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More "Contentment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on his private inspiration. Asking no man's permission, bowing the knee to no tribal idol, renouncing the conventional channels of recognition, he showed us how a life devoted to purely intellectual ends could be beautifully wholesome outwardly, and overflow with inner contentment. Fortunately this type of man is recurrent, and from generation to generation, literary history preserves examples. But it is infrequent enough for few of us to have known more than one example—I count myself happy in knowing two and a half! The memory of Davidson will always ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... of contentment as she watched him go to the tube and heard him tell the servant he was not ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... him to move, he is so foot-sore and weary, but the voices are urging him on and at last the building is in sight. He drags himself wearily to the door. It is night and the door is open—the place is deserted, but he throws himself down on the floor with a sigh of contentment. The next morning they found him with his hands clasped and face upturned to the skies. The blue eyes were opened wide, the lips parted in a happy smile, and poor little lonely Ned ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... departure of the Legate, Petrarch retired to his rus in urbe. In a letter dated thence to his friend the Prior of the Holy Apostles, we find him acknowledging feelings that were far distant from settled contentment. "You have heard," he says, "how much my peace has been disturbed, and my leisure broken in upon, by an importunate crowd and by unforeseen occupations. The Legate has left Milan. He was received at Florence with unbounded applause: as for poor me, I am again in my retreat. I have been ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Tonio responded with commendable gruffness, considering his contentment at heart, as he hastily retreated to his gondola under the Rialto for needed shelter from the banter which followed him, until some other unwary victim became the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... determination. Beneath the Lieutenant's flannel shirt the long, slim muscles showed free and full, and the firm set of jaw and lip denoted a mind at rest and confident of itself. Gale found himself for a moment jealously regarding the youth and his enviable state of contentment ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... wished to make war on all conventional forms, religious and political parties, he remarked, "Unless our friend changes his ideas he will not be the happy man at forty that he is now;" and the saying came true. If we are to judge the value of Alcott's thought by the constant cheerfulness and contentment of his daily life, his ideas must have been of an excellent quality. His flowing white hair, and the calmness and purity of his aspect, gave him quite an apostolic look; and once while visiting at the house ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... that could mean little to her because she lacked the background of contrast and comparison. He was seeing that beauty and that personality in the social life of official Washington; seeing the triumph that would have been hers—and wondering what it would have meant to her in the balance of contentment or unhappiness. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... near Cape Flattery, where his chief residence lay, and remained more than three months in his service, I could never obtain speech with Margit. But I have reason to believe she accepted her new life with absolute contentment. No doubt, though, she found the sight of me an irksome reminder: and one day early in April Yootramaki took me aside and promised me my liberty if I would travel with him as far as the Strait, where an American brig had lately arrived. Of course I accepted his offer with gratitude; ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... add to the enjoyment of a man of moderate desires, seeking to run no political race, was calculated to insure my happiness. And I was happy. No part of my life had so completely all the elements of entire contentment, as my residence at the wild and picturesque homestead of Elmwood. I removed my family to this spot in October, having now a little daughter to enlarge my family circle, and take away, in a measure, the solitariness effected by the loss of my son, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... lives. Under her wise management all jealousy was avoided between the two sets of children; urged on by her stirring example, Thomas Lincoln supplied the yet unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows, and life became more comfortable for all its inmates, contentment if not happiness reigning in the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... understand. I had not thought it mattered very greatly to men, so that they found their happiness—so that they found contentment in their sweethearts' yielding.... Then my surrender would mean nothing to you unless I ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... stared, much as one stares in the Zoo at a cageful of newly-arrived animals that have cost a great deal of money and maybe a life or two. Fine, big men, stalwart and burned brown by the sun; stern-looking, but with that air of large contentment they wear who live much alone and out of doors; massive of jaw and forehead, moulded after a grand pattern. They were lying on the grass, standing in little groups, sauntering up and down in the hot sunshine, playing cricket with ponderous energy, bathing and sporting ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... strength enough to the will to enable it to conquer them, they are not strong enough. If you cannot leave your picture at any moment, cannot turn from it and go on with another while the color is drying, cannot work at any part of it you choose with equal contentment, you have not firm enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... least) an admirable wish. My complaint against these grown-up people is, that they themselves, whom time has robbed of their natural grace as surely as it robs the other animals, are content to be perfectly natural. This contentment I deplore, and am ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... kept her going was to see the evidences of prosperity and contentment which the women on the payroll began to show—their new clothes and shoes—the hopeful confidence of their smiles—the frequency with which the furniture dealers' wagons were seen in the streets around the factory, the sounds of pianos and phonographs in the evening and, better than all, the fact ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... upon his own bowels, and is never at rest. Thus much I dare boldly say; he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy, let them have all things in abundance and felicity that heart can wish and desire, all contentment, so long as he or she or they are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in body and mind, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else earned ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... (commonly called Gros Ventre of the Prairie) woman, who had been married two years to a Frenchman, during which time they had neither of them attempted to learn each other's language; but the husband having taken kindly to the language of signs, they conversed together by that means with great contentment. It is also often resorted to in mere laziness, one gesture saving many words. The gracefulness, ingenuity, and apparent spontaneity of the greater part of the signs can never be realized until actually witnessed, and their beauty is much heightened by the free ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... them, and kept from the shared memories; you must not communicate my knowledge words in any way. Consolidate your power, force peace upon them and lead them into acceptance. The knowledge questing can be made to die within them. Remember that there will be no purpose ... in that they must find contentment. ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... Anacreontic Anacreontic A Fairy Tale, in the Ancient English Style To Mr Pope Health: an Eclogue The Flies: an Eclogue An Elegy to an Old Beauty The Book-Worm An Allegory on Man An Imitation of some French Verses A Night-Piece on Death A Hymn to Contentment The Hermit ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... a certain qualified inevitability about this greater social state because we believe any social state not affording a general contentment, a general freedom, and a general and increasing fullness of life, must sooner or later collapse and disintegrate again, and revert more or less completely to the Normal Social Life, and because we believe the Normal Social Life is ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... whipping their forlorn horses into the sideling trot which is all they are equal to, and after flicking their ears until they are too lazy to continue, they hang their hats and stockingless feet over the carriage lamps and chew sugar-cane, looking the picture of contentment. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... do. Pardon me; I want to see your eye beam again with contentment. The loss of your late companion has left you desolate, more desolate than you have been willing to acknowledge. You cannot ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... But contentment is far off from a man who hears the great edifice of love and happiness which he has reared, crashing ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... stretching his mighty arms and superb chest, fished out a cigarette, set fire to it, unhooked the cartridge-belt and holster from the back of his chair, buckled it on, rose, pulled on his leather-peaked cap, and drew a deep breath of contentment. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... stitches. Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as filled with careless contentment. ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... broadly, with immense satisfaction and contentment—and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving—and that was ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... when at last her friends had gone away, "have built up a wall of contentment around you a person couldn't break ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... the Philippians for their liberality, but wishes them to understand that he does not speak in respect to personal want; for every where and in all things he has been taught the lesson of contentment with present circumstances. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... and I suppose I am, else they wouldn't want to say so. Perhaps I overvalue the physical manifestations of love, but if a child will take my hand, or climb upon my knee, or kiss me unawares, then to certainty of its affection is added a greater contentment and a deeper faith. The peace of a child that sleeps upon one's shoulder, is given also to oneself. The appurtenances of love mean much to me; nearness, warmth, caresses. But I cannot make the advances; ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away, in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and every thing he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... political frame is incurably sore. Let that sore be healed by justice, large, generous, and complete; let Ireland be truly and really represented, in whatever manner her representation may be carried out, and the sudden rise of the little western isle in wealth, contentment, true prosperity, and happiness, will redound to the general good of the whole. As it now stands, its still miserable condition is as great and constant a danger to Great Britain as it is a reproach and a shame upon ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... war ended, on Henry VII.'s accession, ballads took the place of war-songs in the heart affections of the people, and they sang songs of peace and contentment. Bard, scald, minstrel, gleeman, with their heroic rhymes and long metrical romances, gave way in the evolution of song and harmony to the ballad-monger with his licence. However, in turn they became an intolerable nuisance, and a wag wrote ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... this heart is the most marvellous of what is in man, since it is that which ordereth his whole affair: If covetise stir in it, desire destroyeth him, and if affliction master it, anguish slayeth him; if anger rage in it, danger is hard upon him; if it be blest with contentment, he is safe from discontent; if fear surprise it, he is full of mourning; and if calamity overtake it, affliction betideth him. If a man gain the use of wealth, peradventure he is diverted thereby from the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... looking-on with something almost supercilious in his face at this, to him, puny style of hunting, and contentment with such small game as birds, springbok, and the like, announced that the next day they would be entering upon what he ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... tension. She was inspired by a sense of renunciation—of self-sacrifice. It seemed to her that some great work to do, something which should occupy every moment, and all her powers and thoughts, was her only hope of contentment. What it might be, what it ought to be, she had not conceived. Was it not offered now? Horrible, repulsive, degrading—yes, but was it not so much the worthier? Here stood the man she had loved in all ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... bedrooms and bath, a sitting room of some kind is most practical. It need not be large or expensively furnished. A few comfortable chairs, a table or two, possibly a desk and a good reading lamp will suffice. A small radio also adds to the general contentment. In summer if the service wing boasts a screened porch so much the better. If not, some shady nook or arbor nearby where they may rest or read during their spare time may mark the difference between sullen service, frequent change ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... she was wrong. They were not rough to look at, for though it was plain to see that both toiled hard for a bare living there was a light-hearted contentment about them, and a curious something that seemed akin to refinement. It was not educational polish, but rather a natural courtesy and self-respect, though the words do not adequately express it, which seems born of freedom, and an instinctive realization of the brotherhood of man expressed ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... moved, yet as though vexed, while a tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself—a simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... uneventful and—for her—happy. The markings were, perhaps, inherited from the generations of her weather-beaten, toiling, plain ancestors—with the added creases of her own personal habits. For she lived in her house with the regularity and contentment of an insect in a dead log. And few causes age the body faster than such wilful indolence and monotony of mind as hers—the mind, that very principle of physical youthfulness. Save only that it can also kill the body ere it age it; either by too great rankness breaking down at once the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... may be, it is a careful selection, and it demonstrates that, notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which Ireland suffers, the country has an almost unlimited capacity for fine achievement, and that, with prosperity and contentment, she may be expected to rival the most illustrious of art centres. It is only within living memory that any attempt has been made to direct the known artistic skill of the Irish people to industrial effort. But the remarkable success achieved in the modern designs ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... sing and sport In wantonness of spirit; while below The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam That waked them into life. Even the green trees Partake the deep contentment; as they bend To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy Existence, than the winged plunderer That ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... I, who have been behind the scenes, both of pleasure and business, and have seen all the springs and pullies of those decorations which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not only without regret, but with contentment and satisfaction. But what I do, and ever shall regret, is the time which, while young, I lost in mere idleness, and in doing nothing. This is the common effect of the inconsideracy of youth, against which I beg ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... school which ninety per cent will ever attend, a training which will give it an intelligent adjustment to its environment. With this adjustment, the future work of the child cannot reasonably expect to escape the state of drudgery. When a life's work degenerates into this condition, then contentment with it, or happiness as a result of it, becomes an idle dream. Can the accuracy of this statement be questioned? If so, it would be a great privilege for the writer to receive from some teacher a letter setting forth the particulars in ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... was a paradise to him; and when we walked up planks to deserted mixing and crushing mills, and actually saw where the clay was stirred with long iron prongs, and chalk or lime ground with 'a tind of a mill,' his expression of contentment and triumphant heroism knew no limit to its beauty. Of course on returning I found Mrs. Austin looking out at the door in an anxious manner, and thinking we had been out quite long enough.... I am reading Don Quixote chiefly, and am his fervent admirer, but I am so sorry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slaves of his Old Marster, [HW: Harry] Beattie Goforth, on a farm in Claiborne County, North Carolina. His tall frame is slightly stooped, but he is not subjected to the customary infirmities of the aged, other than poor vision and hearing. Fairly comfortable, he is spending his declining years in contentment, for he is now the first consideration of his daughter, Mrs. Lola Reed, with whom he lives at 608 S. Broadway, Knoxville, Tennessee. His cushioned rocking chair is the honor seat of the household. His apology for not offering it to visitors, is that he is "not so fast on his feet ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... consideration, I demanded my bath in a style of good assurance. There was a bathroom contiguous; in an incredibly short space of time the hot water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a shawl dressing-gown, and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was reclined in an easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of pride and anxiety which I could well understand, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the iron shroud, and took infinite pains to incline the boat over to that side so as to be turned away from the wind and screened from the tide, and I therefore weighted her down by placing the dingey and heavy anchor on the lee gunwale, and then with misplaced contentment proceeded to cook my dinner. At a solemn pause in the repast, the yawl, without other warning than a loud splash, perversely turned over to the wrong side, with deck to sea and wind, and every single thing exactly the contrary of what was proper. I had just time to plunge my hissing spirit-lamp ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... things without putting in, 'if God sees it best for me to have it.' And then I know that, if it is really good for me, I shall get it, and that'll be what I need; and if he sees as I'm better without it, he'll give me contentment and peace, and often something much better than what I asked for, and which I never expected, and that'll be giving me in answer to prayer what ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... Rivermouth, Edward Lynde took up the golden threads of his easy existence. But this life of ideal tranquillity and contentment was not to be permitted him. One morning in the latter part of August he received a letter advising him that his uncle had had an alarming stroke of apoplexy. The letter was followed within the hour by a telegram announcing the death ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... how much more fuel they had than they needed to get home. When they were moving away from station, she dropped in alarmed little jumps, but when they were headed home, she inched along in serene contentment, or if they were coasting, sneaked ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... whispered in his ear that the gentleman was connected by descent with the great Washington, upon which the Duke, changing his foot, said, "Ah! le grand Vash!" His manner was that of a lethargic and not wide-awake man. When strangers would sometimes venture some word of compliment on the prosperity and contentment of the Tuscans, his reply invariably was, "Sono tranquilli"—they are quiet. But in truth much more might have been said; for assuredly Tuscany was a Land of Goshen in the midst of the peninsula. There ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... until I too could enter the field. So aunt mounted upon him, and falling forward lent her divine backside to all my fantasies. Twice we ran a course without changing. Then aunt herself claimed my big prick for the contentment of her randy cunt. We quickly changed positions. I, on my back, received dear aunt's delicious cunt on my stiff-and-hard-as-wood-standing pego. She straddled over me, and sank her luscious orbit down upon me until our two hairs were crushed between us. Here, by rising and falling, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... was not in glory, but in goodness; and that Penn in his American colony, where he had established a people in quiet and contentment, was happier than Alexander the Great after destroying multitudes at the conquest of Thebes. He observed that the history of Alexander is obscure and dubious; for his captains who divided his kingdom, were too busy to record his life and actions, and ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... and contentment, reaching Charles at a time when so many of his subjects were rising in rebellion against his authority, was most pleasing to the unfortunate monarch. "Your acknowledgement," he replied to the Governor and the Assembly, "of our grace, bounty, and favour, towards you, and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... woods. It is as fair a picture as ever an artist longed to produce on canvas, one of those dwelling-places which seem to us suggestive of and consistent with nothing else but exquisite peace, comfort and happiness, and though we have no reason for imagining it to be a depository of perfect contentment, we yet repel any idea that might suggest itself to us of empty cupboards inside those walls, of a scolding wife in those cozy rooms, or of washing days in that picturesque ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... envy not the rich and great: seek elsewhere their gilded saloons, and tinsel trappings of pride; but you will find things pretty comfortable. I regret to say we'll have to do our smoking out of doors; but it is generally warm enough for that. If we are noted for anything, it is for modest contentment, unassuming virtue, and cheerful candor—just as you see them in me. Each face reflects the genuine emotions and guileless innocence of the heart connected therewith; more than that, they reflect one another, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... song of the hermit thrush for devoutness and religious serenity; that of the wood thrush for the musing, melodious thoughts of twilight; the song sparrow's for simple faith and trust, the bobolink's for hilarity and glee, the mourning dove's for hopeless sorrow, the vireo's for all-day and every-day contentment, and the nocturne of the mockingbird for love. Then there are the plaintive singers, the soaring, ecstatic singers, the confident singers, the gushing and voluble singers, and the half-voiced, inarticulate singers. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... all, Amid this tangled web of fate, If what is great may not be small, And what is small may not be great. So wondering I go my way, Yet in my heart contentment sings . . . O may I ever see, I pray, God's grace and love ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... near contentment and sober joy in my work and my beautiful old garden. But deep down in my heart I was waiting, ever waiting, for something to happen—something big, stirring, and tremendous, something romantic and poetical; but it never did. Year after year I wore the groove of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... gleam of contentment in Irma Gluyas' eyes when she followed Fritz Braun, two weeks later, into the train for Breslau. Her secret master had redoubled every tender care, and there was a brooding peace ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... Author of this universe, And all this good to man? for whose well being So amply, and with hands so liberal, Thou hast provided all things: But with me I see not who partakes. In solitude What happiness, who can enjoy alone, Or, all enjoying, what contentment find? Thus I presumptuous; and the Vision bright, As with a smile more brightened, thus replied. What callest thou solitude? Is not the Earth With various living creatures, and the air Replenished, and all these at thy command To come and play ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... would find more happiness and contentment in living henceforth unselfishly, with more thought for others and ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... saw what an auspicious beginning and ending the adventure had had for his master, he heaved a sigh of relief and contentment and climbed down from his tree, approaching the lifeless monster with caution and superstitious awe. But he had taken only one look into his face, when he began to cross himself with so many motions and contortions that Don Quixote thought his squire had ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were fix'd on Beatrice, And with mine eyes my soul, that in her looks Found all contentment. Yet no smile she wore And, "Did I smile," quoth she, "thou wouldst be straight Like Semele when into ashes turn'd: For, mounting these eternal palace-stairs, My beauty, which the loftier it climbs, As thou hast noted, still doth kindle more, So shines, that, were no ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee." That cry of St. Augustine has found its echo in unnumbered souls, and our humanity will never be satisfied while it is offered no more than an impalpable abstraction for the contentment of its craving. ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... capacity for work." This was certainly true of this five days' fight. "His Majesty is well," wrote Berthier on the twenty-fourth, "and endures according to his general habit the exertion of mind and body." Once more his enemy was not annihilated, but this contentment and high spirits seem natural to common minds, which recall that in a week he had evolved order from chaos, and had stricken a powerful, united foe, cutting his line in two, and sending one portion to the right-about in utter confusion. To the end of his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... carries rest and contentment in his own mental life, and is equally himself at the Corona d'Italia and on a western ranch; while the weakling runs back to earlier associations like a colt to its stable. But Homer is also Emersonian at times. What could be ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... love, greatly reciprocated, is in itself capable of rendering a human being supremely happy. Nothing else is. Other things, such as wealth, power, fame, success, great discoveries, may give supreme satisfaction, great contentment, but supreme, buoyant happiness is the gift of a great love only. Such loves are rare, and the mortals that achieve it are the envy of the gods. But a great love, unreciprocated, especially when admixed to it is the feeling ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... John. They were all with me every summer in the new home, together with Lucy Anthony, her sister and brother, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, and other friends. We had special fishing costumes made, and wore them much of the time. My nieces wore knickerbockers, and I found vast contentment in short, heavy skirts over bloomers. We lived out of doors, boating, fishing, and clamming all day long, and, as in my early pioneer days in Michigan, my part of the work was in the open. ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... duskily stealing over the earth, he and his bride will sit down alone in their cottage door, in the red light of the western clouds. Over all the dim landscape there are no sights or sounds; and in themselves there are no feelings but those of contentment and love. In his strong palm her soft hand, on his broad breast reclining her head, their hearts are filled and overflow with sweet thoughts and gentle words of present happiness. Fair prospects also of the future rise up before them. Many years crowned ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... a way," and Glen gave a sigh of contentment, as her hand stole gently into his. "That light will shortly fade, and it will be dark over there. But to us the light leading us on must never fade, for the future must be always bright with the glory of ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... it tends to make people of rank additionally anxious not to parade the fact—and I doubt if there is anything on the whole happier than having advantages which you don't want to parade—it gives a tranquil sort of contentment, and it removes all futile ambitions. To be, by descent, what a desperately industrious lawyer or a successful general feels himself amply rewarded for his toil by becoming, isn't nothing. I'm always rather suspicious of the people who try to pretend that it is nothing at ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... have described in Brussels were reproduced in Antwerp. There was a slightly closer supervision over the comings and goings of the inhabitants, but there was the same unreal atmosphere of contentment and real appearance of plenty. Though a good number of officers were in evidence, the military arm of Germany was not sufficiently displayed to produce any intimidation. Perhaps the most obvious mark, here ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... fascinated by any special route leading towards it, and that it is sufficiently free and disengaged to turn with eager interest to any problem, however novel, with which it may be suddenly confronted. Use and want are not its masters, sluggish contentment cannot numb its activity. The customers' requirements, nay, their whims and fancies, are ever sure to receive close attention and prompt satisfaction. The contrast between this unflagging alertness and the drowsy apathy of the British manufacturer and tradesman is an old story, which has ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... champing upon their cuds; down into swales, where the air was damp and cold, like a wet hand on the face; up to hill-crests, over which the perfumes of autumn were blowing—the spices of goldenrod and ragweed, the elusive scent of hedge orange, the sweet of curing fodder in the shock; past peace and contentment, and the ripe reward ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... years needs is mirth more abundantly than at twenty, but the clouds were too thick around me then to take sane views. Contentment comes when a man can shake the clouds inside out and bask in the reflection of the silver lining that makes the other half of the comedy agreeable. I seemed to be plunged into despair, to be confined in a dungeon, with the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... different company that greeted them. The Scarecrow, cheerful and witty in his old Munchkin suit, Dorothy and Sir Hokus smiling happily, and the three animal members of the party fairly blinking with contentment. ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... pursue what disappoints our expectation, or cloys with the Enjoyment, as all irregular pleasures, however Natural, do; and whilst we daily create to our selves desires still more vain, as thinking thereby to be supply'd with new Delights, we shall ever (instead of finding true Contentment) be subjected to uneasiness, disgust and vexation: The unhappy state more, or less, of all who want that Knowledge which is requisite to direct their Actions suitably to the Ends which as rational Creatures they ought to propose: and as can inable them profitably to employ ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... her the smallest satisfaction: she saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they termed "airs"; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... first edition of which was in 1570, gives a list of about 150 geographical treatises."—Hallam's "Literature of Europe," c. xvii. 53.] and other instruments of this Art for demonstration in the common schooles, to the singular pleasure, and generall contentment of my auditory. In continuance of time, and by reason principally of my insight in this study, I grew familiarly acquainted with the chiefest Captaines at sea, the greatest Merchants, and the best Manners of our nation: by which meanes hauing gotten somewhat ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... and leaned over so that it fell in a flood on his pillow. With a sigh of contentment he buried his face in the rich, sweet masses of it. Gently, like the cooling breeze that had come to him in his hours of darkness, her hand caressed him. He closed his eyes; he drank in the intoxicating perfume of her tresses; and ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... phases of life one is bound to acknowledge that we have lost a few things which would have been well worth preserving. We have gained untold social advantages, but we have in too many cases lost the priceless treasure of individual contentment; we have gained a great many things that have been labelled with the sacred name of freedom, but only too often to bow down to false notions of respectability; we have been emancipated as communities from the brutal display of sport and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... they shot. When they were not shooting they congregated in the billiard-room and devoted their powerful intellects exclusively to snooker-pool, leaving Martin free to talk undisturbed to Elsa. He had been doing this for five days with great contentment when Aubrey Barstowe arrived. Mrs Keith had developed of late leanings towards culture. In her town house a charge of small-shot, fired in any direction on a Thursday afternoon, could not have failed to bring down a poet, a novelist, or a painter. Aubrey Barstowe, author ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... now left him? And so, albeit she very well knew that she might have the falcon for the asking, she was perplexed, and knew not what to say, and gave her son no answer. At length, however, the love she bore the boy carried the day, and she made up her mind, for his contentment, come what might, not to send, but to go herself and fetch him the falcon. So:—"Be of good cheer, my son," she said, "and doubt not thou wilt soon be well; for I promise thee that the very first thing that I shall ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... removed from the mate's eye and suspended from the cross-trees in such a manner that it should not strike against the mast or any of the rigging with the roll of the ship, and then the observer drew forth a pipe, which he filled and proceeded to smoke with the greatest apparent calmness and contentment. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... the counsel list of one who's purpose-whole,) An if thou be not drunken still and gladden not thy soul. Ay, ne'er will I leave to drink of wine, what while the night on me Darkens, till drowsiness bow down my head upon my bowl. In wine, as the glittering sunbeams bright, my heart's contentment is, That banishes hence, with various joys, all kinds of care ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... on, she haunted him like his shadow, gliding from tree to tree, nestling down amongst thick fern and undergrowth, motionless as one who stalks a wild thing, watching him afar off while he rested, gladdening her eyes with his beauty. So did she feed her hungering heart, and sought to find contentment by looking ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... many years in the Creek nation, says, "Joy, contentment, love and friendship without guile or affectation, seem inherent in them, or predominant in their vital principle, for it leaves them but with their breath. They are," says he, "just, honest, liberal and hospitable to strangers considerate and affectionate to their wives, children, and ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... easy. What seems intrinsically right is so merely thro habit. Indolence is another obstacle to improvements. The most arduous task a reformer has to execute is to make people think; to rouse them from that lethargy, which, like the mantle of sleep, covers them in repose and contentment. ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... ye and your children fare well, and your affairs be to your contentment, I give very great thanks to God, having my ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... 'Leaf sounds with water, in your ear,' and put 'amreeta' instead of 'amneta' on the second page; and strike out 'of' in the line which names Aeschylus! There are other blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my 'contentment' for some time. I have begged for [proof] sheets in future; and as none have come for the ensuing month, I suppose I shall have nothing in the next number. They have a lyrical dramatic poem of mine, 'The Two Seraphim,' which, whenever it appears, I shall like to have your opinion of. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... good cheer. The very cattle and sheep as they come to the old stone-fence at the edge of the grove and look across to this beautiful spot seem, indeed, to get the same enjoyment that the people are getting. They seem almost to smile in the realization of their contentment and enjoyment; or perhaps it seems so to the looker-on, because he can scarcely help smiling as he sees the manifested evidence of ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the telephone bell; and it kept on ringing until she got up and spoke to the office through the sender. Never had she so craved sleep; and her mental and physical contentment of three hours and a half before had been succeeded by headache, a general soreness, a horrible attack of the blues. She grew somewhat better, however, as she washed first in hot water, then in cold at the stationary stand which was quite as efficient if not so luxurious as a ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... different from hers was needed. It is not simple-minded maidens that one wants at Court to share the confidence of princes. No doubt natures of that sort—simple, disinterested souls are pleasant and agreeable to them, as therein they find contentment such as they greedily prize; but for these unsullied, romantic natures, disillusion, trickery alone is in store. And if Mademoiselle de la Beaumele-Blanc had listened to me, she might have turned matters to far better account; nor, after yielding ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... difficult to realize that Delhi has been the theatre of such a stirring and eventful history, as nowadays one strolls down the Chandni Chouk and notes the air of peace and contentment that pervades the whole city. It seems quite true, as Edwin Arnold says in his "India Revisited," that Derby is now not more contentedly British than is Delhi. Whatever may be the faults of British rule in India, no impartial critic can say that the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of peace with these demons By feeding and clothing them well: I'd as soon think an angel from Heaven Would reign with contentment in H—l ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... off the ship in this strange valley and promptly drop dead? How could a well-equipped corps of tough spacemen become a field of rotting skeletons in this quiet world of peace and contentment? It was a mystery Peter and Sherri had to solve. If they could ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... them subtle and fine. She was slender, and sometimes she seemed tall, and walked and carried herself lightly and joyfully as one who commonly and habitually feels well, and sometimes she stooped a little and was preoccupied. Her lips came together with an expression between contentment and the faintest shadow of a smile, her manner was one of quiet reserve, and behind this mask she was wildly discontented and eager for ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... not for dallying by the side of beauty. He galloped off alone, vanishing through the thin mists that hung like a fairy's draperies among the trees. The Gillespies rode at the end of the train. Even if he could not see them David felt their nearness, and it added to the contentment that always came upon him from a fair prospect lying under a smiling sky. At harmony with the moment and the larger life outside it, he leaned back against the canvas hood and let a dreamy gaze roam over the serene ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... had well-nigh lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still reigned an air of imperial haughtiness, mingled with a certain contentment, the conceit of an upper official, made a deep impression upon Celeste. She alone adored that haggard face. The girl, moreover, felt herself to be the happiness of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... father I fell into a sleep of perfect contentment, and never thought of what might be on the morrow till the morrow came. Then I grew aware of the danger I was in of being carried off once more to school. Indeed, except my father interfered, the thing was almost inevitable. I thought he would protect me, but I had no assurance. He was ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... said Mary. "I prefer the green fields, and the woods, and the gay flowers, and the songs of birds, to the narrow streets, the dingy houses, and the cries of London; but yet I opine that happiness comes from within, and that, if the heart is at rest, contentment may ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... forgotten the infidelity and disrespect of both France and Italy in the past. These are the things, it seems, that really matter to the Vatican. Cardinal Gasparri's portrait, in the same issue of Le Journal, displays a countenance of serene contentment, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... road—and the chance, in case of an accident, of contesting the hardness of your skull with a mass of stone, which seemed as if it were made on purpose for knocking out people's brains. For some time contentment sat smiling over the city. But, as "man never is, but always to be, blest," perfect happiness appeared not to be secured even by Macadam. Ruts began to be formed—rain fell, and mud was generated at a prodigious rate; repairs were needed, and the road for a while was rough ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... long engaged, I see no evil in the course I am now taking, while I humbly trust it may be the means of effecting some little good. God grant that the pictures I shall feel bound to draw of my own past degradation and failings, contrasted as they must be with my present contentment and hopes, may induce some one, at least, of my readers to abandon the excesses so common among seamen, and to turn their eyes in the direction of those great truths which are so powerful to reform, and so convincing ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... bounded in a nutshell. The environment, however, may be partly responsible for the spirit of healthy cheerfulness that animates these verses; whatever they lack, they certainly do not lack purity and charm. Far from the madding crowd the singer finds contentment, which is the keynote of these songs; happiness built on firm indestructible foundations. Some of the divisional titles indicate the range of subjects: Neighbors and the Countryside, Children and Death, Wisdom and Unwisdom, Celia, Away from Grenstone, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... casting men into prison. With us it is the angel, appearing to lead them out of prison and set them free! In short religion with us is emancipation and liberty; with them it is bondage and contentment. ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... satisfactory arrangements for meals difficult. Three hours' work on an empty stomach in the early morning did not induce enthusiasm or vigour in practising attack formations and movements. Nor was the long interval between 1 o'clock dinner and 7 o'clock tea conducive to contentment with other work of an exhausting nature. A little was done to meet the situation by providing an early morning cup of coffee and biscuit, but the poor quality of the rations and the limited regimental funds prevented ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... failed in his duty in not anticipating it by a brighter and a better one! Name you the day, First Lord; make a day; work for a day beyond your little time, Lord Palmerston, and History in return may then—not otherwise—find a day for you; a day equally associated with the contentment of the loyal, patient, willing- hearted English people, and with the happiness of your Royal Mistress and ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... steal off with the lent blanket in the morning. It would not have been easy to slip off unobserved, for the stable was locked and barred, and Nono was as safely imprisoned as if he had been in the common jail. The friendly old cart-horse taught him no harm, and mumbled with contentment as it cheerfully ate its humble fare, peering now and then towards the dark corner where Blackie sang and scolded, as if for the special entertainment of ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... thought of the tiny shoot that crept toward him with her love. And these simple tales pleased the old and riven oak-tree; they were not as heroic as the tales the winds, the clouds, and the stars told, but they were far sweeter, for they were tales of contentment, of humility, ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... wooden boxes, without ornaments or conveniences, and scarcely supplied with the most necessary furniture.[269] Two or more families often occupied the same house; and their way of life, though simple and virtuous, was by no means remarkable for cleanliness. Such as it was, contentment reigned among them, undisturbed by what modern America calls progress. Marriages were early, and population grew apace. This humble society had its disturbing elements; for the Acadians, like the Canadians, were a litigious race, and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... man's door, and wares which now ye account precious and dear-bought, shall then be common things bought and sold for little price at every huckster's stall. Say then, John, shall not those days be merry, and plentiful of ease and contentment for all men?" ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... forbidden, every excellence is simultaneously enjoined—the forgiveness of injuries, the practice of charity, a reverence for virtue, and the cherishing of the learned; submission to discipline, veneration for parents, the care for one's family, a sinless vocation, contentment and gratitude, subjection to reproof, moderation in prosperity, submission under affliction, and cheerfulness at all times. "Those," said Buddha, "who practise all these virtues, and are not overcome by evil, will enjoy the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... from the whole history lessons of sobriety, of contentment with an humble lot, of the duty of cherishing the spirit of love, of kindness, of benevolence, of repressing the first germ of selfishness, of malignity, of envy; of dependence upon an over-ruling Providence; of encouragement ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... American shipyards were turning out merchant ships faster than the Germans were destroying them. American troops were reaching France at a rate which necessarily meant the early collapse of the German Empire. Page's own family had responded to the call and this in itself was a cause of great contentment to a sick and weary man. The Ambassador's youngest son, Frank, had obtained a commission and was serving in France; his son-in-law, Charles G. Loring, was also on the Western Front; while from North Carolina Page's youngest brother Frank ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... in a state of absolute contentment. My eyes were closed. My body was motionless, and felt warm and comfortable. I was quite aware of the position of my limbs in space and I could hear the sound of passing vehicles outside. I was not asleep and yet at the same time I was not awake. I knew I was not properly ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... sake,[323] and Solomon to gratify his wives,[324] it was an uxorious sin; when the judges sinned for Jezebel's sake,[325] and Joab to obey David,[326] it was an ambitious sin; when Pilate sinned to humour the people,[327] and Herod to give farther contentment to the Jews,[328] it was a popular sin. Any thing serves to occasion sin, at home in my bosom, or abroad in my mark and aim; that which I am, and that which I am not, that which I would be, proves coals, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... introspection; it creates also a vast and brooding patience. "In countries where reincarnation and karma [the law of Cause and Effect] are taken for granted by every peasant and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of inevitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary life. A man overwhelmed by misfortunes rails neither against God nor against his neighbours, but regards his troubles as the result of his own past mistakes and ill-doings. He accepts them resignedly and makes the best of them.... ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... thousand Pounds, and askt what had come of them. Answered; helped to fille the Mouths of nine healthy Children, and stop the Mouth of an easie Husband; soe, with a Kiss, made it up. I have the Keys, and am left Mistresse of alle, to my greate Contentment; but the Children clamour for Sweetmeats, and Father sayth, "Remember, Moll, Discretion is the ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... promised fairly, but had betrayed the doctor at once, and had become the worst instrument of his master's dissipation. When, therefore, his hat and the cockade were seen, as the carriage dashed up to the door, the doctor's contentment was by ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... 'you are holy as God is holy,' whether you are real or only nominal Christians. You are voyaging together to a country where you expect to prosper—to secure an independence, and to enjoy happiness and contentment for the remainder of your lives; but, my friends, would you not act wisely to look beyond all this? As our voyage in this ship must come to an end, so must our voyage through life, and what then? Again I repeat, that though by nature depraved, prone to evil, ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... speech, even at second hand, jarred upon Betty, but her father was delighted with my Lady's description of his favourite, and the letters were full of contentment. When the two sisters, arrayed in their stiffest silks, went up to pay their respects to my Lady the next afternoon, their reception was equally warm. My Lady was more caressing to her old acquaintance, Betty, than that discreet personage quite liked, while she complimented and congratulated ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he usually embarked upon ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... the Angel; and the Prince Bishop saw a little blue-winged bird which perched on the stout yoke beam fastened to the horns of the oxen, and sang such a heavenly song of rest and contentment that the big shaggy creatures ceased to blow stormily through their nostrils, and drew long ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... the bath in the house, and I saw them both wringing their locks.[FN347] So I wished them good morning and gave them joy of their safety and reunion, saying to Jubayr, 'That which began with constraint and conditions hath ended in cordial-contentment.' He answered, 'Thou sayest well, and indeed thou deservest thy honorarium;' and he called his treasurer, and said, 'Bring hither three thousand dinars.' So he brought a purse containing the gold pieces and Jubayr ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... and peaks of bitterness and contempt were worn away by a decade of years, the solid rocks from which they sprang persisted and the massive reasons for emotion were not moved, albeit their sharpest expressions vanished. Some loves faded into likings, and their raptures to a placid contentment, built as much on the convenience of habit as the memories of a passionate past; other affections, less fortunate, perished and left nothing but remains unlovely. Hates also, with their sharpest bristles rubbed down, were modified to bluntness, and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... spake; the lady's meek reply Swelled Anasuya's rapture high. "Sita," she said, "my gift to-day Thy sweet contentment shall repay. Accept this precious robe to wear, Of heavenly fabric, rich and rare, These gems thy limbs to ornament, This precious balsam sweet of scent. O Maithil dame, this gift of mine Shall make thy limbs ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... next morning with a wholesome feeling of satisfaction in her mind which she could not at first account for. In a few moments the conversation with Miss Davis rushed back upon her memory, and she knew that her contentment was due to the prospect of independence that had been put before her as so real and so near. Once installed under Miss Davis's roof, teaching in school and earning the bread she ate, neither servants nor companions could taunt her with being ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... goes skipping and bounding along a street in the capital. His movements are gay and alert; there is a sparkle in his eyes, a smirk on his lips, a pleasing flush on his beaming face.... He is all contentment and delight. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot Whether it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... despised. She does not know what she wants. Gibbon serves her better than her own heart. I would rather a hundred times that he left her poor and free among you than that he should take her off to be rich and miserable in England." One does not quite see how Gibbon could have acted to the contentment of Jean-Jacques. For not taking Mdlle. Curchod to England—as we may presume he would have done if he had married her—he is contemptible. Yet if he does take her he will make her miserable, and Rousseau would rather a hundred ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... as Mr. Billings had previously done; a sweet smile of contentment lighted up the venerable features of Doctor Wood, and he walked abroad into the streets as happy a ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... any personal happiness beyond what a serene soul may win in this mortal life. 'O my soul, the time I trust will be, when thou shalt be good, simple, more open and visible, than that body by which it is enclosed;' but this is said of the calm contentment with human lot which he hopes to attain, not of a time when the trammels of the body shall be cast off. For the rest, the world and its fame and wealth, 'all is vanity.' The gods may perhaps have a particular care ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... in which this peaceful family resided; each and all enjoying that tranquility which sheds its calm contentment over the unassuming spirits of those who are ignorant of the crimes that flow from the selfishness and ambition of busy life. To them, the fresh breezes of morning, as they rustled through the living foliage, and stirred the modest flowers of their pleasant ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... is, the air is so pretty, the women sang so softly and sleepily, the music sounded so soothingly as we glided along the water, that I felt in a pleasant half-dreamy state of perfect contentment, and was sorry when, arriving at the landing-place, we had to return to a carriage and civilized life, with nothing but the garlands of flowers to remind us ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... had passed the first months of her newly- obtained freedom in quiet contentment with her children in Fontainebleau, at the house of her father-in-law. Her soul, bowed down by so much misery and pain, needed quietness and solitude to allow her wounds to cease bleeding and to heal; her heart, which had experienced so much ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... and enjoy, here, uninterrupted contentment and happiness, and may your valuable life be continued a ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... the longest, their rate of travelling was not precisely of the quickest. Daisy was not impatient. The afternoon was splendid, the dust had been laid by late rains, and Daisy looked at her pail and basket with great contentment. Before she had gone a quarter of a mile from home, she met her little friend of the wintergreens. Nora sprang across the road ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours, produces a dual result. In the first place one receives a PURELY PHYSICAL IMPRESSION, one of pleasure and contentment at the varied and beautiful colours. The eye is either warmed or else soothed and cooled. But these physical sensations can only be of short duration. They are merely superficial and leave no lasting impression, for the soul is unaffected. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... lonesome in my great house, which was as much too large for me as my fortune was, I had taken a child to replace the boy I had lost. Remembering the cold blood running in the veins of those nearest me, I chose a boy from alien stock and, for a while, knew contentment again. But, as he developed and my affections strengthened, the possibility of all my money going his way roused my brothers and sisters from the complacency they had enjoyed since their road to fortune had been secured by my son's death, and one day—can you recall it, Hudson? can you recall ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... work which tended to throw Chartism into obscurity. The repeal of the Corn Laws had given the people cheap bread, and the advent of free trade gave abundant work and good wages. With increased bodily comfort came contentment of mind. The greater freedom of intercourse, caused by railway travelling, showed the lower classes that the governing bodies were not so badly disposed towards them as they had been taught to believe. On the ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as filled with careless contentment. ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pour forth the whole story. As Harry listened a broad grin of contentment appeared on his face, for one of Hazelton's lovable weaknesses was his desire to see ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its "still small voice" amid rural leisure and placid contentment. But perhaps the knowledge which causeth not to err, is most frequently impressed upon the mind during seasons of affliction; and tears are the softened showers which cause the seed of Heaven to spring and take root in the human breast. At least it was thus with ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... through the Papal States, and caused everywhere a burst of exultation and gratitude toward the new sovereign. It carried joy to thousands of households, bringing back to them the long-separated brother or parent, and it was a token of future peace and contentment. In the city, says Farini, [Footnote: Luigi Carlo Farini, who is freely quoted by Bowen, was an Italian historian and statesman. His principal work is Storia dello stato Romano dall' anno 1814 al 1830.—ED.] the hosannas were countless; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... "and receive this crown, which I never bestow on any but my greatest favorites. It is called the crown of Contentment. I reserve it for those who, led on by Perseverance, come to me by the Right Path, in spite of Difficulty and Danger. Those who arrive at my presence by any of the many other roads that are open to mankind I give over to the charge of some of my inferior attendants, such as Pride, Vanity, or Ambition, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... contentment. She would remember and tell her Aunt Debby about this. While her Aunt Debby had chided her about repeating these little romantic tales which came to her ears, Hester had a feeling that the elder Miss Alden ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... rise from it like soothing fingers laid upon his brow and his frame drooped in extreme contentment; for it portrayed the country he had come to seek from his home back in that wilderness where bridle-paths are boulevards and primitive log cabins the mansions of his people. So he continued to sit spellbound, held between ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... medley. It was not, of course, contentment she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear assailed her; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a country owned so largely by small farmers, the first task of the Government must be to secure their welfare and contentment. Before plague laid its grasp on the rich central districts it was feared that they were becoming congested, and the canal colonization schemes referred to in a later chapter were largely designed to relieve them. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... to conceal his divine knowledge. Now, opening this box you would have found within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible courage, unimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible misregard of all that for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... she could then change her determination if she wished. So she told him once more, that duty and not present enjoyment was to be consulted; that she still thought it was best for him to stay at Mr. Martin's, and she still believed he would find contentment and peace there, in doing his duty. She did not upbraid him, but told him very tenderly, she wished him to acquire more strength of purpose, and to gain the habit of controlling his feelings. If he did not, he could never be happy or useful, and it ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous
... remedy for sorrow, not of a source of joy. No young man should dare to neglect literature. At some period of his life he will surely need consolation. And he may be certain that should he live to be an old man, there will be none other,—except religion. But for that feeling of self-contentment, which creates happiness—hard work, and hard work alone, can give ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... should seem plain to them, that for the few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word. Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself and ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... bit of it," said Squire Murphy; "it is going to be true. You just do what you are bid, and you will be in the hoight of contentment." ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... bright example of contentment," said the baron; "and for your and the children's sake, I wish this property were ten times larger, so that I might keep a page and a couple of maids of honor ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... he murmured, as a ray of light fell suddenly on the darkness of his spirit: "Contentment is better than wealth. Dear brother! Dear old home! Sweet Ellen! Ah, why did I leave you? Too late! too late! A cup, full of the wine of life, was at my lips; but I turned my head away, asking for a more fiery and exciting draught. How vividly comes before me now that parting scene! I am ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... was so great! And, moreover, nobody was angered by this venality; it merely gave rise to malicious witticisms; and the fans continued waving in the increasing heat, and the ladies quivered with contentment as the whispered pleasantries took wing and fluttered over their ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and His favour to bring our voyage to a safe and prosperous issue and already we congratulated one another on our good fortune and boon voyage. We fared on from sea to sea and from island to island and city to city, in all delight and contentment, buying and selling wherever we touched, and taking our solace and our pleasure, till one day when, as we sailed athwart the dashing sea, swollen with clashing billows, behold, the master (who stood on the gunwale examining the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... after some discussion, agreed to, and the news caused gladness and contentment throughout the earldom. The younger men who had been included in the levy were quite satisfied with the arrangement. The spirit of the West Saxons was still high, and those without wives and families who would suffer by their ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... confused hum is heard, which proclaims the presence of industry; the fields are covered with abundant harvests; the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the labourer; and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which are the reward ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... he could have returned to his lodgings in the High Street, if not with exaltation, at least with satisfaction, had that been all. But the venom of the chaplain's harangue had worked into his blood, and sapped the life of his sweet contentment. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... children hurried on before; stout young labourers in clean round frocks; and buxom girls with healthy, laughing faces, were plentifully sprinkled about in couples, and the whole scene was one of quiet and tranquil contentment, irresistibly captivating. The morning was bright and pleasant, the hedges were green and blooming, and a thousand delicious scents were wafted on the air, from the wild flowers which blossomed on either side of the footpath. The little church was one of those ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... her mother's apartment in the Bell Tower, and because of this fact found a curious contentment in it. ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... all the stored-up love of his empty life he loved her, and longed for her for his own. That was the reason of his happiness during the past days, of the extraordinary new zest and interest in life which had filled his mind; of his content in Pixie's contentment, his anxiety for her anxiety, his furious resentment when she was abused. And he loved her. He loved her when she lapsed into her Irish brogue, and said "Me dear"; he loved her when she assumed Frenchified ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... numbers of swine, including those of various ages and sizes, can be safely kept in one herd. The writer has seen over two hundred head of swine, ranging in size from pigs just weaned to 250-pound porkers ready for market, living in peace and contentment in one building, eating and sleeping and sharing the forage pastures together. Of course this means a big saving in buildings and fencing and a great reduction in the ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... their broad hats; there they stood and laughed, chattered, jested and indulged in rough play while their foreman received his instructions from the telegraph operator. And then with a cheer and a song they started on their way to Oak Cliff. Happiness and contentment are ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... Jordan without any fears For all were now calmed on her dear Saviour's breast? On pinions of light did she mount to the spheres Where all is contentment, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Drusus in his flight to Ravenna; she had wished herself beside him, to be a man, able to fight a man's battles and win a man's glory. For the first time in her life the quiet routine of the Temple service brought her no contentment; for the first time she felt herself bound to a career that could not satisfy. She was restless and moody. The younger Vestals, whose attendance on the sacred fire and care of the Temple she oversaw, wondered at her exacting petulance. Little Livia brought her aunt to her senses, by asking ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... it, hated it, and then, after she came, loved it. He had thought it the most beautiful scene in all the world and one never to be forgotten. The dingy old building, with its bare wooden walls, had been first a horror, then a prison, and at last a palace of contentment. With the two women, one a second mother to him, and the other dearest of all on earth, he could have lived there forever. But now the old prison feeling was coming back. He was tired of the view and of the mean little room. He felt ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... tabac,' and went along gaily with M. Tapin to the Bastille. Verily the true bibliophile is not as other men, and a modern world looks upon him askance. Yet his portion is a happiness that riches cannot purchase, for his soul has found lasting comfort and contentment in a knowledge of the innermost recesses of human thought. There is no aspect or phase of the human mind with which he is unacquainted; and it is a knowledge that ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... mind what is said above, that Love is a form of Philosophy, and therefore here is called her Soul; which Love is manifest in the use of Wisdom, and such use brings with it a wonderful beauty, that is to say, contentment under any condition of the time, and contempt for those things which ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... brick floor, and its great fire flaming and crackling in the wide chimney. It was a comfortable place to be in on such chilly and blustering March nights as these, and a goodly company had taken shelter there, and were sipping their wine in contentment and gossiping one with another in a neighborly way while they waited for the historian. The host, the hostess, and their pretty daughter were flying here and there and yonder among the tables and doing their best to keep up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... To whome, yf it please God that I returne, and questioun be demanded, What was the impediment of my purposed jorney? judge yow what I shall answer. The caus of my dolour and sorrow (God is witnes) is for nothing pertenyng eyther to my corporall contentment or worldly displeasur; butt it is for the grevouse plagues and punishmentis of God, which assuredly shall apprehend nott only yow, but everie inhabitant of that miserable Realme and Ile, except that the power of God, by the libertie of his Evangell, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... clear of the power of money by going without things, but that was not the way. Capital always preached contentment to the poor; he would go the other way, and conquer production by ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... grey hair. Mr. Mayfair, too, had a calm, pleasing manner. To Beth's literary mind there was something about the Mayfair home that reminded her of a novel. They were wealthy people, at least supposed to be so, who had settled in Briarsfield to live their lives in rural contentment. ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... he would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. "Why ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... sometimes wonder, after all, Amid this tangled web of fate, If what is great may not be small, And what is small may not be great. So wondering I go my way, Yet in my heart contentment sings . . . O may I ever see, I pray, God's grace ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... and yodeling, the whole summer long, for there was hardly another human being in the world as happy as he was up there with his goats. Often, however, when he lay stretched out in his contentment on the Pulpit-rock, and gazed down into the sunny valley below, he had to think how he had sat that time with the heavy burden on his heart, under the Rain-rock, and all happiness was gone; and he would say again and again in his ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... disrespect of both France and Italy in the past. These are the things, it seems, that really matter to the Vatican. Cardinal Gasparri's portrait, in the same issue of Le Journal, displays a countenance of serene contentment, a sort of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... the Bible, is but a series of bloody wars. It must be thus to make us appreciate the blessings of peace, and to bow in humble adoration of the great Father of all. The Garden of Eden could not yield contentment to man, nor ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... as the eye could see on every side there was no trace of a human being; no house, no boat, no cultivated land. It was as though they had stepped back a hundred years and were in the midst of the primeval forest of song and story. Migwan lay on her back in lazy contentment, watching the sunshine filter through the leaves. Idly she drew out her pencil and began scribbling words in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... the ex-sub-director had well-nigh lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still reigned an air of imperial haughtiness, mingled with a certain contentment, the conceit of an upper official, made a deep impression upon Celeste. She alone adored that haggard face. The girl, moreover, felt herself to be the happiness of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the upper gallery and watch the throng issuing from the dining-room, I make a nice and unerring social distinction between the Toothpick Brigade who leave the table with the final mouthful semi-masticated, and those who have an air of finished contentment. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Just then, too, there came into view the sight of green tree-tops and a glimpse of the river, and these encouraged her to proceed. Indeed, she was now more afraid to go back than to go forward, and Bonny Angel's strange contentment in the care of a stranger, like herself, renewed a belief that she was other than mere mortal, and so above the common needs ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... years past she had not enjoyed the feeling of contentment, of quiet bliss, that filled her now. It seemed as if the danger that threatened her so direly had vanished. Her thoughts were all with the future of the child whom only a few hours ago she had so bitterly accused. Shotaye ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... part of our course we again met with the Caen ship, which could now spare us no more victuals; but having some hides, which he had taken in traffic among the islands, we were glad to procure them, and gave him for them to his contentment. After this we passed Cape Florida, and clearing the Bahama channel, we directed our course for Newfoundland. Running to the lat. of 36 deg. N. and as far east as the isle of Bermuda, we found the winds, on the 17th September, very variable, contrary to expectation and all men's writings, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... after their marriage did the Infantes of Carrion sojourn in Valencia in peace and pleasure, to their own great contentment, and their uncle Suero Gonzalez with them; and at the end of those two years, there came to pass a great misadventure, by reason of which they fell out with the Cid, in whom there was no fault. There ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Canning, who considered it was intended to undermine the barriers which resisted the inroads of a more wide and sweeping innovation. Mr. Canning also brought forward the unexampled prosperity of Edinburgh, and the contentment which pervaded its population, as a convincing proof of the excellence of the old system. After expatiating on the advantages connected with the Scotch representation, he remarked that his objection to the present ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... heroine—the SARA BERNHARDT of the piece) then, in the penultimate Act, anything tragic, or otherwise, might picturesquely and appropriately have happened to the classic Girton girl, Hypatia, and Master Phil 'Ammon, the good young Monk so inclined to go wrong, to the great contentment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... look, read, decide, and dance the while. 'This might do!'—then would she sparkle. 'Ah this would never do!'—then would she become placid, tranquil, and complete her tour with contentment; for as I think some one else has before me wisely observed, the end of doubt is the beginning of repose. Then would the faces of the ladies generally become vastly more attractive than at present during the enjoyment of the waltz; for singular as may seem the remark, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... measures which will be proposed to you for a reform in the commons house of parliament; a speedy and satisfactory settlement of this question becomes daily of more pressing importance to the security of the state, and to the contentment and welfare of my people." The other parts of the speech referred to the distress which prevailed; to the appearance of the cholera morbus; to the agitation prevailing in Ireland; to the Portuguese affairs; to the separation of the states of Holland and Belgium; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... down needs fear no fall; He that is low, no pride; He that is humble, ever shall Have God to be his guide.(Phil. 4:12, 13) I am content with what I have, Little be it, or much; And, Lord, contentment still I crave, Because Thou savest such. Fullness to such a burden is, That go on pilgrimage; Here little, and hereafter bliss, Is best from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... passages in his letters clearly go to show that his unhappiness and discontent were largely due to the fact of his overlooking the real enjoyment to be derived from the small occurrences and events of every day, which rightly viewed are capable of affording such a large fund of real contentment. In a letter to Hippel early in 1815, he himself states, "For my shattered life I have really only myself to blame; I ought to have shown more resolution and less levity in my earlier years. When a youth, when ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and explained to all three. They extorted many ejaculations of wonder, and divers grunts of admiration and contentment. Cloud conferred a moment with the two principal chiefs; then he turned ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... kindred, to pay his duty to him, or to his revered memory. Of late, indeed, there had been an object introduced to his acquaintance, from whom it was bitter to part; but his designs had been planned and firmly fixed before he knew Rebecca; nor could he have tasted contentment even with her at the expense of his ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... the personation of contentment with his station in life, and of the buoyancy of good hope. "There's a good time ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... play-hours, carried him triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-sized form, and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered that, although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all he passed third in Algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should have seen his mother's face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) was presented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the parents and company, with an inscription ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... get a dinner for me in their fashion, of which I also eat very well. After dinner I found occasion of sending him abroad, and then alone 'avec elle je tentais a faire ce que je voudrais et contre sa force je le faisais biens que passe a mon contentment'. By and by he coming back again I took leave and walked home, and then there to dinner, where Dr. Fayrebrother come to see me and Luellin. We dined, and I to the office, leaving them, where we sat all the afternoon, and I late at the office. To supper and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... can only be for things that we have known; and the Desire, as you have said, is a proof of the thing desired, and, but for these things which we know, the words 'joy' and 'contentment' and 'fulfilment' would ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... you, I should never have an intemperate or ignoble thought, never be feverish or despondent. So far as I could absorb or transmute your quality I should be cheerful, continent, equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed warmth and contentment around. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the land of our fathers. Many long years God has afflicted us for our sins, but it will not be for ever." The old gentleman was going to get a passage from Tripoli to the Holy Land. How little suffices some! How much does faith! So mysterious are the ways of the Creator in distributing contentment. For myself, I fared extremely well in the midst of this happy melée of misery and starvation, Mr. Pariente, of Jerbah, having filled for me a large box of provisions, consisting of a leg of lamb, a fowl, pigeons, fish and bread, besides wine and spirits. But this was as liberally distributed ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... hearts of the people and are the noblest monument to its founder Gautama Buddha. The taking of the meanest life is strictly forbidden, and falsehood, intemperance, dishonesty, anger, pride, and covetousness are denounced as incompatible with Buddhism, which enjoins the practice of chastity, gratitude, contentment, moderation, forgiveness of injuries, patience, and cheerfulness." The priests of Buddha are regularly ordained and sworn to celibacy, and they are required to meet each other every fourteen days for purposes of mutual confession. The lowest ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... been changed. Whether 'you are holy as God is holy,' whether you are real or only nominal Christians. You are voyaging together to a country where you expect to prosper—to secure an independence, and to enjoy happiness and contentment for the remainder of your lives; but, my friends, would you not act wisely to look beyond all this? As our voyage in this ship must come to an end, so must our voyage through life, and what then? Again I repeat, that though by nature depraved, prone to evil, full of sin, with hearts desperately ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... was making a record in school. He had two daughters who helped their mother; he had a cottage, a little yard, a few flowers, a garden. He worked hard in a garage by day and evenings he cultivated his flowers, his garden, and his family. He had health, plus contentment a-plenty. His possessions were few and the care of them ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... of all the riot and wickedness about the Black Hills, the mad striving after sudden gold, and the total lack of real joy in its use after getting it, suggested to Jim a sermon founded on the proverb: "Better is a dinner of herbs and contentment therewith, etc...." But, for once in his life, Hartigan was a little abashed by the situation and, reciting the verses from memory, he managed to get them mixed and rendered them thus: "Better is a stalled ox and contentment therewith than a dinner of herbs with a brawling woman." ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was the secret of Sarah Grimke's unvarying contentment, and there was always some one needing the help she was so ready to give, some one whose trials made her feel, she says, ashamed to think of her own. But the infirmities of old age were creeping ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... tents That incense-troubled Love may grieve and stir, Be ransomed from satiety's sad graves, And go to God up the bright stair of Wonder. Since passion makes immortal Time's tired slaves I am of those that delicately sunder Corruptions of contentment from the breast As with rare steel. Like music I unveil Last things, till, weary of earthen cups and rest, You seek Montsalvat and the burning Grail. Ah! blindly, blindly, wounded with the roses, I bear my spice ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... obedience, love, and regard of our voyage, and for the better confirmation thereof, willed every man the next Sunday following to prepare himself to receive the communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought to do, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the musing, melodious thoughts of twilight; the song sparrow's for simple faith and trust, the bobolink's for hilarity and glee, the mourning dove's for hopeless sorrow, the vireo's for all-day and every-day contentment, and the nocturne of the mockingbird for love. Then there are the plaintive singers, the soaring, ecstatic singers, the confident singers, the gushing and voluble singers, and the half-voiced, inarticulate singers. The note of the wood pewee is a human sigh; the chickadee has ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... a child is sweet music to the ear. There are three most joyous sounds in nature—the hum of a bee, the purr of a cat, and the laugh of a child. They tell of peace, of happiness, and of contentment, and make one for a while forget that there is so much ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... affectionately remembered sixty years afterwards.[71] By his constant contributions to the Edinburgh, he was both helping forward the great causes in which he most earnestly believed, and establishing his own fame. Good health, cheerfulness, and contentment reigned in the Rectory, which might well have been called "A Temple of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... heart, and often it ached almost unbearably at night, or when the world hurt him with its beauty, which he must see without Her; but usually he kept the spot well covered up; and being healthy as well as young, he had cultivated that kind of contentment which Thoreau said was only desperate resignation in disguise. He took an interest in books, in politics, and sport and motor cars, and a good many other things; but on the terrace, the blue of the sea; the opal lights on the mountains; the gold glint ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... they went to the Academy and were promptly refused, he drew a long face and said I had better have gone into the Indian Civil Service as he wished. Subsequently, when I had sold them all, and not one for less than a thousand guineas, he began to enter upon a placid state of contentment with me which induced him to say to other captious relations—"Let the boy alone, he will be an artist some day." At which I used to laugh inwardly and go away to my studio to listen to the Divine voice dictating fresh pictures to me. For five years in Italy ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... excellence is simultaneously enjoined—the forgiveness of injuries, the practice of charity, a reverence for virtue, and the cherishing of the learned; submission to discipline, veneration for parents, the care for one's family, a sinless vocation, contentment and gratitude, subjection to reproof, moderation in prosperity, submission under affliction, and cheerfulness at all times. "Those," said Buddha, "who practise all these virtues, and are not overcome by evil, will enjoy the perfection ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... their deadly enemy. He eats up their eggs and the young shrimps, as well as sandhoppers, and indeed anything living which he can get into his big mouth. In his way he is just as terrific a fellow as the shark. He is very hardy, too, and will live in an aquarium with perfect contentment provided he can get enough ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... of him at intervals until he is half way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment, Mr. Guppy says, "You are ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... were certain points of resemblance between them. A man of the ranks, without any education, his courage had been the sole mainspring of his military promotion, and sound sense had taken the place of brilliancy. Of the highest honor and clean-handed, he was ending a noble life in full contentment in the centre of his family, which claimed all his affections, and without a suspicion of his brother's still undiscovered misconduct. No one enjoyed more than he the pleasing sight of this family party, where there never was the smallest disagreement, for the brothers and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... has been taken "to suit the convenience of party or the necessities of kings, to induce the newly admitted classes to give their money, to produce political contentment." ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... not as yet reached the end of the first "honey-moon." So these two old lovers, like "John Anderson my Joe," and his devoted companion, had climbed the hill and were standing "thegither at its foot" in happy contentment, looking toward the golden sunset and catching the gleam of ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... realise her, for she had scarcely known her. But this momentary sensation left her depressed and fatigued. What had she done with her life? What future was there before her? What was make-believe, and what was real? Were these proposals and intimacies and adventures real, or was the contentment which she had seen on the faces of Susan and Rachel more real than anything ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... sorrow, so as to give a fresh charm once more to the repose and exempted joys of the celestial realm. In this way, by a series of recurring lives below and above, novelty and change with larger experience and more vivid contentment are secured, the tedium and satiety of fixed happiness and protection are modified by the relishing opposition of varied trials of hardship and pain, the insufferable monotony of immortality broken up and interpolated by epochs of surprise and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... already got together a new establishment. I was glad to find in the servant who attended me an old acquaintance. He had been in my own employ when I first settled at L——, and left me to get married. He and his wife were now both in Strahan's service. He spoke warmly of his new master and his contentment with his situation, while he unpacked my carpet-bag and assisted me to change my dress. But the chief object of his talk and his praise was ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abstinence, chastity, honesty, moderation, lowliness, sobriety, purity." Andronicus also says [*De Affectibus] that "the companions of temperance are gravity, continence, humility, simplicity, refinement, method, contentment." [*Per-se-sufficientiam which could be rendered "self-sufficiency," but for the fact that this is taken in a bad sense. See Q. 169, A. 1.] Therefore it seems that Tully insufficiently reckoned the parts ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... were in their way quietly heroic, impressed me a good deal; but his abject contentment with the limitations of his lot appalled me. I felt a dread grow in me lest I should become subdued to the element in which I worked as he was. I asked myself whether a life so destitute of real interests and pleasures was life at all? I made fugitive attempts to allure ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... be one-and-twenty," she said to herself; "it seems a great age, but Malcolm is nearly nine years older." And then she added to herself in a whisper, "And from morning to night we shall be together, just he and I, our own two selves," and there was a soft look of contentment on Anna's face. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... decision like a judge or sending in a report like an inspector; here we have only glimpses, light and even fantastic glimpses, of a world that is really alien to Dickens. It is so alien that he can almost entirely enjoy it. For no man can entirely enjoy that which he loves; contentment is always unpatriotic. The difference can indeed be put with approximate perfection in one phrase. In Italy he was on a holiday; in America he was on a tour. But indeed Dickens himself has quite sufficiently conveyed the difference in the two phrases that he did actually use for the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Napoleon. M. Morilleau, French consular agent in charge, keeps the place respectable and the buildings in good repair. His family at Longwood, consisting of wife and grown daughters, are natives of courtly and refined manners, and spend here days, months, and years of contentment, though they have never seen the world beyond the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... understand. Perhaps it means. "And how does your present contentment advance or care ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... yet as though vexed, while a tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself—a simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary good-luck. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... the position. For some reason or other, the dear girl had been prevented from coming this afternoon, and she had written to explain and relieve his anxiety. It was like her. It was just the sweet, thoughtful thing he would have expected her to do. His contentment with the existing scheme of things returned. The sun shone out again, and he found himself amiably ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... new troubles were in store for the inhabitants of that beautiful region. The traces of the massacre of 1778 had disappeared, the houses had been rebuilt, new settlers had come in, and the pretty villages had taken on their old look of contentment and thrift, when in the spring of 1784 there came an accumulation of disasters. During a very cold winter great quantities of snow had fallen, and lay piled in huge masses on the mountain sides, until in March a sudden thaw set in. The Susquehanna ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... achievement of the adept as regards his own personal interests;" and of course our own interests were all that I or any of the other mahatmas ever thought of. "He has reached," pursues our author, "the farther shore of the sea in which so many of mankind will perish. He waits there, in a contentment which people cannot even realise without some glimmering of spirituality—the sixth sense—themselves, for the arrival of his future companions." This is perfectly true. I always found that the full enjoyment of this sixth sense among mahatmas was heightened just in proportion to the numbers ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... railroads, and sights and his impatience of all pursuits save Bertha's. Many a time she was permitted to see and hear nothing but how much he was bored, but on the whole the growls were so mitigated compared with what she had known, that it was almost contentment; and that he did not absolutely dislike their habits was plain from his adherence to the ladies, though he might have been quite ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forced to confess the supremacy of good: he shall withdraw into the depths of hell, whence he shall never again issue forth, and all the reanimated beings devoted to the Mazdean law shall live an eternity of peace and contentment. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... must be numbered a strong fancy for keeping dogs of various breeds. When you come to understand the animals you can make friends of them, and I have lived in perfect contentment for months at a stretch with no company but my terriers. A favourite terrier often goes about with me now, and the other day Mr. Landlord said, with insinuating softness, "We must have your pup entered for our coursing meeting." It mattered little to me one way or the other, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... see much of Mr. Brandon? Could not he restore your sister to the self-appreciation so essential to happiness and contentment?" ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... education, who had slumbered within him, now awakened. He resolved to quit the world and adopt the Carthusian habit. The advice of his confessor was that he should regulate his life by marriage. Racine yielded, and found his contentment in a wife who was ignorant of his plays, and in children whose inclinations and training were religious. The penitent was happy in his household, happy also in his reconciliation with Nicole and Arnauld. To Boileau he remained attached. And he did not ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... no other example of a genius so universal as Leonardo's, so creative, so incapable of self- contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of his portraits Michelangelo's personages are simply ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... I found near contentment and sober joy in my work and my beautiful old garden. But deep down in my heart I was waiting, ever waiting, for something to happen—something big, stirring, and tremendous, something romantic and poetical; but it never ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... an age of comparative social contentment, in strong contrast with the days of Langland. The rapid increase of manufacturing towns gave employment to thousands who had before been idle and discontented. Increasing trade brought enormous wealth to England, and this wealth was shared to this ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... expeditions and battles every year, these would only affect a small part of the whole country. Over all the rest, the tending of cattle in the glades of the forest, the sowing and reaping of wheat and oats, the gathering of fruit and nuts, continued in quiet contentment and peace. The young men practiced the arts of war and exercised themselves in warlike games. The poets sang to them, the heralds recounted the great doings of old, how Cuculain kept the ford, how ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... looked forward with eager hope, to the following day. That would, without doubt, bring him news of his friends, or, perhaps, restore him to liberty. Under the pleasant influence of thoughts like these, his mind grew more calm and cheerful every moment, and passed into a state of tranquil contentment Besides, he was tired, and his weariness brought on drowsiness. As long as his excitement lasted, he could not feel the drowsiness; but now, as calmness returned, the weariness and sleepiness became stronger, and by ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... concealed from me any desire of thine, least of all if such it were that privation should cause thee to languish; for well assured thou shouldst have been and shouldst be, that I hold thee dear as my very self, and that whatever may be for thy contentment, even though it were scarce seemly, I would do it for thee; but, for all thou hast so done, God has shewn Himself more merciful to theeward than thyself, and, lest thou die of this malady, has given me to know its cause, which ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... certain vague memories of their pre-natal days in the maternal womb—memories of a life which, though full of growing vigor and vitality, was yet at that time one of absolute harmony with the surroundings, and of perfect peace and contentment, spent within the body of the mother—the embryo indeed standing in the same relation to the mother as St. Paul says WE stand to God, "IN whom we live and move and have our being"; and that these ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... with the hiding away of some of his most matterful and weightiest productions in local and fugitive publications, and in Prefaces and Appendices to Poems, go far to explain the prevailing unacquaintance with even the extent, not to speak of the importance, of his Prose, and the light contentment with which it has been permitted so long to remain (comparatively) out of sight. That the inter-relation of the Poems to the Prose, and of the Prose to the Poems—of which above he himself wrote—makes the collection and publication of the Prose a duty to all who regard ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and sacred history: the Shunammite introduced: her hospitality; proposes to her husband to accommodate Elisha with a chamber: the gratitude manifested by the prophet in offering to speak for her to the king: her reply expressive of contentment: various considerations calculated to promote this disposition, advantages of a daily and deep impression of the transitory nature of our possessions, and of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... who delighted much in musicke, because themselves therein were somwhat expert, as on the virginals, bandora, lute and such like: were one eventing at a common inne of this town (as I have heard) where the one of them shewed his skil on the virginals to the no little contentment of the hearers. Now as divers guests of the house came into the roome to listen, so among the rest entered an artificial Cony-catcher, who as occasion served, in the time of ceasing between the severall toies and fancies be plaied: very much commended ...
— The Third And Last Part Of Conny-Catching. (1592) - With the new deuised knauish arte of Foole-taking • R. G.
... consists of short tales and anecdotes, to which are appended comments in prose and verse, and is divided into eight chapters, or sections: (1) the Morals of Kings; (2) the Morals of Dervishes; (3) the Excellence of Contentment; (4) the Advantages of Taciturnity; (5) Love and Youth; (6) Imbecility and Old Age; (7) the Effects of Education; (8) Rules for the Conduct of Life. In culling some of the choicest flowers of this perennial Garden, the particular order ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... colony had thus far been effected with very little regard to the wants of human nature. There were no women there. Without the honored wife there cannot be the happy home; and without the home there can be no contentment. To herd together five hundred men upon the banks of a foreign stream, three thousand miles from their native land, without women and children, and to expect them to lay the foundation of a happy and prosperous ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... intense and that its strong pulsation was felt everywhere: in crowded streets and quays, in numerous offices and warehouses, on the large exchange, around the Public Weighing Houses, in the shops and market-places, etc. The ease and self-contentment with which the Dutch were so often reproached at the time of the French Revolution, were then unknown; on the contrary all was enterprise, action, and movement. A salutary freshness of spirit was favoured by the variety of people crowding in this ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... slightly better condition, but all more or less showing the same symptoms of stupefaction. Those that could mutter words said that it was an irresistible passion that they could never stop. The opium gave them no dreams, they told me, but a delicious feeling of absolute contentment and happiness, which they could never experience when not ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... money really suffices for health, contentment, and harmless pleasure!" he thought. "The secret of our growing social mischief does not lie with the natural order of created things, but solely with ourselves. We will not set any reasonable limit to our desires. If we would, we might live longer ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... we left at 9.30 A. M., after a night in which all of us slept soundly—the first sound sleep some had enjoyed for a long time. Contentment and satisfaction are great somnifacients. The Grand Basin was glorious in sunshine, the peaks crystal-clear against a cloudless sky, the huge blocks of ice thrown down by the earthquake and scattered all over the glacier gleamed white in ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... peace, harmony, and tranquillity. So, now, I infer, from the greater amount of agitation, from the greater amount of danger, that, if you adopt the measures under consideration, they, too, will be followed by the same amount of contentment, satisfaction, peace, and tranquillity, which ensued after the Missouri compromise. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... their eldest brother and Sir Patrick himself waiting to conduct them to Utrecht, where their house was. No sooner were they met again than they forgot everything, and felt nothing but happiness and contentment. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... was wealth, it ne'er was wealth, That coft contentment, peace, or pleasure; The bands and bliss o' mutual love, O ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... made a point of forbidding politics as a subject for discussion in the house, and confined the general conversation exclusively to fish. That this thoughtful act was appreciated by the overworked politician it is needless to remark; he settled down to his brief respite with a tranquil contentment and complete blankness of mind which only the cleverest of us can ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... was the happiest and most memorable night in the history of the Gran Parsonage. The pastor walked up and down on the floor, rubbing his hands in quiet contentment. Inga, to whom an engagement was essentially a solemn affair, sat in a corner and gazed at her sister and Strand with tearful radiance. Arnfinn gave vent to his joy by bestowing embraces promiscuously upon whomsoever chanced to come ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... seemed to harden, his blood to quicken, and even his brain to become more alert and eager. If he had been ambitious and studious in an average temperature of eighty-five degrees, what would happen when the thermometer dropped below zero? He smiled, but with much contentment. The vaster the capacity for study, the better; as for his ambitions, they could rest until he had finished his education. Now that his feet were fairly planted on the wide highway of the future, his impatience was taking its well-earned rest; he would allow no dreams to interfere with the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... at an end—for it lasted three days, to the great contentment of the people—Messire Bruyn with great pomp led the little one to his castle, and, according to the custom of husbands, had her put solemnly to bed in his couch, which was blessed by the Abbot of Marmoustiers; then came and placed ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... discouragement threatened on all sides, and, as every thoughtful one expected, there was such a slump in the practice as kept Remsen and Whipple and poor Blair awake o' nights during the next week. But Whipple toiled like a Trojan, and Remsen beamed contentment and scattered tongue-lashings alternately; and Blair, ever armed with a text-book, watched from the side-line whenever ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... never more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment. All seemed very domestic and peaceful except the Kurdish dogs, which set upon us with loud, fierce ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... of him in terms of affectionate eulogy, the writer proceeded to confide her earnest wish that he should not longer delay that change in life which, concentrating so much that is vague in the desires and aspirations of man, leaves his heart and his mind, made serene by the contentment of home, free for the steadfast consolidation of their warmth and their light upon the ennobling duties that unite the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their beauteous petals blessings flow; But there are other countless beauties yield Blessings unnumbered in fair nature's field, Suggesting happy thoughts and pure desire, Inspiring us to string our heart's best lyre, Constraining to contentment in life's race, By making earth seem an enchanted place. Nature of human pleasures is the Queen, Robed in her own unrivalled peerless green, Wed to the sun's all-glorious majesty, Eternal witnesses ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... goodwill of the archbishop: insomuch that the king reputed him giltie of treason. Within a few daies after, Walter bishop of Alba, bringing to him his pall, verie wiselie reconciled the pope and the king. Notwithstanding all this, Anselme could not purchase the kings goodwill to his contentment, though he wiselie dissembled for the time; so that when the bishop of Alba should returne to Rome, he made sute for licence to go with him. Neuerthelesse, the king offered him, that if he would ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... meditative fashion,—its mother slept profoundly. She bent lower and lower over the child. With a beating heart she ventured to touch the small, pink hand that lay outside its wrappings like a softly curved rose-leaf. With a sort of elf-like confidence and contentment the feeble, wee fingers closed and curled round hers,—and held her fast! Weak as a silken thread, yet stronger in its persuasive force than a grasp of iron, that soft, light pressure controlled and restrained her, . . . very gradually the mists of her mind cleared,—the rattling, thunderous ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... seem to justify discontent, much more must it be good and desirable for those who already possess everything which can be conceived necessary to happiness. It is the merest insolence of selfishness to preach contentment to a laborer who gets thirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active and plotting covetousness to be meritorious in a man who has three thousand a year. In this, as in all other points of mental discipline, it is the duty of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
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