"Sweetness and light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... question seems quite to disturb the bachelor equanimity of Epictetus; it makes him use language of the strongest and most energetic contempt: and it is only when he trenches on this subject that he ever seems to lose the nobility and grace, the "sweetness and light," which are the general characteristic of his utterances. In spite of his complete self-mastery he was evidently a man of strong feelings, and with a natural tendency to express them strongly. "Heaven ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... up to the veriest contortions of affected mediaevalism, rarely striking out a note of common sense. Simple English art is the apotheosis of the British middle-class spirit, of Mr. Arnold's "Philistinism." English art departing from this spirit shows, not Mr. Arnold's "sweetness and light," not calmness, repose, sureness of self, unconsciousness of its own springs of life, but theories running into vague contradictions, a far-fetched abnormalness, a morbid conception of beauty, a defiant disregard of the fact that a public exists which judges ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... college, and such as their own taste and the woods and gardens could furnish; but the young men were shapely and intelligent, and the young women had grace and brightness; their hearts were in it, and in the result surely there was a measure of "sweetness and light" for them and ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Throughout large parts of the population, even in long-settled regions, there is no excess of those virtues needed for the maintenance of social harmony. Especially out in the West, men's dealings do not yet betray too much of the "sweetness and light" which we are told distinguish the cultured man from the barbarian. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which my assertion is true. You know that the primitive man lacks power of application. Spurred by hunger, by danger, by revenge, he can ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired—nay in the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living, that his reasonings found voice in ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... figure of a horseman moving slowly up the road toward them. The approaching rider was the Reverend Melanchthon T. Browning, late of Providence, Rhode Island. He had come to the frontier to teach it the error of its ways and bring a message of sweetness and light to the unwashed barbarians of the Rockies. He was not popular. This was due, perhaps, to an unfortunate manner. The pompous little man strutted ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... majority want to know and that fine fruit of knowledge concerning which there is so widespread an infidelity. Will culture aid a minister in a "protracted meeting"? Will the ability to read Chaucer assist a shop-keeper? Will the politician add to the "sweetness and light" of his lovely career if he can read the "Battle of the Frogs and the Mice" in the original? What has the farmer to do with the "Rose ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... year after year, as I have indicated, would be bringing back something of sweetness and light to their stubborn, irascible folk. The powerful and exacerbated bias of this folk toward the echt Deutsch would be neutralized and mollified under the contact of its youths with dispositions making for kindliness and courtesy. Confessedly ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... emaciated cheeks was a settled pallor. The face was still very beautiful, but in repose it was melancholy and about the mouth there was a touch of bitterness. The illumining smile still flashed out at times, and filled all his countenance with sweetness and light—but it was rarer ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... good-bye to London, and follow Elsie into her quiet world of meadows and streams. Another summer would bring Mrs. Beaton and her son into that pastoral country, just to refresh themselves with a glimpse of its sweetness and light. How Elsie would welcome the sight of those friendly faces which ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... later that he spoke directly to the girl. "I was just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to our city park. Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and light." ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... squalid in their habits, and herded like animals; they were barren of aspirations, and their industry was brutish (though of a kind still belauded), since it left no leisure for humanizing exercises, no room for sweetness and light. They were law-abiding, but that was not a virtue to commend itself to the Victorian diggers at this date, and they were only law-abiding because of their slavish instincts and their lack of courageous attributes. The antipathy bred then survives in the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... period of his life was what his master would have called conscientious. Was he not encouraging the strangest, wickedest, wildest ideas in the Princess? Strange and wicked and wild that is from the grand ducal point of view, for to Priscilla they seemed all sweetness and light. Fritzing had a perfect horror of the Grand Duke. He was everything that Fritzing, lean man of learning, most detested. The pleasantest fashion of describing the Grand Duke will be simply to say that he was in all things, both of mind and body, the exact opposite of Fritzing. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... are precious and inspiring only so far as they express the essential sweetness of the disposition of the thinker, and the essential illuminating power of his intelligence. Emerson's greatness came from his character. Sweetness and light streamed from him because they were in him. In everything he thought, wrote, and did, we feel the presence of a personality as vigorous and brave as it was sweet, and the particular radical thought he at any time expressed derived its power ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... society as fraudulent as the satirists describe it; yet, when we turn to the uplift—particularly the professional uplift—what do we find but the same old tunes, hypocrisy and empiricism posing as "friends of the people," preaching the pussy gospel of "sweetness and light?" ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... of humor," he lamented. "You used to have a deal, too, before you took to being conscientiously cheerful, and diffusing sweetness and light among your cowering associates. Well, it was because it helped him a little. Oh, I am being truthful now. I had some reason to dislike Jack Charteris, but odd as it is, I know to-day I never did. I ought to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... thought or unkind insinuation. In all of them, though so many are for the use of persons placed in the most trying circumstances, and some of them are for persons writhing under a sense of intolerable injury, sweetness and light do ever reign. Even 'yours truly, Jacob Langton,' in his 'letter to his Daughter's Mercenary Fiance',' mitigates the sternness of his tone by the remark that his 'task is inexpressibly painful.' And he, Mr. Langton, is the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... law of God. If they erred in seeking that authoritative law, and passed over the Sermon on the Mount for the stern Hebraisms of Moses; if they hesitated in view of the largeness of Christian liberty; if they seemed unwilling to accept the sweetness and light of the good tidings, let us not forget that it was the mistake of men who feared more than they dared to hope, whose estimate of the exceeding awfulness of sin caused them to dwell upon God's vengeance rather than his compassion; and whose dread of evil was so great that, in shutting their hearts ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... any more sweetness and light when you get engaged. I simply couldn't stand it! You're chock-a-block full ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... startled. And then there is Mr. C. Chaplin—always there is Mr. C. Chaplin. Personally, I loathe the cinematograph. It is, I think, the most tedious, the most banal form of entertainment that was ever flung at a foolish public. The Punch and Judy show is sweetness and light by comparison. It is the mechanical nature of the affair that so depresses me. It may be clever; I have no doubt it is. But I would rather see the worst music-hall show that was ever put up than the best picture-play that was ever filmed. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... She is committing suicide—of a holy sort. Well, what made me a brute and her an angel? And when she's gone how will the brute get on without the angel? Why should I be filled with fury and wickedness and she of whom I was born with sweetness and light? Let God or the devil answer that if they can. My mother, oh! my mother!" and this violent, sinister youth hid his face in his hands ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... seek to leave the irritation and annoyance behind when we cross the threshold of our dwelling. Into it the roughness and bluster of the world should never be permitted to come. It should be the place of "sweetness and light," and every member may do something to make it so. It is a bad sign when a young man never cares to spend his evenings at home—when he prefers the company of others to the society of his family, and seeks his amusement wholly beyond its circle. There is something wrong when ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees |
