|
|
|
More "Cheerfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... support six individuals—the father and mother, with four children! It does so, indeed, by an arrangement of only one poor meal in the day; a dinner four times, and a supper three times, in the week. They endure their distress with tolerable cheerfulness, though in the same street, where they occupy the garrets of a house, resides, in an elegant hotel, a man who was once their groom, but who is now a tribune, and has within these last twelve years, as a conventional deputy, amassed, in his mission to Brabant and Flanders, twelve millions of livres. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... pity," she sighed, with a half-inquiring, half deprecatory look at this fortunate first comer. "I shall have to put him below, poor man. I'm afraid he won't like it, but—" Mr. Ransom remained silent. "But," she went on with sudden cheerfulness, "I will make it up in the supper. That shall be as good a one as our kitchen will provide. Four city guests all in one day! That's a good many for ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... therefore always borne after him. When his Majesty had got a little way down the Hall, he turned to his train-bearers, and requested them to bear his train farther from him, apparently with a view to relieve himself from the weight. As he went down the Hall he conversed with much apparent cheerfulness with the bishop of Lincoln, who was on ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... certainly the most entertaining of any humorous lecture to which I have ever listened, and it left the audience talking, with such bright, happy faces, I can see it now in my mind. And they continued to repeat the happy things you said; at least my own friends did. It was not a "plea for cheerfulness," it was cheerfulness. I hope you may give it, and make the world laugh, a thousand times. "He who makes what is useful agreeable," said old Horace of literature, "wins every vote." You have the wit of making the useful agreeable, and the spirit ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... those which are expressive of certain pleasant or solemn emotions; and the rest startling, or curious, or cheerful, or exciting, or sublime, but not beautiful, (and so in music.) And all questions relating to this grandeur, cheerfulness, or other characteristic impression of color must be considered under the head ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... frequently, and to whom even Mrs. Mavick was in a manner reconciled. She was often in the little house in Irving Place. There was nothing in her manner to remind Mrs. Mavick that she had done her a great wrong, and her cheerfulness and good sense made her presence and talk a relief from the monotony ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... agriculture and commerce betoken a powerful danger commercially over the old Europe, so have they to thank the political power and the methodical perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants from England as well as the industry, the bravery and the cheerfulness of the Germans who have placed themselves politically in the service of the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... lay in country sights and sounds: the fresh gallop over the downs, the pleasant saunter through the sweet Sussex lanes, the sweet breath of her roses and carnations, would all woo her back to health and cheerfulness. When the pretty colour came back into Lesbia's face her mother would not regret her sacrifice; and then I remembered that Charlie's friend Harcourt Manners lived about half a dozen miles from Rutherford, and always attended the Pinkerton dances, and he was a nice intelligent fellow. But I ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... use the power of Christ, or wisdom, guided as we may be by the true Wisdom and Light of men? It is in this sense that the Gospel of Christ is a leveller of ranks: we pay, indeed, our superiors full reverence, and with cheerfulness as unto the Lord; and we honour eminent talents as deserving admiration and reward, and the more readily act we thus, because these are little things to pay. The time is short, year follows year, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascinating creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two refugees, but ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... aspect so much alike, that cursory observation can scarcely detect a single feature of variety. The winter of more temperate climates, and even in some of no slight severity, is occasionally diversified by a thaw, which at once gives variety and comparative cheerfulness to the prospect. But here, when once the earth is covered, all is dreary, monotonous whiteness; not merely for days or weeks, but for more than half a year together. Whichever way the eye is turned, it meets a picture calculated to impress ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... little windows are decorated with flowering plants. Within them there is an air of simple neatness and freshness we have seldom seen surpassed; the meagre furniture seems to have been arranged by some careful hand, and presents an air of cheerfulness in strange contrast with the dingy cabins around. In each there is a neatly arranged bed, spread over with a white cover, and by its side a piece of soft carpet. It is from these we shall draw forth the principal characters ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... patient sun that everything under it shall decay, and if by reason of some swift calamity, some fiery cataclysm, the perishable shall be overtaken by a fate that fixes it in unwasting arrest, it cannot be felt that the law has been set aside in the interest of men's happiness or cheerfulness. Neither Pompeii nor Herculaneum invites the gayety of the spectator, who as he walks their disinterred thoroughfares has the weird sense of taking a former civilization out of storage, and the ache of finding it wholly unadapted to the actual ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I invited myself," he answered, with attempted cheerfulness. Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gracious impulses, are, of course, but the first instinctive movements of the social feeling. And from these we move onward over a vast field of action, to the very farthest point reached by the higher charities of Christianity. There can be no doubt that the charm, the grace, and the happy cheerfulness of society are chiefly due to women; and it is also true that the whole unwritten common-law of society is, in a great measure, under their control. The world is constantly encroaching here, enervating and corrupting social life. To ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... conquests, as well as to the protection of the trade of his subjects, which he had extremely at heart. He told the commons, that nothing could relieve his majesty's royal mind, under the anxiety he felt for the burdens of his faithful subjects, but the public-spirited cheerfulness with which their house had granted him such large supplies, and his conviction that they were necessary for the security and essential interest of his kingdoms; he therefore returned them his hearty thanks for these supplies, and assured ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The people, too, had wagged their heads over him. Like pouting children on the public square, who "won't play," whether the game proposed is a wedding or a funeral, the people had criticized John for being a gloomy ascetic, and found fault with Jesus for his shocking cheerfulness. There was no way of suiting them, and no way of making them take the call of God to heart. Long before electricity was invented, human nature knew all about interposing nonconductors between itself ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... fatigue, and the privation of food and drink, and bear exposure to the tropical sun for hours with no covering for the head, without being in the least affected. Their bearing evinces entire subjection and abasement, and they shun and distrust the whites. They do not manifest the cheerfulness of the negro slave, but maintain an expression of indifference, and are destitute of all curiosity or ambition. These peculiarities are doubtless the results of the treatment they have received for generations. The half-breeds, or Mestizos, prefer to associate with the whites rather than with the ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... said I, "that a being so wonderfully formed as I am, was created to live in idleness; while the birds, which have no hands, and nothing but their little bills to help them, work with cheerfulness, and without being told to do so? Has then the great Creator given me all these limbs for no purpose? It cannot be: I will try to go to work. I did so, and went away from the village to a spot of good land, where I built a cabin, enclosed ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... reflected cool experience of the world and of men. Yet the eyes were young, and there was no hardness in them, and the mouth seemed curiously unfashioned for worldly badinage—a very wistful, full-lipped mouth that must have been disciplined in some sad school to lose its cheerfulness ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... L. Kane, not a Mormon, dramatically dwelling upon the circumstances of the exodus from Nauvoo and the later dedication there of the beautiful temple, abandoned immediately thereafter. He wrote also of the Mormon camps that were then working westward, describing the high spirit and even cheerfulness in which the people were accepting exile from a grade of civilization that had made them prefer the wilds. Colonel Kane helped in the organization of the Battalion, in bringing influence to bear upon the President and in carrying to Fort Leavenworth the orders ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Washington forests. The former are dry, light, and cheerful; the latter, moist, dark, silent, and somewhat forbidding. The northern forests of the Coast have their attractive features, to be sure; they are fecund, solemn, and majestic, but the prevailing note is not cheerfulness, as ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... little man. But oh, Alice, if you had seen the Duke's long face through those three days; if you had heard the tones of the people's voices as they whispered about me; if you had encountered the oppressive cheerfulness of those two London doctors,—doctors are such bad actors,—you would have thought it impossible for any woman to live throughout. There's one comfort;—if my mannikin lives, I can't have another eldest. He looks ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... into the firebox, and from it hung an old iron pot. The andirons were long, narrow slabs of granite, set on edge, upon which were piled logs of pine wood, burning merrily—not because it was a cold night, but because of its cheerfulness. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... the new scenes and changes," which were to be passed, before the trees of the forest could be supplanted, by the fruits of the field, or society be reared in the solitude of the desert. With a capability to sustain fatigue, not to be subdued by toil; and with a cheerfulness, not easily to be depressed; a patience which could mock at suffering and a daring which nothing could daunt, every difficulty which intervened, every obstacle which was interposed between them and the accomplishment of the objects of their pursuit, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... population is now in no degree in excess of the means of subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through all classes. ... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so rapidly as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the people must have struck every observer.[26] ... If industrial improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay political discontent, Ireland should ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... they have been not so badly brought up, Campbell, but that they will submit with cheerfulness, and be a source of comfort to us both. Besides, we ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... with him. One should never, in even one's heart, do an injury to kine. One should, indeed, always confer happiness on them. One should, always reverence kine and worship them, with bends of one's head. He who does this, restraining his senses the while and filled with cheerfulness, succeeds in attaining to that felicity which is enjoyed by kine (and which kine alone can confer). One should for three days drink the hot urine of the cow. For the next three days one should drink the hot milk of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... as it meant not a few weeks, but the loss of a 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 made their mark in life in the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... utility, in reference to individual comfort and to the interests of society at large, renders "marriage honourable in all;" and while it would be ungrateful to Providence, not to accept with suitable emotions of cheerfulness the blessing which has been so long and so eagerly sought, it must always be injurious to character to indulge in extravagant merriment or indecorous festivity. Let persons forming such a connection aim to chastise ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the Gigolette—good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable—all imbued with the intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what can ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... an attempt at cheerfulness, "I did not expect thee back so soon. Hush! I have made a famous bargain. I have found a broker to buy these things which we don't want just at present, and can replace by new and prettier things when the siege is over ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... crying over spilt milk, fellows," he said, trying to infuse cheerfulness into his tone. "We've got to try Billy's recipe and make lemonade from the lemon that the ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... self-conscious and superficial. It is better than nothing and unquestionably adds greatly to the sum of human happiness. But I do not think we ought to be cheerful if we are consumed with trouble and sorrow. The fact is we ought not to be for long beyond a natural cheerfulness that comes from the deepest possible sources. While we are sad, let us be so, simply and naturally; but we must pray that the light may come to us in our sorrow, that we may be able soon and naturally to put aside ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype, the main-line station. The drive, superficially pleasant, was in reality very disconcerting to him. For nine days the household had talked in apparent cheerfulness of father's visit to London, as though it were an occasion for joy on father's behalf, tempered by affectionate sorrow for his absence. The official theory was that all was for the best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... ourselves up, comrades; further resistance were but a bootless sacrifice." Not the least noteworthy of Bayard's many fine qualities were his rare good sense and his cheerfulness under misfortune. If he won, he enjoyed his victory; if he lost, he ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... long to die—yes, my dear child, to such an extent that your health plainly suffers. At other times, and I must speak candidly at the risk of offending you a little, you view your perils with a levity and cheerfulness that astound me." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his trousers, "I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... dinner with great cheerfulness and good appetite, and for an hour after it they chattered away happily. Then Elsie grew drowsy, very drowsy, indeed, and presently, nestled against Tinker, she fell asleep. Fortunately, the southern night was warm, and, in the fur-lined ulster, she could take no harm. He sat holding her to him, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... me. They keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of thousands of families in this great town (Birmingham) and neighbourhood, who are in a similar state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the instruction of the females in the work of a house, in teaching them to produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fireside, would prevent a great amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation, female ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of every art which reflects nature, but almost entirely ignorant of the ways of boys and men. An attack of consumption, with which he had long been threatened, caused him to leave Oxford in 1840, and for nearly two years he wandered over Italy searching for health and cheerfulness, and gathering materials for the first volume of Modern Painters, the book that made ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... slaughter and skin it with their teeth and devour it on the spot,—its conjure-wallahs, who, for a few pice, will run sharp foils through each other's bodies without for a moment disturbing either health or cheerfulness, or will make mangoes grow under table-cloths, "all fair and proper," while Master waits,—as the Brahmin still dodges the shadow of the Soodra, and the Soodra spits upon the footprint of the Pariah, the Baboo returns to his chariot; the fat and solemn coachman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... soon brought round, but Julie's state was critical. When she had recovered a little, she was taken back to Clarens. The doctor told her she had but three days to live. She spent those three days in perfect cheerfulness and tranquillity of spirit, conversing with Madame D'Orbe, the pastor, and myself, expressing her content that her life should end at a time when she had attained complete happiness. On the fourth morning we found ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... all kindness. Call when you will, and ask for what you please, the object solicited is sure to be granted. He never seems to rise (and he is a very early riser) with spleen, ill-humour, or untoward propensities. With him, the sun seems always to shine, and the lark to tune her carol. And this cheerfulness of feeling is carried by him into every abode however gloomy, and every society ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the lesson 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
... air and the sunlight were after the close atmosphere of London! The shining sea—the fresh breeze blowing in—the busy brightness and cheerfulness of the King's Road—it all seemed new and delightful again! And of course amidst the general clamour and commotion of getting into the house, who was to take much notice of Nan, or watch her self-conscious shyness, or regard the manner in which she received Frank King ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Never do Fielding's courage, cheerfulness, and affection forsake him; up to the last days of his life he is laboring still for his children. He dies, and is beholden to the admiration of a foreigner, Monsieur de Meryionnet, French consul at Lisbon, for a decent grave and tombstone. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... would not allow her visitors to be overshadowed by this trouble for long. She possessed a good share of her father's cheerfulness and dry humor. She began to tell semi-humorous tales of her own experiences about the ranch and on the ranges, and this started Tom and Frank to swapping tales—some of them altogether too ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... genial mountain air, like one who had relieved his conscience of a heavy debt. Like most laymen of the Catholic persuasion, he thought himself no longer bound to maintain a grave and mortified exterior, when worship and penitence were duly observed, and he joined his friend with a cheerfulness of air and voice that an ascetic, or a puritan, might have attributed to levity, after the scenes through which ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... hold conversation with a mere laboring man. He drew Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all but the one unmentionable thing; and then he told stories about his own life. He was a great one for stories, not always of the choicest. Being sent to jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had "done time" twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What with women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Bessie's cheerfulness revived under the brisk influence of her friend, and she was ready to give an epitome of her annals, or a forecast of her hopes, or (which she much preferred) to hear the chronicles of Beechhurst. Miss Buff was the best authority for the village politics that she ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close—in its very final words—he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... their own hands again.... 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 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, it betokens ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... withhold him from any toil or any brave action. Neither his statue nor picture are extant, he never allowing them in his life, and utterly forbidding them to be made after his death. He is said to have been a little man, of a contemptible presence; but the goodness of his humor, and his constant cheerfulness and playfulness of temper, always free from anything of moroseness or haughtiness, made him more attractive, even to his old age, than the most beautiful and youthful men of the nation. Theophrastus writes, that the Ephors ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... lover. In return for this kindness the lady promised that should the object of her affections ever arrive, he should marry them both, and that she should have the precedence in the ceremony of union. The two friends having thus agreed, the vizier's daughter regained her cheerfulness, and means were taken to convince her father, mother, and friends of the consummation of the nuptials. From this time they lived in perfect happiness together, one exercising the authority of sultan to the satisfaction of the subject, and the other acting the part of a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... of garden-fronted cottages! leading us along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the full view of PITT Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic—yea, call it at once magnificent—right up to the great ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... through these relationships gives us a "New Whole" which maybe stated thus: The spirit of cheerfulness, radiating from the Locksmith's personality and expressed through his work, is reflected by ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... some of her witty jokes, but they seemed to be wasted on Anna. After jesting with the servant had failed, scolding was next tried, but nothing seemed to bring back the girl's usual cheerfulness. "Oh, Anna," said the mistress at length, "you make me think of the olden days, when such disagreeable whims on the part of frowning maids used ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with sounds so blood-curdling that Suydam put his mattress on the sofa and his sleeping-bag on top of that, and, shutting himself in, defied them. The incomparable Levy was Italian by his birth and cheerfulness, Jewish on his father's side, Turkish by the fez he wore and a life spent in guiding strangers about Constantinople. He had the face of a dean of a diplomatic corps or one of those comfortable old gentlemen in spats who have become fixtures in ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... appalling. The hardship of the work was astonishingly increased, robbed of Tuck's unfailing cheerfulness and faith. There was one moment when, toward sunset, Jim's strength almost failed him. The walls were rougher now. He had found a hand-hold but no place for the night. He clung here until his exhausted arms were able to ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... danger-spot our C.O. passed—an upright, gallant figure, saying little, exhorting not at all, but instilling confidence and cheerfulness by ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the idea with which my beloved friend is inseparably associated in my mind. His nature had all the attributes of light—its revealing power, its cheerfulness, its salubrity, its beauty, its inconceivable rapidity. He had the quickest intellect that I have ever known. He saw with a flash into the heart of an argument or a situation. He diffused joy by his own joy in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth and said in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, "Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven, in its bounty, bless and preserve you; may this be the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... as though he could not restrain the growing feeling of apprehension caused by his mother's looks and strange reticence. They were so unlike her usual cheerfulness when he came home from school or the shop, and he could see that she had grown yet paler than when he left her at the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... all the wear and tear comes on the same nerves—every blow falls on the same place. Variety, even in a bad direction, is a great relief. But living long has nothing to do with getting old gracefully. Good nature is a great enemy of wrinkles, and cheerfulness helps the complexion. If we could only keep from being annoyed at little things, it would add to the luxury of living. Great sorrows are few, and after all do not affect us as much as the many irritating, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... all the cheerfulness of a dog who had found a job which suited him, and his owner, after again warning the cook of what would happen if he moved out of the chair, left the room, shutting the door as he went. The cook heard the front door close behind him, and then all was silence, except ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... I have long felt that it would be wiser for us at once to meet a necessary evil. For God's sake, put an end to the torture of this life, which is destroying us both. Poverty, absolute poverty, with you and with your love, I can meet even with cheerfulness; but indeed, my Ratcliffe, I can bear our present life no longer; I shall die if you be unhappy. And oh! dearest Ratcliffe, if that were to happen, which sometimes I fear has happened, if you were no longer ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... fingers over the keys of the melodeon. The others wanted to be coaxed as amateurs always do. There is no backwardness that requires as much persuasion to appear before an audience as that of an amateur, but when once persuaded there is no cheerfulness that exceeds that of an amateur in responding ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, according to their abilities, when required thereto by letter from one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State; and that their right to grant the same, and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants, have been at sundry ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... the lobby of the big hotel with their new friends. Richmond without was quiet and blazing in the sun. Harry had received a second letter from his father from an unnamed point in Georgia. It did not contain much news, but it was full of cheerfulness, and it intimated in more than one place that Bragg's army was going ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... discriminate more closely than to call him fool. Had Sir Purcell sunk or bent under the thong that pursued him, he might, after a little healthy moaning, have gone along as others do. Who knows?—though a much persecuted man, he might have become so degraded as to have looked forward with cheerfulness to his daily dinner; still despising, if he pleased, the soul that would invent a sauce. I mean to say, he would, like the larger body of our sentimentalists, have acquiesced in our simple humanity, but without sacrificing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will mount to the house tops and say 'I told you so! It was an idea of my own!' What great geniuses are going to spring from the earth! I am in haste, so adieu, courage, energy, silence and especially cheerfulness! And especially cheerfulness!" Perhaps this cheerfulness of strong minds is the invincible weapon of those who, like Sommeiller and Favre, fight against apathy or the bad faith of their adversaries! Like Favre however Sommeiller had not the pleasure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... pillow there lies a sweet, patient face; the voice is cheerful and thankful; and, instead of being self-absorbed, the mind is full of unselfish thoughts for others. I recall the description given by a friend of one such invalid's chamber, which used to be filled with the most beautiful cheerfulness and activity. At a certain time of year you might see in it quite an exhibition of stockings, pinafores, dresses and other pretty things, prepared for the children of a mission-school in India. By thinking of the needs of those children far away ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... suspected any other motive than was here declared, and which might make his pupil unwilling to face the parental brow, and he had declared that nothing could have been more exemplary than the whole demeanour of the youth, who had at first gone about as one crushed, and though slowly reviving into cheerfulness, had always been subdued, until quite recently, when the meeting with his old companion had certainly much enlivened his spirits. Poor Mr. Fellowes had been rejoicing in the excellent character he should have to give, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after that one confidential talk of theirs, in which she had afforded him a glimpse of her sorrowful past. She had not alluded to the subject a second time; and, somehow, he had not been able to get behind the defenses of her smiling cheerfulness. Always she was with her father, it seemed; and the old man, garrulous enough when alone, was invariably silent and moody in his daughter's company. One might almost have said he hated her, from the sneering impatient looks he cast at her from time ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... a large woman, of middle age, with a high forehead unruffled by thought, and a clear skin unmarred by wrinkles. She had a cheerfulness that obtruded itself, like a creditor, at unpropitious moments; and her voice, though not displeasing, gave the impression that it might become volcanic at any moment. She also possessed a considerable theatrical instinct, with which she would frequently manoeuvre to the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... expense of maintaining the autocratic pomp of the Kaiser, his sons and satellites. Every member of the German family had his or her task, even to the little three-year-old toddler whose business it was to look after the brooms, dust rags and other household utensils. There was nothing of cheerfulness or even of the dignity of labor about this. It was hard, unceasing, grinding toil which crushed the spirits of the people. It was part of the system to cause them to welcome ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... management and encouragement of them, amid poverty and trouble, the characters of the boys themselves, their cheerfulness, courage, and patience, and the firm grip which they take upon the lowest rounds of the ladder of success, are told simply and ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... day to the house to offer fish for sale—cod, whitings, herrings, whatever fish chance had given to his net. Flora was glad to observe something like cheerfulness once more illumine the old sailor's face. She always greeted him with kind words, and inquired affectionately after his welfare; and without alluding to his heavy family afflictions, made him sensible that she deeply sympathised ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the cockroach flies around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... themselves as in herself. She rebelled against the outrages of poverty, and she drank to its dregs the cup of straitened circumstances. She was proud, as proud as Lucifer, and she was forced into positions which suppleness and cheerfulness might have made tolerable, if not agreeable. She wrung from these positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... delection[obs3]; relish, zest; gusto &c. (physical pleasure) 377; satisfaction &c. (content) 831; complacency. well-being; good &c. 618; snugness, comfort, ease; cushion &c. 215; sans souci[French:without worry], mind at ease. joy, gladness, delight, glee, cheer, sunshine; cheerfulness &c. 836. treat, refreshment; amusement &c. 840; luxury &c. 377. mens sana in corpore sano [Latin: a sound mind in a sound body][Juvenal]. happiness, felicity, bliss; beatitude, beautification; enchantment, transport, rapture, ravishment, ecstasy; summum bonum[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... ordinary thought and emotion, we find many instances of this principle of induction. We know that one person vibrating strongly with happiness or sorrow, cheerfulness or anger, as the case may be fends to communicate his feeling and emotions, state to those with whom he comes in contact. All of you have seen a whole room full of persons affected and influenced in this way, under certain circumstances. You have also seen how a magnetic orator, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... isolated, they sigh and mope; yet they are proud of this lukewarm longing, which does not quite avail, and keep diaries to record with protest the dulness of every day. Sentimentality is initial genius. Its complaint seems to contradict the cheerfulness of wisdom, yet it enjoys complaining; though life be not worth having on these conditions, it bottles every tear. A weak sadness fills great space in literature, stocks the circulating library, and counts its Werthers by the thousand in every age. Now we expect this malady, as we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... nevertheless, your cheerful greeting had better not convey any reference to the weather, else it will be met by a sneer which, taking you unawares, may give you a crushing sense that you make a poor figure with your cheerfulness, which was not asked for. Some daring person perhaps introduces another topic, and uses the delicate flattery of appealing to Touchwood for his opinion, the topic being included in his favourite studies. An indistinct muttering, with a look at the carving-knife in reply, teaches that daring ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... have seen trouble, and worn blinkers ever since. Of course, one just loves them for it, but I must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one so of a duck that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. Ducks have no repose. Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a cook who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a hopeful sign, and a conscience that's absentee for about eleven months of the year, and only turns up ...
— Reginald • Saki
... that sort of sunshiny nature which easily shifts to shadow, like the atmosphere of an April day. Cheerfulness held sway with her, except occasionally, when her domestic cares grew too overwhelming; but her spirits rebounded ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... so impoverished, as anything other than an inevitable dispensation of Providence. If they thought otherwise, at any rate if the contrary view were at all prevalent amongst them, they must be most gifted hypocrites, to go about with the good temper in their eyes and the cheerfulness in their voices that I ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... relieve the thoughts of the whole party, by giving them a new direction, while it was likely to produce no unpleasant results, every one was willing to enter into it; the girls bringing forth the firearms with an alacrity bordering on cheerfulness. Hutter's armory was well supplied, possessing several rifles, all of which were habitually kept loaded in readiness to meet any sudden demand for their use. On the present occasion it only remained to freshen ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... fear of the difficulty of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, which he had never before discouraged, now presented itself to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness gave him hope on the one hand by indicating a spirit superior to all disappointments, it was suspicious to him on the other, as arising from some latent certainty of being soon united to the earl. All these circumstances concurred ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... the sect in which he is enlisted are exposed, and shown to be evidently and demonstrably opposite to that system of subordination and dependence, to which we are indebted for the present tranquillity of the nation, and that cheerfulness and readiness with which the two houses ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... took off his overcoat without looking at Bailey, who bustled about getting the supper, his resolute cheerfulness once more aglow. ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a calamity as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have been more sensible of this than David Lynde himself, and that there was something extremely touching in the alacrity and cheerfulness with which he assumed ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... unwashed for five days, his eyes bloodshot for want of sleep, hungry and footsore, fresh from terrible fighting, and the loss of many friends, he was still the same unmistakable British soldier, that queer mixture of humour and blasphemy, cheerfulness and grumbling, never losing that imperturbability which has no mixture of any other quality at all. The camping ground was arranged almost as though they were going to stay there for ever. Here were the guns in order, there the relics of the ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... beautiful women and blooming maidens, all moved in a confused intermixture, jesting and laughing with each other. They were all very gay on this evening, as the regent had herself set the example. With the most unconstrained cheerfulness, radiant with joy, did she wander through the rooms, dispensing smiles and agreeable words among all whom she approached. She bore in her bosom the glowing and cherished letter of her lover, and at its lightest rustling she seemed ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... 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
... him to sit down. "Please stay." She seemed to rouse herself with an effort. "Of course, there was only one thing George could do when he was lamed—send them on. But Clarence, who was with him, never made his fortitude and cheerfulness so clear as you have done. You even mentioned the exact words he said now and then—how ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Dame Joanna. Pulcheria, however, asked the old man what was wrong with him, for his face had suddenly clouded. His cheerfulness had vanished, his tufted eyebrows were raised, and his pinched lips seemed unwilling to part, when at length ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... makin'!" Palmerston reported to Mrs Bowldler. (With the utmost cheerfulness he continued running to and fro between summer-house and residence under the downpour.) "When Mrs Bosenna said that about a merrythought I ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... than a personal reply. The Ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said—it was the apparent heart that went with his request—which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... he never left without finding himself pledged to return in the evening. In his loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation he found it dangerously sweet to be thus petted and sought after. Cassie made no demands of him and acquiesced with apparent cheerfulness in the implication that he loved another woman. She humbly accepted the little that was left over, and, though she wept many hot tears in secret, outwardly at least she never rebelled or reproached him. She knew that to do either would be to lose him. In fact she ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... This cheerfulness, however, did not hide from his friends that he was subject to a languor which had been unknown before his journey to Russia. It was not the peevish fatigue that often brings life to an unworthy close. He remained true to the healthy temper of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the future Queen of England, in a letter to one of his correspondents, Lord Harcourt had given this description of her:—"Our queen, that is to be, has seen very little of the world; but her very good sense, vivacity, and cheerfulness, I dare say will recommend her to the king, and make her the darling of the British nation. She is no regular beauty; but she is of a pretty size, has a charming complexion, with very pretty eyes, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Caesar, took courage and held out more stubbornly. The barbarians for a long time knew nothing of the assistance he was bringing; he journeyed by night, lying by day in most obscure places, so as to fall upon them as far as possible unawares. At last from the unnatural cheerfulness of the besieged they suspected it and sent out scouts. Learning from them that Caesar was at last drawing near they set out against him, thinking to attack him while off his guard. He received advance information of this ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... desolate, neither has our Father forsaken us in our time of necessity. Surely He giveth bread to the hungry, and filleth the fainting soul with gladness!" Then spreading the tempting viands before the famished invalid, she smiled with the cheerfulness of her earlier days, as she saw with what ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... characteristic cheerfulness of the negro soldiers was as striking as their bravery. In his little book called The Nth Foot In War, Lieutenant M. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the lovely dining room, which in point of brilliancy and cheerfulness has more the character of a drawing than of a dining room. Opposite the window is an upright grand pianoforte. It is the largest ever made, with the exception of its companion made at the same time, and its richness and power of sound are very great. Over the fire is what is seldom ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... love and cheerfulness had got the upper hand when the little family party gathered again; at least that spirit had rule of all that either eyes or ears could take note of. They gathered in the 'keeping-room,' as it was called; the room used as a common sitting room by the family, though it served also the purpose ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... (even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it) made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret. There was a great similitude between his character and that of Sir Richard Steele. He had the advantage both in learning, and, in my opinion, genius: they both agreed in ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... nature now. Suffering was "making her perfect." She had a firm belief that God knew all about it, and that somehow or other it was "all right." Her mother took a great deal of pains to teach her this. She knew that no one can bear affliction with real cheerfulness who does not ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... was saying with evidently fictitious cheerfulness, "no, it was just a little headache.... It's much better. I think I can sleep now. Thank you very ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... have counteracted the Hegelian influences brought to hear upon him at Berlin, [Footnote: See a not, however, on the subject of Amiel's philosophical relationships, printed as an Appendix to the present volume.] would have taught him cheerfulness, and taught him also the art of writing, not beautiful fragments, but a book. Possibly—but how much we should have lost! Instead of the Amiel we know, we should have had one accomplished French critic the more. Instead of the spiritual drama of the "Journal Intime," some further additions to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made me very welcome, and I was struck by her unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman indeed, and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by misfortunes, and daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck around her of her former wealth and position, she bore all with exemplary fortitude, and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Pump Room, or in church on Sunday, or in the Park on sunny afternoons had the least notion of the tragedy that was going on. My reflections were interrupted by his entrance. He had forced up a cheerfulness that I am sure he didn't really feel, and seemed afraid of letting our talk flag for a moment. I remember, too, that for the first time he offered to read me his novel, instead of as usual waiting ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... Ada Cambridge's twenty-five years' Australian experience is shown in her general outlook upon life, rather than in the details of her work. The prevailing tone of her books is one of marked cheerfulness, sincerity, and simplicity; she has a hearty dislike for conventional stupidities, especially for the mock-modesty that stifles honest sentiment; and she gives emphatic endorsement to the pleasant dictum (which seems so much more feasible in sunny Australia than in colder northern lands) that the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the Likkhavis, harboring thoughts of pride and disappointment, said: "Why should that one take away our profit?" But, knowing Buddha's heart to be impartial and fair, they once again regained their cheerfulness. Tathagata, moreover, nobly seizing the occasion, appeasing them, produced within a joyful heart; and so subdued, their grandeur of appearance came again, as when a snake subdued by charms glistens with shining skin. And now, the night being passed, the signs ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... amidst a press of occupations and labor for which, after all, I was not born. But we are not here to have facilities found us for doing the work we like, but to make them." This sentence, written in a letter to his mother in his fortieth year, admirably expresses Arnold's courage, cheerfulness, and devotion in the midst of an exacting round of commonplace duties, and at the same time the energy and determination with which he responded to the imperative need of liberating work of a higher order, that he might keep himself, as he says ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothing to remind me of the business of the night. Felipe came to my bedside with obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court, the Senora was sunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued from the gateway, I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling, the heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the mountain-sides ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... skilful manager, with strict regard to justice, stocking the land of which he had the direction, and securing income from it, he would never take anything from such a person, but was ever ready to give him something in addition; so that men labored with cheerfulness, acquired property with confidence, and made no concealment from Cyrus of what each possest; for he did not appear to envy those who amassed riches openly, but to endeavor to bring into use the wealth of those ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... one or two of those other journeys, during which they had spent arduous days floundering through slushy snow and had slept in saturated blankets, and sometimes shelterless in bitter frost. Carroll had endured these things without complaint, though he had never attained to the cheerfulness his comrade usually displayed. He was willing to face hardship, when it promised to lead to a tangible result, but he failed to understand the curious satisfaction Vane assumed to feel in ascertaining exactly how much ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... down into the garden: her satisfied pride had restored some of her cheerfulness, so much so that, seeing, while crossing the hall, a mandolin lying forgotten on a chair, she told Mary Seyton to take it, to see, she said, if she could recall her old talent. In reality the queen was one of the best musicians ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... his errand. He always liked to ride with Sherburne, who was a fount of cheerfulness, and he was still keyed up to that extraordinary intensity and pitch of excitement that made all things possible. He now understood how the young soldiers of Napoleon in Italy had been able to accomplish so much. It was the man, a leader ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... down Beverly's supply of good spirits; she was having difficulty in keeping the haggard, distressed look from her face. Her tender, hopeful eyes were not so bold or so merry as on the day before; cheerfulness cost her an effort, but she managed to keep it fairly alive. Her escort, wretched and half-starved, never forgot the deference due to their charge, but strode steadily on with the doggedness of martyrs. At times she was impelled to disclose her true identity, but discretion ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... married to Marie, whom he wished to associate with his glory. Married to Marie! Each time he thought of it, burning fever and secret disquietude came over him. If he now remained so silent and had lost his quiet cheerfulness, it was because he had felt new life, as it were, emanating from her. She was certainly no longer the same woman as formerly; she was becoming more and more changed and distant. He had watched her and Pierre when the latter happened to be there, which was now but seldom. He, too, appeared ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... other two are neither to hold nor to bind till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on those occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... language might be surmised, one who, though young in years, is old in experience, and hath already discovered how unsatisfactory are the vanities of the world? There be such men in these strange days. And yet, how wonderfully hath he preserved his cheerfulness, and though chastened, is not cast down! That he hath been a cavalier, I plainly see, and he doth admit; that he is fit at present to be one of us, I doubt; that he will be, I hope. The jealous Dudley, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... reflected with astonishment upon the delicacy which dictated and the fortitude with which he managed his concealment, and felt deep and sympathetic sorrow for the anguish he must have been privately enduring while he endeavoured to dress his face with tranquillity and to converse with his accustomed cheerfulness and ease. Smothered grief is one of the most deadly inmates; and it is reasonable to believe that a paroxysm of violent emotion in a moment when solitude gave an opportunity for giving a loose to reflection, operating upon a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... that the deaths were real deaths and not stage ones. Again and again, when an air raider dropped a bomb which tore a child and its mother limb from limb, the people who saw it, though they had been reading with great cheerfulness of thousands of such happenings day after day in their newspapers, suddenly burst into furious imprecations on "the Huns" as murderers, and shrieked for savage and satisfying vengeance. At such moments it became clear that the deaths they had not seen meant no more to ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... few 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 things for ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... round of diplomatic dinners," said the consul, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "I have brought two uniforms to wear ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... who sells goods 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 ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... much cheerfulness in thy music, for which reason this young person and I will trouble you to play us that sustaining psalm—I mean that blessed air called the Swaggering Jig, which is ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the better of his politeness and he struck the offending paper from Arnold's hand. Warner stooped hastily and secured it. He and Easton examined the document with angry scrutiny. Both had given way with cheerfulness to Ethan Allen's superiority in the matter; but this affront was personal to them as well as to their beloved leader. Allen, with his arms akimbo and fire flashing from his eyes faced the suave and cold intruder. "Sir!" he exclaimed, "I do not care to see your commission, ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... advised to cultivate cheerfulness, to go into society, to encourage kind people who tried to make me hear what was going on, to be on my guard against morbid depression, to check myself when the sense of my own horrible isolation drove me away to my room, and, last but by no means ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... Her aunt's astounding indifference to the results of defeat for her beloved South when she learned of her husband's injury left the younger woman utterly bewildered. Nothing in her own nature, as she thought it all over, enabled her to understand it, nor was her aunt's rapid gain in health and cheerfulness during the next few days more easy to explain. At first with effort, but very soon with increase of ability, she gradually became more ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... and parlor that used to seem like a dark-green curtained mausoleum, sacred to the mournin' pieces on the wall, and the hair wreaths of defunct Poolers wuz now the sunshinny hant of Beauty and Cheerfulness. Bay windows bordered with soft-colored glass, and curtained with fleecy white, let the sunshine stream into the pretty, freshly-decorated room, where it seemed to love to stay and shine. A conservatory ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Troops on the triumphant issue of this protracted siege, and thanks them for the cheerfulness and fortitude with which they have encountered its toils, and the valour which has led to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... advanced, sadness more and more paralysed my efforts at gaiety and cheerfulness. The state of our invalid grew always worse; the wind wailed in the ravines, the rain beat against our windows, the voice of the thunder penetrated through our thick walls and mingled its mournful sounds ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Ramona recovered cheerfulness. Baba was in such gay heart, she could not be wholly sad. The horse seemed fairly rollicking with satisfaction at being once more on the move. Capitan, too, was gay. He had found the canon dull, spite of its refreshing ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... swear to make all the sacrifices which this word imposes, sir," said Morrel, "not only with resignation, but with cheerfulness." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as if everybody was to have a sort of sober cheerfulness, and must yield to indolence under this charming atmosphere. I went into the courtyard by the sea-shore (where a few lazy ships were lying, with no one on board), and found it was the prison of the place. The door was as wide open as Westminster Hall. Some prisoners, one or two soldiers and ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it like this dead President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with counsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes faltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He fed hungry souls all over the country with sympathy and consolation. He spread before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and patriotism, on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solid truths. He taught ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... 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 ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... whatever else would not go into the last inch of trunk. Pretty dresses, jaunty hats, tidy gloves and boots they wore; but better than these were their bright, honest faces, and the hearty words they spoke, Cheerfulness seemed to gush out in the wildest hilarity. How they talked with their tongues, and their eyes, and their hands! Enthusiasm sent their words racing after each other into sentences which had no ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... small private parlor, where each seemed to strive to assume a cheerfulness which no ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was beginning to get used to his condition, and to find out amusements in new ways. Thus mercifully does a kind Providence temper people's minds to the afflictions He sends. They are often more dreadful to think of than to bear; for God can give patience and cheerfulness and comfort to those that do ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... manifested when General Washington entered, did not surpass the cheerfulness which overspread his own countenance, nor the heartfelt pleasure with which he saw another invested with the powers that had so long ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Mordaunt claiming the attention of the reading public, but it is doubtful whether any of her other books have surpassed "Rosemary" for sheer charm and attractiveness. It is a blue sky book, full of cheerfulness and good nature. It tells of an Englishwoman who spends a quiet year in Australia, and who describes the procession of the seasons and how they appeal to her. The chapters are all interesting, and cannot be exhausted by a single reading. This is a book that is always fresh. Open it anywhere and it ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... afternoon it was Ernestine herself who was forced to fight hard for cheerfulness. She did not want to go away. She was curiously depressed about it, and resentful. More than once she was on the point of telephoning to Dr. Parkman that ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... walked through Cedarville on that day, the whole aspect of the place seemed changed. I questioned with myself, often, whether this were really so, or only the effect of imagination. The change was from cheerfulness and thrift, to gloom and neglect. There was, to me, a brooding silence in the air; a pause in the life-movement; a folding of the hands, so to speak, because hope had failed from the heart. The residence of Mr. Harrison, who, some two years before, had ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... features is repulsive to the average Chinaman, certainly his is very much so to us. One looked in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. The better classes wear a supercilious expression of features that makes ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... of the oppression by which he deemed himself unjustly doomed to a life of penury and toil. The light-hearted child was often weary of these complainings, and turned for relief to the placidity and cheerfulness of her mother's mind. Here she found repose—a soothing, calm, and holy submission. Still the gloom of her father's spirit cast a pensive shade over her own feelings, and infused a tone of melancholy and an air of unnatural reflection into her character. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... thousand glorious colours, a bright and quick sense of joy, A VISIBLE MUSIC. But it is only since my childhood closed that I have mourned, as I now unceasingly mourn, for the light of day. My boyhood passed in a quiet cheerfulness; the least trifle then could please and occupy the vacancies of my mind; but it was as I took delight in being read to, as I listened to the vivid descriptions of Poetry, as I glowed at the recital of great deeds, as I was made acquainted by books with the energy, the action, the heat, the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soldier will advance, with spirit and cheerfulness, to any service that falls in his way. But it is the practice of the bad soldier to be complaining and grumbling on all occasions; saucy in time of ease, and peevish in return for kindness; faint-hearted under hardships, and feeble ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... and I will tell them together," I said with forced cheerfulness. "But you must be quiet ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... medicine to his soul to keep him humble and watchful, and begging, at the same time, for the conversion and happiness of his persecutors. After this he would throw the papers into the fire, and come out to his family all smiles and cheerfulness, as though something specially pleasant and gratifying had just been happening to him—as indeed it had; for having cast his care on his Saviour, he had been getting a full measure of "the peace of God, which passeth understanding, to keep ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... It gives life itself, spirits, wit, &c. For which cause the ancients called Bacchus, Liber pater a liberando, and [4303]sacrificed to Bacchus and Pallas still upon an altar. [4304]"Wine measurably drunk, and in time, brings gladness and cheerfulness of mind, it cheereth God and men," Judges ix. 13. laetitiae Bacchus dator, it makes an old wife dance, and such as are in misery to forget ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the ocean, think sometimes of your old friend, to whom a letter from you will be always welcome. Remember me to your family, though I am not known to them. May the present year bring you health, cheerfulness, and the full enjoyment of your great ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... men under his command, so that in battle those human attributes which are favorable to success, may be strengthened and those which are favorable to defeat may be weakened. Of the former, courage, determination, initiative, respect, cheerfulness, comradeship, emulation and esprit de corps, are the principal ones; of the latter, fear, surprise, disrespect, and dejection, are the leading ones. By means of good, sound discipline, we can create, improve and foster the qualities mentioned that are ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... of her beloved Froeken, and cover it with kisses. And while Thelma laughed with pleasure to see her, and stroked her hair. Sir Philip described their long drive through the snow, and so warmly praised Britta's patience, endurance, and constant cheerfulness, that his voice trembled with its own earnestness, while Britta grew rosily red in her deep shyness and embarrassment, vehemently protesting that she had done nothing,—nothing at all to deserve so much commendation. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... reluctance. I next ordered Andrew to procure the attendance of a couple of stout fellows upon whom he could rely, the population around being Papists, and Sir Rashleigh, who was capable of any desperate enterprise, being in the neighbourhood. Andrew Fairservice undertook this task with great cheerfulness, and promised to bring me up from Trinlay-Knowe, "twa true-blue Presbyterians like himself, that would face and out-face baith the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender—and blythe will I be o' their company mysell, for the very last night ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... have behaved with gross dishonesty towards the composer; and yet he forgave them, and continued their benefactor. The society of Schickaneder, a man of grotesque humour, often in difficulties, but of inexhaustible cheerfulness and good-fellowship, had attractions for Mozart, and led him into some excesses that contributed to the disorder of his health, as he was obliged to retrieve at night the hours lost in the day. A long-continued irregularity of income, also, disposed him to make the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the companionway after lunch, Frederick saw Arthur Stoss in the unfrequented smoking-room eating his meal in perfect equanimity and cheerfulness undisturbed by the weather. Frederick went in for a chat with the original, witty monstrosity. He was cutting his fish with a knife and fork held between the great toe and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the table and touched his hand again. Her lips were trembling; her whole face, which only a few moments before was bright with cheerfulness, was now drawn, pinched with the suffering ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... rendered so much the more attractive by their tears and their smiles, neither of which were spared. I could see that both had been dreadfully agitated; but joy restored their colour, and brought back the smiles to their sweet faces. The situation of the place was such, perhaps, as to render cheerfulness neither very lasting nor very lively; but the tenderest female can find her heart suddenly so lightened from its burthen of apprehensions, as to be able to seem momentarily happy, even when environed by the horrors of war. Such, in a measure, was the character ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... no use: the pleasant April weather out of doors, and perhaps the natural spring in the body, disposed her nature to cheerfulness, and insensibly she returned to her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the Gigolette—good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable—all imbued with the intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... and cheerfulness had got the upper hand when the little family party gathered again; at least that spirit had rule of all that either eyes or ears could take note of. They gathered in the 'keeping-room,' as it was called; the room used as a common sitting room by the family, though it served also the purpose ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... teller of a story.... In conversation he was easy and pleasant, and the reverse of disputatious. Even in the worst of his political difficulties—and he had some pretty hard trials in this way—he had the power of throwing off public cares for the time, and in his house retained his cheerfulness and good-humour.... In matters of business he was an easy master to serve, and the duties of his private secretary were light as compared to others in the same position. He never made work and never was fussy, and even at the busiest times never seemed ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... his enemies Sir Walter had had recourse to artifices unworthy the great hero that he was, now that all hope was lost he conducted himself with a dignity and cheerfulness beyond equal. So calm and self-possessed and masterly was his defence from the charge of piracy preferred at the request of Spain, and so shrewd in its inflaming appeal to public opinion, that his judges were constrained to abandon that line of prosecution, and could discover no ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... John's cheerfulness astonished her—it was so uniform, it could not be assumed. Perhaps she did not yet understand him, perhaps in his heart he was glad that all pretences ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... makes slaves of us all, has decreed that we shall wear black, as a mark of respect to those we have lost, and as a shroud for ourselves, protesting against the gentle ministration of light and cheerfulness with which our Lord ever strives to reach us. This is one side of the question; but, again, one word as to its good offices. A mourning dress does protect a woman while in deepest grief against the untimely gayety of a passing stranger. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... his total lack of interest in what she wanted to interest in him, irritated, too, because her curiosity remained unsatisfied. But that abrupt look and action of absolutely unconscious animalism, chasing the leeriness of the contented man's conceit, turned her to softness if not to cheerfulness. She adored Fritz like that. His open-mouthed, gaping yawn moved something in her to tenderness. She would have liked to kiss him while he was yawning and to pass her hands over his short hair, which was like a mat and grew as strongly as the hair which he shaved ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... rapidly along, clinging to the arm of the tall fellow who strode silently beside her. A cheerfulness had come over Sam. He felt he had accomplished something—something he had set out to accomplish. He again thought of his mother and drifting into the notion that he was on his way home from work at Freedom ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... able to prove who did it—let's see," he spoke with a light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... of the promised story was a German of that particular type in which the sombre irony of Goethe's Mephistopheles is blended with a homely cheerfulness found in the romances of August Lafontaine of pacific memory; but the predominating element in the compound of artlessness and guile, of shopkeeper's shrewdness, and the studied carelessness of a member of the Jockey Club, was that form of disgust which set a pistol in the hands of a young Werther, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... know 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
... very bright and practical one, notwithstanding those few hard lines, looked pensive for a moment. Then its habitual expression of cheerfulness returned to it, and when she entered the house Frances Kane looked as practical and business-like a woman as could be found anywhere in the whole of the large parish in the north of England where she and ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the characteristic cheerfulness of the negro soldiers was as striking as their bravery. In his little book called The Nth Foot In War, Lieutenant M. B. Stewart ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... friendship—anything you had. He was big, with a wholesome brown face, blond hair, and gray eyes that seemed always to be laughing and twinkling, even when he was hungry. He carried about with him a load of cheerfulness so big that it was constantly spilling over on ...
— Thomas Jefferson Brown • James Oliver Curwood
... between the handsomest and the cleverest of the unmarried officers of the garrison of Chicago," replied Maria Heywood with an effort at cheerfulness; "therefore, Mr. Ronayne, I advise you not to be too much elated by Mrs. Headley's compliment. After that caution, I think you ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event. That is why until we know what others think they know, we cannot truly understand their acts. I have seen a young girl, brought up in a Pennsylvania mining town, plunged suddenly from entire cheerfulness into a paroxysm of grief when a gust of wind cracked the kitchen window-pane. For hours she was inconsolable, and to me incomprehensible. But when she was able to talk, it transpired that if a window-pane broke it meant ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... did not do quite such ample justice to it as the hungry rustics at the lower board had done to the good things provided for them, the cook could not reasonably complain. No allusion whatever being made to the recent strange occurrence, the cheerfulness of the company was uninterrupted; but the noise in the lower part of the hall had in a great measure subsided, partly out of respect to the host, and partly in consequence of the alarm occasioned by the supposed supernatural ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the condition of the poor was followed by severe enactments against vagrancy; and the Protestant legislature, after creating a proletariate, treated it as a crime. The conversion of Sunday into a Jewish Sabbath cut off the holiday amusements and soured the cheerfulness of the population. Music, singing, and dancing, the favourite relaxation of a contented people, disappeared, and, especially after the war in the Low Countries, drunkenness began to prevail among ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... sudden cheerfulness, "Mrs. Marshall'll be glad I'm not coming, and some day, maybe you'll take me when ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... life. For to have long life in the sense of the Scriptures is not only to become old, but to have everything which belongs to long life, such as health, wife, and children, livelihood, peace, good government, etc., without which this life can neither be enjoyed in cheerfulness nor long endure. If, therefore, you will not obey father and mother and submit to their discipline, then obey the hangman; if you will not obey him, then submit to the skeleton-man, i.e., death [death the all-subduer, the teacher of wicked children]. For on this God insists ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... it be Wither, there is no poet of the time who practised his art with such entire cheerfulness: though Wither's satisfaction had a deeper note, as when ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dead would have been a relief: to think he had abandoned me, that he had been false, was insupportable. It was the most probable solution of the mystery, but I have never believed it, and I love him as deeply to-day as ever. I have schooled myself to cheerfulness and gayety, but having known him spoiled me for loving again. Here is his portrait," drawing a case from a drawer: "I wish you to see how handsome and good and noble a man may look to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... The place itself is weird and terrible—low ceiled, with the stone hearth built far out into the room, and the melodramatic implements of Venetian cookery dangling tragically from the wall. Here is no every-day cheerfulness of cooking-range, but grotesque andirons wading into the bristling embers, and a long crane with villanous pots gibbeted upon it. When Giovanna's mother, then (of the Italian hags, haggard), rises to do us reverence from ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... humiliation of the other honest fellow, so brimming with anecdote and cheerfulness, no longer; and I came to his rescue with my cigarette case. For I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... the prince to him; I firmly hope he will soon be completely cured; moreover, this scheme is externally beneficial, for from inhaling the air of various places, and from the diet and drink of different countries [through which we shall pass], the prince's mind will be restored to cheerfulness.' The merchant's advice seemed very proper to the king, and being pleased, he said, 'Very well; perhaps the holy man's treatment may prove efficacious, and this melancholy may be removed from my son's mind.' The king appointed a confidential nobleman, who had seen the world, ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... of gloom, but a heart of joy. And thereunto enjoin a supreme love of God, and a close walk with him in a pure and benevolent life. From this, the genuine spring of all the sweetest charities and joys of life, Marion derived that cheerfulness which appears never to have failed him. Even in his last will, where most men fancy they ought to be gloomy as the grave whither they are going, his cheerfulness continued to shine with undiminished ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... did not see my wife ministering to the afflicted family at Newcome Park; but I can fancy her there amongst the women and children, her prudent counsel, her thousand gentle offices, her apt pity and cheerfulness, the love and truth glowing in her face, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at her with an odd attempt to simulate cheerfulness, kissed her fingers and hurried ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... has returned, the nearest relation takes possession of his nose, while the others hang upon his arms, shoulders, and legs, and keep perfect time with the chief mourner (if he may be so called) in the various expressions of his lamentation. This ended, they resume their wonted cheerfulness, and enter into a detail of all that has happened during their separation. As there were nine New Zealanders just returned, and more than three times that number to commemorate the event, the howl ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Arthur continued his breakfast in silence. The sun shone in at the windows, the soft coal fire sputtered in the grate, and to all appearance the room was full of cheerfulness. Edith leaned her head upon her hand and reflected sadly. She resolved that her husband should be weaned from the Pagans, if that were within her power. She seemed to herself to relinquish joy in life, and to devote herself ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... was small and rather delicate, with never-failing cheerfulness on his lips, and eyes that seemed always to have behind them the recollection of the pitiful scenes among which he ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... thorough seamanship was required; and even his experiment of getting transferred to a vessel commanded by an old messmate had seemingly failed. Here was a change, however, and a ray, brighter than common, shone athwart the darkness of his future. Even Cuffe was struck with the cheerfulness of his countenance, and the alacrity of the master's-mate's movements, and he reproached himself with having so long been indifferent to the best interests of one who certainly had some claims on his friendship. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in a low tone. "Well, rather than see two ladies lose a sale," he said with forced cheerfulness, "we will make you an offer of three thousand dollars. Money talks ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... to be always bright - with your sort of brightness; there was not much brilliance to it; but you had a kind of steady cheerfulness of your own, from a child. What has become ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in these human rapids had driven Richling and the Doctor wide apart. But at last, one day, Richling entered the office with a cheerfulness of countenance something overdone, and indicative to the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... statue nor picture are extant, he never allowing them in his life, and utterly forbidding them to be made after his death. He is said to have been a little man, of a contemptible presence; but the goodness of his humor, and his constant cheerfulness and playfulness of temper, always free from anything of moroseness or haughtiness, made him more attractive, even to his old age, than the most beautiful and youthful men of the nation. Theophrastus writes, that the Ephors laid a fine ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... encouragement to any industrious man to see this young fellow rise, carefully dress himself, eat his breakfast deliberately, smoke his cigar tranquilly, and then repair to his room, to what he called his work, with a grave and occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal of humility ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unusual situation," said Colonel Winchester, with an effort at cheerfulness. "Here we are, ready to attack, and the Southerners are ready to defend, but a storm holds us both fast in our tracks. Our duty to protect our cartridges is even greater than our duty to attack ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gentle and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but that was in her manners, scarcely ever in her features; and the exquisite fairness of her complexion, enriched by the very sweetest and most delicate bloom that ever I have beheld, should rather have allied it to a tone of cheerfulness. Looking at this noble creature, as I first looked at her, when yet upon the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... hardy rather than a rugged hue. If Robin Oig did not laugh, or even smile frequently, as indeed is not the practice among his countrymen, his bright eyes usually gleamed from under his bonnet with an expression of cheerfulness ready to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... the iron-clamped doors stand open on rusty hinges, and the court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... 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 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that mark of poverty upon himself which in old Europe strikes the eye sadly at every step. I have seen no ragged poor—have seen not a single house bearing the appearance of desolated poverty. The cheerfulness of a comfortable condition, the result of industry, spreads over the land. One sees at a glance that the people work assiduously, not with the depressing thought just to get through the cares of a miserable life from day to day by hard toil, but ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... He constantly taught that it is a duty not to allow the mind to prey on itself. 'Gaiety is a duty when health requires it' (Croker's Boswell, p. 529). 'Encourage yourself in bustle, and variety, and cheerfulness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale ten weeks after the death of her only surviving son (Piozzi Letters, i. 341). 'Even to think in the most reasonable manner,' he said at another time, 'is for the present not useful as not to think.' Ib ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... cannot be had, cannot be reached—that is just what the boy wants. As we could not yet actually realise the desolateness and barrenness of winter there, but only remember the delights and beauties of summer and autumn, we lost cheerfulness over the boxes and trunks, and sighed because of the brick walls, narrow streets, and toilsome school-work that were ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... men threw off like a mask the aspect of cheerfulness they had worn in the presence of the Senora. Thomas Worth ate heartily, for he had been without food since morning; but Navarro did not attempt to join his meal. He sat patiently waiting his sombre eyes fixed upon the mental visions which circled in the enchanted ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... poured in at one angle of the wide bay window. The three girls, in their very simple black dresses, with no crape, came forward in a little group to meet her. In their hearts they were slightly excited and upset, but rather than give way they put on an air of extra cheerfulness. Miss Martineau, fond as she was of them, felt absolutely scandalized—to keep her out of the house for a whole month, and then to admit her in this fashion—such a lot of sunlight—such a heap of flowers, no crape on the ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... any of those, especially the young, who were attracted by my Father's preaching, and for several years was a great joy and comfort to us all. Even when her illness so increased that she could no longer rise from her bed, she was a centre of usefulness and cheerfulness from that retreat, where she 'received', in a kind of rustic state, under a patchwork coverlid that was like ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... that all birds are joyous, and that joy can never have entered that house since it was first built; and yet, perhaps, when that old man married, and took home his bride, and children's voices and feet were heard about the house, even that desolate crowded grave-yard and biting blast could not quench cheerfulness and hope. Now there is something touching in the sight of that little creature entombed in such a place, and moving about herself like a spirit, especially when you think that the slight still frame encloses a force of strong fiery life, which ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was awakened at once. His ordinary school tasks and home duties no longer looked commonplace, and were no longer distasteful to him. They were but incidents in a general plan of usefulness, and he performed them with an air of cheerfulness that pleased his teacher and delighted his parents. He volunteered to help his father in the fields, and while but a boy in years, he yet performed the work of a man. In fact, he had discovered that every duty of life has its heroic ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... boasted, were laid on the little widow's board to feed her distinguished guest and the other gentlemen who accompanied him. The kind mistress of Castlewood looked so gay and handsome and spoke with such cheerfulness and courage to all her company that the few ladies who were present could not but congratulate Madame Esmond upon the elegance of the feast and upon her manner of presiding at it. But they were scarcely in the drawing-room, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... minister's wife suddenly broke down and had a good cry; while Philip comforted her, first by saying two or three funny things, and secondly by asserting, with a positive cheerfulness which was peculiar to him when he was hard pressed, that, even if the church withdrew all support, he (Philip) could probably get a job somewhere on a railroad, or in a hotel, where there was always a demand for porters who could walk ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... ponies to their pace and replied only by shouting, "Got to catch the train!" In such wise he stayed them in their tracks, reluctant but helpless. At last, pointing to a small, wavering speck far out upon the level sod, he called with forceful cheerfulness: "There's the tank. We'll overhaul it in an hour." Then he added: "I've been thinking. What shall I do about the cabin? Shall I pack the furniture and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... and interested by these two fine old fellows, their pitiable plight, their uncomplaining cheerfulness under such misfortunes, and their ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... to be right that she should be relieved of the burdens of the office which were growing heavier each year as the demands upon the association became more numerous, and should be free to devote her time to certain lines of work which could be done only by herself. They tried to imitate her own cheerfulness and philosophy in this matter, but found it more difficult than it ever before had been to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... changed into a diminutive coat. His father had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad's place in some office. A long-worn suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor woman! We could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have enough. Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth mingled sometimes with the thought, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... girl is taken to church perhaps but once a year, where nothing is seen among the women but talking and trifling; of course she attaches no solemnity to the worship of God. No sweet domestic circle of father, brother, mother and sister, all capable of promoting mutual cheerfulness and improvement, greets her in her own house. I do not mean to imply that there exists no family affection among them, for this tie is often very strong; but it has no foundation in respect, and is not employed to promote elevation of character. The men ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... of his life resolved at once upon a course of action. He would not show despair, he would not sulk, he would so bear himself and with such cheerfulness and easy good nature that the watch upon him might be relaxed somewhat, and the conditions of his captivity might become less hard. It was perhaps easier for him than for another, with his highly optimistic nature and his disposition to be friendly. He kissed his hand ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from confinement. He had no apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: he was not in pressing want of money: his power was greater than it had ever been: the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down; but the cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A trifle now sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said Cavendale, with affected cheerfulness. "Let's have these lights up. The chief was abed, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... breakfasted—yes—off of corfy, and paid for it, and buttered 'arf slices and no stintin', for twopence. Sally had a fellow-feeling for this boy's optimism. But he had something on his mind, for when Sally asked him if Major Roper had got home safe last night, his cheerfulness clouded over, and he said first, "Couldn't say, missis;" and then, "He's been got home, you may place your dependence on that;" adding, inexplicably to Sally, "He won't care about this weather; it won't be no odds!" She couldn't ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... or her previous change of manner to a lighter cheerfulness, almost a briskness, seemed to rouse Androvsky to a greater confidence, even to anticipation of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... he could not restrain the growing feeling of apprehension caused by his mother's looks and strange reticence. They were so unlike her usual cheerfulness when he came home from school or the shop, and he could see that she had grown yet paler than when he left her at the breakfast ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Those who know them best—the superintendents and teachers—testify to the happiness of their daily lives and their light-hearted enjoyment of all their blessings; but to the casual observer there seems to be a general absence among the freedmen of that cheerfulness and mirth which he naturally expects to find in their homes. A simple explanation of this fact may be found in the sense of insecurity which the uncertain issue of the civil war that rages about them creates in their minds. They have seen one after another of those islands ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... character; an accompaniment is something that unites with the principal matter, tho not necessary to it; as, the piano accompaniment to a song; a concomitant goes with a thing in natural connection, but in a subordinate capacity, or perhaps in contrast; as, cheerfulness is a concomitant of virtue. A circumstance is not strictly, nor usually, an occasion, condition, effect, or result. (See these words under CAUSE.) Nor is the circumstance properly an incident. (See under ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... containing otherwise many just and striking views, we find, in the portrait drawn of him, such features as the following:—"Lord Byron had a stern, direct, severe mind: a sarcastic, disdainful, gloomy temper. He had no sympathy with a flippant cheerfulness: upon the surface was sourness, discontent, displeasure, ill-will. Of this sort of double aspect which he presented, the aspect in which he was viewed by the world and by his friends, he was himself fully aware; and it not only amused ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... 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, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... 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 death ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 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
... those regular practitioners who did not make sufficient allowance for the wonderful influence of imagination in certain cases. The Countess, who at this time was not more than five-and-twenty, and all radiant with grace, beauty, and cheerfulness, spoke openly of her eldest son as a fine young man of eight-and-twenty, who had been for some years a captain in the Dutch service. The trick succeeded to admiration. All the ugly old women in Strasbourg, and for miles around, thronged the saloon of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... went back to her work in the lighthouse, but Grace remained on the beach until the coble that bore her friend away had passed completely out of sight. She might be forgiven if, for that day, her usual cheerfulness forsook her, and she felt as if she could not settle down to the monotony ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Christianity in name only. The true Christian can no more part from Christ in mirth than in sorrow. And, after all, what is the essence of Christianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely common sense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... atriensis, sent a nomenclator to announce the guests; and Petronius, who, imagining that eternal sadness reigned in this severe house, had never been in it, looked around with astonishment, and as it were with a feeling of disappointment, for the atrium produced rather an impression of cheerfulness. A sheaf of bright light falling from above through a large opening broke into a thousand sparks on a fountain in a quadrangular little basin, called the impluvium, which was in the middle to receive rain falling through the opening during bad ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... with my boy, however; he had his troubles, and in spite of his cheerfulness he knew what heartache was. Walking in the quaint garden of the Luxembourg one day, he confided to me the little romance of his life. A very touching little romance as he told it, with eloquent eyes and voice and frequent pauses for breath. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... life; and there being no convenient place to be had for the entertainment of so great a confluence of people as followed him upon the account of his teaching, he consulted with them for the building of a meeting- house, to which they made their voluntary contributions with all cheerfulness and alacrity; and the first time he appeared there to edify, the place was so thronged, that many was constrained to stay without, though the house was very spacious, every one striving to partake of his instructions, that were of his persuasion, and show ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... the following testimonial: "Having, during the prevalence of the late malignant disorder, had almost daily opportunities of seeing the conduct of Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and the people employed by them to bury the dead, I with cheerfulness give this testimony of my approbation of their proceedings, as far as the same came under my notice. Their diligence, attention, and decency of deportment, afforded me, at the time, much satisfaction." After the lapse of years it is with something of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... well tell you exactly about my health. I am not at all ill; have quite recovered; only I am what MM. LES MEDECINS call below par; which, in plain English, is that I am weak. With tonics, decent weather, and a little cheerfulness, that will go away in its turn, and I ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this complaint, than the alternations of ease and distress. At one time the patient suffers the severest agonies, assumes the most ghastly appearance, and is apparently on the verge of death; in a day or a week after, his pain leaves him, his appetite and cheerfulness return, a degree of vigour is restored, and his friends forget that he has been ill. The paroxysms occasionally recur, and become more frequent, as the disease progresses. Afterwards the intermissions are shorter, and a close succession of paroxysms ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... "Now the collection is itself again; the queen has come home," she broke down and cried. She did much of that in the weeks that followed. You would have supposed her another person than plucky Miriam Baxter. But the situation hardly made for cheerfulness. Light housekeeping being no longer practicable, they depended on the unwilling ministrations of a slovenly maid. John, who, to do him justice, had never boasted much surplus vitality, felt vaguely that something was now due from him that he could not supply. To escape an inadequacy that was ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... a chill conviction that she was both heartless and empty fell on him. He turned away without another word. She called to him with a sudden airy cheerfulness that made him start. "Stay, monsieur, I forgot—I have a favor to ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... knowing his temper, she not only gave the maiden leave, but advised her to retire into a convent until the storm was over. This she did as secretly as she could, yet not so stealthily but that the Duke was advised of it. Thereupon, with pretended cheerfulness of countenance, he asked his wife where the maiden was, and she, believing him to be well aware of the truth, confessed it to him. He feigned to be vexed thereat, saying that the girl had no need to behave in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... supine life which he had been leading; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the King's; the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his greater cheerfulness and altered demeanor. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... gone on with us to Delhi; but having the command of his regiment, and being a zealous officer, he did not like to leave it so long during the exercising season. We felt much the loss of his society. He is a man of great observation and practical good sense; has an infinite fund of good humour, and a cheerfulness of temperament that never seems to flag—a more agreeable companion I have never met. The villages in these parts are literally crowded with peafowl. I counted no less than forty-six feeding close by among the houses of one hamlet on the road, all ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... try your plan, Fenton," he said in a tone which lacked not cheerfulness. "Father, under your eye we shall ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... Loring, with as much cheerfulness as she could have wished, and burying deeply for the last time the ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... which tyranny cannot deprive them. Notwithstanding the wretchedness in which they are left by the government, they have still to satisfy the greediness of their priests, but these contributions they pay with cheerfulness. Many of the convents indeed are too rich to require their assistance, but those which are poor, together with all the parish priests and church officers, live upon the people. Such is the condition of this Christian commonwealth, which instead of deserving the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... promised that they would not fail to represent my conduct to the authorities, and gave me hopes of a speedy release. I had the same idea, and took possession of the apartments prepared for me (which were airy and well ventilated) with almost cheerfulness. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... gales that enter our open windows with the morning sun. Its branches, always turning upward and closely gathered together, afford a harbor to the singing-birds that make them a favorite resort, and its long, tapering spire that points to heaven gives an air of cheerfulness and religious tranquillity ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... died a poor man: ill luck pursuing him to the end of his days, when he was carried off by yellow fever at Mobile in 1842, just as his unprosperous skies were brightening a little. His son bears affectionate witness to the upright character of the man and to his indomitable cheerfulness in the most adverse circumstances. He spared no pains in bringing up his children in good ways, and he was earnestly seconded by his wife, a heroic figure in her humble sphere, whose tact and courage not seldom saved the family bark when it was drifting ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... which she had, in his presence, sung his own songs. Of retiring and unobtrusive habits, she mixed sparingly in general society; but among her intimate friends, she was held in estimation for the extent of her information and the unclouded cheerfulness of her disposition. She has left some MSS. of poems and songs, from which we have been privileged to make selections for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sweetening life, as well as of taking the sting from death and winning heaven; and, lest we should be guilty of any unfairness to him, we will quote the two passages which convey this sentiment the most explicitly. In the one he gives "Lorenzo" this excellent recipe for obtaining cheerfulness: ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
