late, and work for me to the last gasp," he thought, "but father was right. It is selfish of me to take it," and so he sat trying to fashion his parting note into a tone of cheerfulness. ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... yet to learn." He demanded spiritual liberty, and though, as time went on, he learned to use gentler phrases, he was always a century or two ahead of his age. The mirthfulness of his early days passed, as well it might, but a better possession— cheerfulness—remained to the end. Exile never embittered him, and the writings that are his legacy "show an habitual upwardness of mental movement; they grow rich in all gentle, gracious, and magnanimous qualities as the years increase ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... articles with great cheerfulness, whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was at ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... of Wine; these I have nothing to say to, as not knowing how to invite them to Reflections full of Shame and Horror: But those that will observe this Rule, I promise them they shall awake into Health and Cheerfulness, and be capable of recounting with Delight those glorious Moments wherein the Mind has been indulging it self in such Luxury of Thought, such noble Hurry of Imagination. Suppose a Man's going supperless to Bed should introduce him to the Table of some great Prince or other, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... I call pleasurable excitement (titillatio) or cheerfulness; that of sorrow I call pain or melancholy. It is, however, to be observed that pleasurable excitement and pain are related to a man when one of his parts is affected more than the others; cheerfulness and melancholy, on the other hand, when all parts are equally affected. What the nature of desire is I have explained; and besides these three—joy, sorrow, and desire—I know of no other primary emotion, the others ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... to see how his dark mood had changed in the last few days and given way to greater cheerfulness. It appeared to Lord Erich as if his brother had come to reason, and after all had made up his mind to fulfil their parents' wish. He believed all the more in the happy change when he heard that his brother intended presenting himself ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... the South Carolinians are the gentlest people I ever met with. They accede to every requisition with cheerfulness; and never have I known an instance where any one of them has used subterfuge to evade a rule, however hard it might bear upon them. They are the soul of honor, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... up and came alongside us, taking his part in our talk in all cheerfulness. And from that time I had little thought but of the pleasantness of the ride in the sharp winter air and under the bright sun with him toward the new court which I had often longed to see, with its strange ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... his best to restore the major to whatever cheerfulness was possible under the circumstances, and the sturdy Englishman had regained his ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Ned?" said the latter as a ray of cheerfulness shot over his sad heart, on seeing the happiness meeting with himself gave to the boy; "where are you going so far from home, bare-footed and half bare-legged, on such a cold day ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... hold you suspended over death; my life is full of labour and anxiety; and I choose," said he, with a remarkable accent of command, "that you shall greet me with a pleasant face." He never needed to repeat the recommendation: from that day forward I was always ready to receive him with apparent cheerfulness; and he rewarded me with a good deal of his company, and almost more than I could bear of his confidence. He had set up a laboratory in the back part of the house, where he toiled day and night at his elixir, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supplied to the human mind by unerring Wisdom, that enables us, however broken down by the pressure of misfortune, to recover our cheerfulness after a while, and resign ourselves to the decrees of Heaven. It consoles the widow—it supports the bereaved lover, who had long dwelt upon anticipated bliss—it almost reconciles to her lot the fond and forsaken girl, whose ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rather a gloomy apartment; the front windows were high and narrow, and the overhanging balcony rather obscured the light; the folding-doors had been taken away, but though this added to the size of the room, there was no additional cheerfulness gained, as the glass door in the inner room, which once had opened into a pleasant garden, now merely led into a covered way ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... don't recognize the pleasure of being here. It is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness out of bare respect ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... or brooding over their griefs, or dreaming in broad day of their being marabouts or sultans, the poor witless thing runs in amongst them, shaking hands with the first he meets with, and bursts out a-laughing. He usually succeeds in infusing a little of his cheerfulness into these equally mad people, but more sober in their method of madness. Yesterday the slaves had another feast for the dead. The Moors allow their slaves the liberty of blending the two religions, as Rome has allowed the blending ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... he wore it cut close all round, it showed thinner on the crown than on the temples, and his pale eyebrows were waning. He had a settled patience of look which would have been a sadness, if there had not been mixed with it an air of resolute cheerfulness. I am not sure that this kept it from ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of art and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... chance one stumbles on a household where the woman does not disdain housewifely work, and specially the practical superintendence of the kitchen, there we may be sure we shall find cheerfulness and content. There seems to be something in the life of a practical housekeeper that answers to the needs of a woman's best nature, and that makes her pleasant and good-tempered. Perhaps it is the consciousness that she ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... only free from fear and passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation? and that will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy (which was his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not what new satisfaction, and a frolic cheerfulness in his last words and actions? In the start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his leg when his irons were taken off, does he not discover an equal serenity and joy in his soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same time ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... appearance. In short, Harry Rivers was one of those rare good fellows who make friends wherever they go; who take the world into their confidence; who insist on making every one familiar with their varying fortunes; and carry about with them a perpetual atmosphere of joyousness and breezy cheerfulness. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille |
