"Amiability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing is that while Shakespeare is depicting Richard's heartlessness, he does his work badly; the traits, as I have shown, are crudely extravagant and even contradictory; but when he paints Richard's gentleness and amiability, he works like a master, every touch is infallible: he is ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... course he could not have expressed all this as the prince did, still clearly entered into it and was greatly conciliated, as was evident from the increased amiability of his expression. "If you are really very anxious for a smoke," he remarked, "I think it might possibly be managed, if you are very quick about it. You see they might come out and inquire for you, and you wouldn't be on the spot. You see that door there? Go in there ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... whatever, could bring earls into their nets, there was no reason why Nora could not be a princess or a duchess. So she planned accordingly. But the child puzzled and eluded her; and from time to time she discovered a disquieting strength of character behind a disarming amiability. Ever since Nora had returned home by way of the Orient, the mother had recognized a subtle change, so subtle that she never had an opportunity of alluding to it verbally. Perhaps the fault lay at her own door. She should never have permitted Nora to come ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... buckboard, with one of the stablemen to drive her. The landlord put her neat bundle under the seat of the buckboard with his own hand. There was something in the child's bearing, her dignity and her amiability, which made people offer her, half in fun, and half in earnest, the deference paid to age ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by leniency born of a fellow-feeling. At his best he is "a clever, good-for-nothing fellow." The shortcomings of this presumptively primitive type of character are weakness, inefficiency, lack of initiative and ingenuity, and a yielding and indolent amiability, together with a lively but inconsequential animistic sense. Along with these traits go certain others which have some value for the collective life process, in the sense that they further the facility ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... fact is that the Goody, anxious to invest herself with an appearance of forbearance towards the frivolities of youth, readiness to forego (from amiability) any share in the conversation, insight into the rapports of others (especially male and female rapports), and general superiority to human weakness, had endeavoured to express all these things by laying down her knitting, folding her hands on her circumference, and looking as if she knew ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... very angry, and yet there was a sparkle of something like amusement in her eyes. Having bowed to Tussie Fritzing sat down again with the elaboration of one who means to stay a long while. During his walk from the farm he had made up his mind to be of a most winning amiability and patience, blended with a determination that nothing should shake. At the door, it is true, he had been stirred to petulance by the foolish face and utterances of the footman James, but during the whole of the time he had been alone ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... away at once with so many qualities with one fell swoop, that one can hardly tell what is left. It puts amiability out of the question, and unselfishness and cheerfulness, and—and tact, and everything which makes us care for a person or not. When they are gone, what ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the less hopeful after this effort in that her companion only showed a strange good nature. And it wasn't a satiric amiability, though it WAS amusement. "Take Mrs. ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... that we were so; and lastly appeared a Mr. W———, a merchant in Manchester, and a very intelligent man; and the party was then complete. Mr. Swain, the poet, is not a man of fluent conversation; he said, indeed, very little, but gave me the impression of amiability and simplicity of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these Newport ladies by winning, do you? Not I, my boy. I plan too far ahead for that. For the good of our cause it is my task to lose steadily and with good grace. This establishes my credit, proves my amiability, ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... face suddenly changed from an aspect of moroseness to one of bewitching amiability. He stood ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and she was my—wife—and when I was given a parish and had introduced her to my people, they loved her for the white gentleness which seemed purity, and for acquiescent amiability which seemed—goodness. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... to learn something of the Paris suburbs. The joyous expedition which ended our every day that year was so in the spirit of Harland that I should be inclined to look upon him as the tempter, had we not, with the usual amiability of the tempted, met him more than half way. Still, he excelled us all in the knack of collecting us from our work, no matter how it had scattered us or in what quarter of the town we might be, and carrying us off suddenly ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... opening in the direction of place and power. Nothing could exceed the manliness of his bearing in the unequal conflict in which every session he found himself engaged, unless it is to be looked for in the inexhaustible amiability that characterized his relations with the most implacable of his foes. It is, however, evident that as his health began to fail from the long course of exhausting labours which his office imposed upon him, he became more sensitive to such provocations, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... constitutional tendencies were all evil. His greatest pleasure consisted in annoying those about him. Those who were most conversant with his humor could never guess the temper of his mind. He laughed the loudest and affected the greatest amiability when he was most exasperated, and scowled defiance when he was perfectly unruffled. His only talent was a keen sense of the ridiculous. Nothing escaped him that could be tortured into sarcasm, although no one could have guessed, from his abstracted and careless demeanor, ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... his sacred abstractions under the last palm-trees fringing a desert. In the heat and noise of quarrelling Turks and Egyptians, I have come suddenly, as with the cool shock of his own shower-bath, on the listless amiability of the English gentleman. The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... which especially it has this being abroad, and that is something distinctive, marked, speci- fically or individually speaking, as for a voice and echo clearness; for a reflected image light, brightness; for a shadow-casting body bulk; for a man genius, great achievements, amiability, and so on. In this case it is, as the sonnet says, distinctive quality in genius. ... By moonmarks I mean crescent-shaped markings on the quill- feathers, either in the colouring of the feather or made by the overlapping of one on another.' Letter to R. B., ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... and Bacon, and were oftener at the apex of a triangle than its comfortable base? And you always as calm as though 'sailing over summer seas!' Come—I am absolutely blue;' and the half-fretful belle, who had really exhausted her strength and amiability by a grand pedestrian tour in the Central Park that morning, stretched out demurely her gaiter boots, and drew with an invisible pencil on imaginary paper, the outline of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... using his note-book in an obvious manner, "now skewing at an object, now leering at an individual," he was only once thoroughly put out, and that was at Beth Gelert by a Scotchman: which suggests a great deal of amiability, on one side, considering that Borrow's Welsh was ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... trying to pay them back with love,—for presents, such as thousands would like to make, are prohibited by disciplinary rule. Officers and crew must be weary; but the crowding and the questioning are borne with charming amiability. Everything is shown and explained in detail: the huge thirty-centimetre gun, with its loading apparatus and directing machinery; the quick-firing batteries; the torpedoes, with their impulse-tubes; the electric lantern, with its searching mechanism. I myself, though a foreigner, and ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... of his temper, over which he had very little. He had taken on the Mastership of the Pexdale Hounds in succession to a highly popular man who had fallen foul of his committee, and the Major found himself confronted with the overt hostility of at least half the hunt, while his lack of tact and amiability had done much to alienate the remainder. Hence subscriptions were beginning to fall off, foxes grew provokingly scarcer, and wire obtruded itself with increasing frequency. The Major could plead reasonable excuse for his fit of ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... all sure that it was only that. This fatal amiability might have raised quite different expectations in Adair. Like her two latest husbands, he might take a notion to hang his hat in her hall. If he did, would she abate her amiability sufficiently to tell him to hang it ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... are always talking with you about this one or that one's social position, and they never make new acquaintances without finding out what set they belong to; and I was never allowed from a little girl to make acquaintances with any children whose mothers were not in the right set; and amiability and goodness had nothing to do with ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... manage everything, and then you have no time!" said Ethel, sensible all the time of her own ill-humour, and of her sister's patience and amiability, yet propelled to speak the unpleasant truths that in her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... without a word said; but we are well, and sing better than in France. The air is excellent, and this is a terrestrial paradise, where the difficulties and troubles of life come so lovingly, that the more one is piqued, the more one's heart is filled with amiability." ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... home, feeding rankly on rumour; Opinion in neutral countries; Opinion getting into great tangles of misunderstanding and incorrect valuation between the Allies. The confidence and courage of the enemy; the amiability and assistance of the neutral; the zeal, sacrifice, and serenity of the home population; all were affected. The German cultivation of opinion began long before the war; it is still the most systematic and, because of the psychological ineptitude of the Germans, it is probably the clumsiest. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... being enough to drive one wild!—for low be it spoken—it is the sheerest impudence!!! Indeed, the visitor who does not know her, and happens to "strike" on one of these bad days, would have to be dowered with more than his share of amiability and imagination, should he be able to mentally visualize anything approaching "brilliant accomplishments" in the face of one of these fiascos. Whether these "turns" be due to sudden obstinacy, to some feeling of injury inflicted either by myself or the onlooker—to what on earth such tempers ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... a story concerning a critic upon whose death half the stage went into quarter-mourning. If it be true, it showed that he was very short-sighted in his amiability, for when dealing with an overcrowded profession one must remember that ill-earned praise of A may keep B, who is more worthy, from getting A's place, to which, of course, he has a better title. It is very hard to act upon this proposition, although it involves a duty, for it is much easier ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Minority Report; and by the end of a year or so has come to telling Hudge heatedly that the people were much happier where they were before. As the people preserve in both places precisely the same air of dazed amiability, it is very difficult to find out which is right. But at least one might safely say that no people ever liked stench or starvation as such, but only some peculiar pleasures en tangled with them. Not ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... in great spirits, and prattled away as they sat at dinner, emboldened by the lady's unusual amiability to ask all sorts of questions, some of which proved rather embarrassing to Miss Henny, and very amusing to Roxy, listening in ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... the hero of the little circle, where his wit, his person, his education, his amiability, were perpetually praised. One or another would remark that in seven years he had largely increased his fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand francs a year, and was surrounded, like the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... the boy. Either under the venerable title bestowed by Bill, or as "Tom Islington," after his adopted father, his was a familiar presence in the settlement, and the theme of much local criticism and comment. His waywardness, indolence, and unaccountable amiability—a quality at once suspicious and gratuitous in a pioneer community like Angel's—had often been the subject of fierce discussion. A large and reputable majority believed him destined for the gallows; a minority not quite so reputable enjoyed his presence without troubling themselves much about ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... literature. His infinitesimal library, a few French novels, an Horace, and some well thumbed volumes of the modern English poets in the familiar edition of Tauchnitz, he put at my disposal, in return for a collection, somewhat similar, although a little larger, of my own. In his rare moments of amiability, he could talk on such matters with verve and originality: more usually he preferred to pursue with the bitterest animosity an abstract fetish which he called his "luck." He was by temperament an enraged ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... it isn't Amy, short for amiability. To you I shall continue to be Little Miss Grouch until ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... said, that when women addict themselves to vice of any kind, they carry it to extravagance, and become far worse than bad men. In like manner, when the natural softness and amiability of the Hindoo character yield to the temptations of luxury and dominion, the individual grows into a tyrant as cruel and odious as any of those depicted in history. This apparent discrepancy has given rise to many speculative mistakes; but, in our opinion, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the Church for the same reason. Ah! you must be careful what you say lest you offend the young! This is an indulgent, a good-natured, a compromising time. Behind this solicitude the best reasons lie, but is there no danger to these young people in all this amiability? Is it quite impossible for a young man to be put in peril by our very ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... superiority of the African race. She loved to descant upon it as the cause and explanation of her own arrogant habit of feeling; and she seemed indeed to have inherited something of the Indian's hauteur along with the Ethiop's supple cunning and abundant amiability. She gave many instances in which her pride had met and overcome the insolence of employers, and the kindly old creature was by no means singular in her pride ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... ourselves Chevalier Petit-Bon-Homme-vil-encore, became the object of my admiration. I made him a few of those advances which never compromise a woman; I spoke of the good taste exhibited in his latest waistcoats and in his canes, and he thought me a lady of extreme amiability. I thought him a chevalier of extreme youth; he called upon me; I put on a number of little airs, and pretended to be unhappy at home, and to have deep sorrows. You know what a woman means when she talks ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... as are entitled to fair answers; at least the first. I do not call levity, amiability; nor mere constitutional gaiety. Some of the seemingly most light-hearted women I have ever known, have been anything but amiable. There must be an unusual absence of selfishness,—a person must live less for herself, than others—or rather, must find ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... friend and sought none. He knew the liking to be there as surely as he knew it to be shy and sullen, curt in expression, contemptuous of itself. Had he ever troubled to examine himself honestly, Gilbart must have acknowledged himself Casey's inferior in all but amiability; and Casey no doubt knew this. But in friendship as in love there is usually one who likes and one who suffers himself to be liked, and the positions are not allotted by merit. Gilbart—a self-deceiver all his life—had accepted the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... each time he took out the Levantine with him, when it was necessary to move this indolent person, who, not being able to accept even any responsibility whatever, left others to think, decide, act for her, going willingly where she was desired to go, once she was started. And it was on this amiability that he counted to take her to Hemerlingue's. But when, after dejeuner, Jansoulet dressed, superb, perspiring with the effort to put on gloves, asked if madame would soon be ready, he was told that she was not ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... marked him as first in whatever company he chose to frequent. A good friend and a good foe, men thought seriously before they opposed him. He had made himself a power in the Southwest because he was the type that goes the limit when aroused. Yet about him, too, there was the manner of a large amiability, of the easy tolerance characteristic ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... ranch. Mr. D—— became instantly possessed of a desire to own the marvel, and a bargain was concluded on the spot. Billy by this time had shed his horns, and was all that could be wished for in the way of amiability. We tied his legs together, and shipped him ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... as mothers or sisters or wives. No man who is engaged in the serious work of the world, in the effort to purify public opinion and direct it aright, but is helped or hindered by the women of his household. Few men can stand the depressing and degrading influence of the uninterested and placid amiability of women incapable of the true public spirit, incapable of a generous or noble aim—whose whole sphere of ideas is petty and personal. It is not only that such women do nothing themselves—they slowly asphyxiate their friends, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... but it isn't Miriam's amiability that I'm thinking about at present. It's what we'd better do to straighten out this trouble for Elfreda," said Grace anxiously. "I felt glad when I came to Overton that I did not have to worry about any one but myself, and now I'm confronted ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... with the travellers to London, and spent a pleasant day or so, being hurried about from shop to shop. If he had not been the most angelic bishop in England he would have revolted; but as he was anxious that his wife should have no cause of complaint, he exhausted himself with the utmost amiability. But the longest lane has a turning, and the day came when Mrs Pendle and Lucy, attended by the dazed Harry, left for Nauheim via Queenborough, Flushing and Cologne. Mrs Pendle declared, as the train moved away, that she was thoroughly ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... a creature of light and laughter, but there were in her odd little streaks of unconsidered impulse that testified to a passionate soul. She would flash into a temper over a mere trifle, and then in a moment flash back into mirth and amiability. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... that her parents were well-to-do people. All that we gather of Joan's early years proves her nature to have been a compound of love and goodness. Every trait recorded of the little maid's life at home which has come down to us reveals a mixture of amiability, unselfishness, and charity. From her earliest years she loved to help the weak and poor: she was known, when there was no room for the weary wayfarer to pass the night in her parents' house, to give up her bed to them, and to sleep on ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... he watched her expanding so rapidly into womanhood and exhibiting such graces of manner, such amiability of disposition, such selfless regard for others, combined with a physical beauty such as he thought he had never before gazed upon, a great yearning would clutch his soul, and a lump would rise in his throat. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to look at it, of course," assented the agent, who made it a point to agree always with a man of Ford's size and caliber, on the theory that amiability means popularity, and that placation is better than plasters. "You sure ought to let her do the hunting—and the worrying, too. You aren't to blame if she married you unawares. She did it all on her own hook—and she must have known what ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Wylder just announced by soft-toned Larcom, is the daughter (there is no mistaking the jolly smile and lumpy odd little features, and radiance of amiability) of the good doctor and Mrs. Chubley, so curiously blended in her loving face. And last comes in old Major Jackson, smiling largely, squaring himself, and doing his courtesies in a firm but florid military style, and plainly pleased to find himself in good company and on the eve ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... France, since Giles was certainly to go upon it; and lest Mrs Headley should be starting on her journey, he said he should despatch a special messenger to stay her. Giles, who had of course been longing for the splendid pageant, cheered up into great amiability, and volunteered to write to his mother, that she had best not think of coming, till he sent word to her that matters were forward. Even thus, Master Headley was somewhat insecure. He thought the dame quite capable of coming and taking possession of his house in his absence, and therefore ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those lively cheerful individuals on whom amiability had set its unmistakable stamp, and, like most of his kind, his soul's peace depended in large measure on the unstinted approval of his fellows. In hunting to death a small tabby cat he had done a thing of ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... through various paths of thought. She could recall Rosalie's girlhood, and what she herself, as an unconsciously observing child, had known of her character. She remembered the simple impressionability of her mind. She had been the most amenable little creature in the world. Her yielding amiability could always be counted upon as a factor by the calculating; sweet-tempered to weakness, she could be beguiled or distressed into any course the desires of others dictated. An ill-tempered or self-pitying person could alter any line of conduct she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hear half of what Sommers was saying on the way to the cabin. His very amiability jarred upon her nervous depression. She had always liked him, and respected his vast learning, but to-day she certainly did not get much comfort out of his converse. She wondered why she had been so light-hearted while Starr was with her showing her how to shoot, and lecturing her ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having poured several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea without probing it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously had terrified ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... flexibility, richness, and musical tone of that vehicle of thought which could represent with full effect the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, [Footnote: Albius Tibullus was a poet of singular gentleness and amiability, who wrote verses of exquisite finish, gracefully telling the story of his worldly misfortunes and expressing the fluctuations that marked his indulgence in the tender passion, in which his experience ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... merely howled. Other triumphs were but preparatory to this ultimate triumph, and if she fell short of his ideal, he would take no further interest in her voice. However well she might sing Margaret, he would not really care; as for Lucia and Violetta, it would be his amiability that would keep him in the stalls. To-day her fate was to be decided. If Madame Savelli were to say that she had no voice—she couldn't very well say that, but she might say that she had only a nice voice, which, if properly trained, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Up to that time he had made his own industry the butt of much good-natured ridicule, viewing it apparently as a sort of vacation novelty amusing enough while the novelty lasted. But he went from task to task that next day in a methodical, dogged fashion that was farthest of all from amiability. Two or three times Steve, trying to spare him needless effort, attempting to show him how to favor blistered hands and aching back, met with rebuffs so curt that he learned to keep his advice to himself. He knew what end Garry was ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... to his ability as a writer, he possessed fine literary taste; and his personal character was marked by great amiability, courtliness, and patriotism. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the latter of whom was destined afterwards to exercise so much influence over his fate. The Duke of Orleans was pleased with the vivacity and good sense of the Scottish adventurer, while the latter was no less pleased with the wit and amiability of a prince who promised to become his patron. They were often thrown into each other's society, and Law seized every opportunity to instil his financial doctrines into the mind of one whose proximity to the throne pointed him out as destined, at no very distant date, to play an important ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... politician than as a statesman in the sense that Pitt, Canning, and Peel were statesmen. He was not made for active life; he was rather a philosopher, wielding power by his pen, casting his searching glance into everything, and leading men by his amiability, his sympathetic nature, his force of character, and his enlightened mind. The question might arise whether Jefferson's greatness was owing to force of circumstances, or to an original, creative intellect, like that of Franklin or Alexander Hamilton. But for the Revolution he might ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... told me this I have been turning it over in my mind; and it is particularly vexing not to know more. "Delightful" can be such jargon and mean nothing—or, at any rate, nothing more than amiability. Still, that is something, for one is not always amiable, even when meeting strangers. On the other hand, it might be, from ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift and amiability of disposition are two different things. A good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers: it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not there, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... heart;—a strong head to perceive and grasp the truth of things, a strong will to select and order the materials for expressing it, and a strong heart, which is tenderness, to give the work a soul of beauty and sweetness and amiability. As a man combines all these strengths, and as, moreover, through the unifying power of imagination, he pours the united life and virtue of them all into his work; so will his worth and honour stand as an artist. For whence should ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Amiability itself; they know nothing. [Rising and looking down upon FRAYNE.] You see, Chick, all that Miss Fullgarney has to do—if she hasn't already done it—is to tell a trifling taradiddle to Muriel concerning the events of last night. Well, in effect, she has promised ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... who has known it and has often sought that spot for the sake of its ancient associations, and of the sweet solace they have found in the solitude, or for the noble view of the sacred city from its summit, will not deplore this fatal amiability of the authorities, this weak desire to please every one and inability to say no ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... delighted at the failure of Polly's scheme to sew him in his tent, that he simply radiated amiability, and spent the whole morning helping Elsie and Margery with a set of elaborate dinner- cards, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... whole air of the youth was that of goodness. I do not think that the impression made by him forecast his career, or, in any degree, the leadership which he afterwards held in his Church. But everybody who knew him at that time must recall his charming amiability. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Will you make me the pleasure and the honour to come and do the ouverture of the hunt at my chateau to-morrow, Sunday—my auto will call for you about six of the morning. We will be about ten guns, and I count on the amiability of my partridges and my hares to make you pass a beautiful and good day. Will you accept, dear sir, the assurance of my sentiments the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... small for her monstrous bulk; her profile, pure Greek, the eyes ox-like, the cups full of feeling, with heavy accents beneath them. Her face, almost slim, had planes eloquent with surface meanings upon the cheeks and chin, while the mouth, sweet for a large woman, revealed amiability quite in accord with the expression of the eyes. These were the glory of her countenance, these and her resonant black hair. Isolate this head from the shoulders, from all the gross connotations of the frame, and the trick would be done. So ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... on the 23rd of October 1893. His remains were brought to Sofia, where they received a public funeral, and were eventually deposited in a mausoleum erected in his memory. Prince Alexander possessed much charm and amiability of manner; he was tall, dignified and strikingly handsome. His capabilities as a soldier have been generally recognized by competent authorities. As a ruler he committed some errors, but his youth and inexperience and the extreme difficulty of his position must be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the end of the seventeenth century, was in the habit of telling visitors that he entered the playhouse as a servitor. Malone recorded in 1780 a stage tradition 'that his first office in the theatre was that of prompter's attendant' or call-boy. His intellectual capacity and the amiability with which he turned to account his versatile powers were probably soon recognised, and thenceforth his ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... With characteristic amiability, combined with that courage which had caused impatient people, who snubbed her in vain, to say she had the hide of a rhinoceros, Miss Luscombe had accepted the blow of Rathbone's proposal—the proposal which she had taken for an offer of marriage, but which was really an offer ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... long a subject of patient suffering from disease, for many years an elder of the Presbyterian church, and died peacefully on the 13th of April, 1846, aged seventy-two years. His wife, Catharine, a lady of great amiability and worth, died on the 17th of December, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... ever-growing liberality, by the way, in speaking of this matter of temper. In old age, he said that the world certainly does get on in minor morals: that when he was young "everybody had a temper"; whereas now no such thing is allowed; amiability is the rule; and an imperfect temper is an offence and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... the artist or poet, those countless restrictions which once ruled all this fairy-world [459] and shaped the soul of it, he cannot but admire and love their best results: the simplicity of old custom,—the amiability of manners,—the daintiness of habits,—the delicate tact displayed in pleasure-giving,—the strange power of presenting outwardly, under any circumstances, only the best and brightest aspects of character. What emotional poetry, for ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... each time an explanation had been asked concerning the state of France, the Englishman openly drew out a note-book and requested those about him, the wine merchant, the abbe, or the young noble to repeat their remarks; to which each had complied with an amiability equal to the courteous tone of the request. He had noted down the most important, extraordinary and, picturesque features of the robbery of the diligence, the state of Vendee, and the details about ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... flowed into another channel. She dreaded her husband in his black rages, but she feared him more now in his unusual amiability. Perhaps he would strike Tobey when he saw him. She ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... "Jack's" amiability, too, was a permanent condition. Apparently no one could make him angry or resentful. For this reason, he was the target for many pranks perpetrated ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... fear Douglas." The younger, Douglas, was a man whom some people would have called plain. But the dark sallow face, with its irregular features, was illuminated by an expression of mingled intelligence and amiability, which possessed a charm for all ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... goddess than a woman." Her student life has been marked by seriousness and deep religious feeling. She is a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo. She was deeply loved by her teachers, more for her solidity of character and amiability of disposition than for exceptionally brilliant intellectual traits, though her ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... might have been in the rear." The same person also testifies to Beckwith's care of his men, extending even to minute particulars about clothing. Also, that he was a great favourite with his brother officers on account of his intelligence and amiability. After recovering somewhat from his wound he returned to England, and visited America during this time. Shortly after his arrival in England from the latter place he sought out his old companions in the army, and among others he called on ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... excellent qualities which the friends of John Martin knew him to possess. Rectitude of principle, abhorrence of injustice and intolerance, deep love of country, the purity and earnestness of a saint, allied with the kindliness and inoffensiveness of childhood; amiability and disinterestedness, together with a perfect abnegation of self, and total freedom from the vanity which affected a few of his compatriots—these they gave him credit for, but they were totally unprepared for the lion-like courage, the boldness, and the promptitude displayed ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... realize that never for a moment had the proud smile wavered. She was beginning to feel as though an elastic band had been stretched for hours under her nose and behind her ears, and the sole comment her lofty amiability had drawn forth had been a reference to the famed animal ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... I wish to vie with Mr. Allen's unrivalled polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible, I will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm between an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Napoleon and the average level of their respective tribes. Let it be as small as Mr. Allen thinks. All that I object to is that he should think ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... proper snuff-box, but only a box turned of bone, shaped like a powder-flask. When they take snuff, they throw back their head, insert the point of the flask in their nose, and shake a dose of tobacco into it. They then, with the greatest amiability, offer it to their neighbour, he to his, and so it goes round till it ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... amiability of manners, and kindliness of heart, Anne Barnard added the more substantial, and, in females, the more uncommon quality of eminent devotedness to intellectual labour. Literature had been her favourite pursuit from childhood, and even in advanced life, when her residence was the constant resort ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising, he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said of any man, his misfortune rather than his fault. But it was his fault rather than his misfortune that he permitted himself to be dragged in a day into a line of conduct which the sober judgment of years had disapproved. He is usually and most justly regarded as a man of great amiability of character; of unquestionable integrity in all the purely personal relations of life; of more than ordinary intellectual ability of a solid, though not brilliant, quality; and a diligent student of the science ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... know what you'll think of me, and what I've come for," said Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her, and Mrs. Witham appeared in the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... that horrible Turk, Jacob Asdrubal, the Old Bailey barrister, the terror of witnesses, the bane of judges,—who was gall and wormwood to all opponents. It was said of him that "at home" his docile amiability was the marvel of his friends, and delight of his wife and daughters. "At home," perhaps, Mr. Daubeny might have been waved at, and have forgiven it; but men who saw the scene in the House of Commons knew that he would never forgive ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... any other teacher, and heard me play the first movement. It was frightfully hard, but I had studied it so much that I managed to get through with it pretty successfully. Nothing could exceed Liszt's amiability, or the trouble he gave himself, and instead of frightening me, he inspired me. Never was there such a delightful teacher! and he is the most sympathetic one I've had. You feel so free with him, and he develops the very spirit of music in you. He doesn't ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... not all of a punitive nature. There were two medals in the school, one for spelling, the other for amiability. They were awarded once a week, and the holders wore them about the neck conspicuously, and were envied accordingly. John Robards—he of the golden curls—wore almost continuously the medal for amiability, while Sam Clemens had a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... came back we had a good supper, and Maton pleased me both by her appetite and amiability. When we had finished I affectionately asked her if she would like to share my bed, and she replied as tenderly that she was wholly mine. And so, after passing a voluptuous night, we rose in the morning the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... volunteered Eph, with suspicious amiability, holding out his hand, which the Frenchman took daintily. "I'm a 'shoveleer' myself, and this awkward, gawky looking boy ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... her countenance or deportment; and, if she was not called a queen, she might as well be any ugly old woman. The Princess Charlotte of Wales I thought pretty; she has small features, regular, pale complexion, great amiability of expression and condescension of manners; the Princess Elizabeth is extremely corpulent, and, from what I could see of her face, was ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... "Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support. 'Someone ought to do it, but why should I?' is the ever reechoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. 'Someone ought to do it, so why not I?' is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution." True enough! and between these ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... stood there affable and smiling, endeavouring to put a handful of awkward girls at their ease. But neither his nor Mrs. Strachey's efforts availed. It was impossible for the pupils to throw off, at will, the crippling fear that governed their relations with the Principal. To them, his amiability resembled the antics of an uncertain-tempered elephant, with which you could never feel safe.— Besides on this occasion it was a young batch, and of particularly mixed stations. And so a dozen girls, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... he, nodding his huge square-cut head. This amiability in the matter of leave taking was unusual. Trina put the dishes down and came up to him, her little chin, once so adorable, in ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... her elder sister. Before the actress of the evening had been five minutes on the stage, Norah detected, to her own indescribable astonishment, that Magdalen had audaciously individualized the feeble amiability of "Julia's" character, by seizing no less a person than herself as the model to act it by. She saw all her own little formal peculiarities of manner and movement unblushingly reproduced—and even the very tone of her voice so accurately ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of the office." Consequently, Mr. McInnes was removed from office, and the Dominion government appointed in his place Sir Henri Joly de Lotbiniere, who has had large experience in public affairs, and is noted for his amiability and discretion.] ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... town of Luca, he felt that indescribable sense of a welcoming in the mere outward appearance of things, which seems to mark out certain places for the special purpose of evening rest, and gives them always a peculiar amiability in retrospect. Under the deepening twilight, the rough-tiled roofs seem to huddle together side by side, like one continuous shelter over the whole township, spread low and broad above the snug sleeping-rooms within; and the place one sees for the first time, and must tarry in but for a night, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... condition of the provinces. "This sick man will die in our arms," he said, "without our wishing to kill him." He also left no doubt in the royal mind as to the utter incompetency of the archduke for his office. Although he had much Christianity, amiability, and good intentions, he was so unused to business, so slow and so lazy, so easily persuaded by those around him, as to be always falling into errors. He was the servant of his own servants, particularly of those least disposed to the king's service and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spokes again with disdainful obedience, and the red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through the open skylight the hail "On deck there!" arrested him short, attentive, and with a sudden change to amiability in the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at Barnard College (Columbia University), March 7, 1906, by the Barnard Union. One of the young ladies presented Mr. Clemens, and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an address. She closed with the expression of the great joy it gave her fellow-collegians, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bit,' and went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, 'Tommy', the great, idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for one afternoon ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... summer when he is happy and gay, his song is extremely soft and agreeable, while it grows very mournful and plaintive as cold weather approaches. He is mild of temper, and a peaceable and harmless neighbor, setting a fine example of amiability to his feathered friends. In the early spring, however, he wages war against robins, wrens, swallows, and other birds whose habitations are of a kind to take his fancy. A celebrated naturalist says: "This bird seems incapable of uttering a harsh note, or of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Borasdine asked. Further along were two women putting fish upon poles for drying, and a third was engaged in skinning a large salmon. The women did not look up from their work, and were not inclined to amiability. They had Mongol features, complexion, eyes, and hair, the latter thick and black. Some of the men wear it plaited into queues, and others let it grow pretty much at will. Each woman I saw had it braided ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Justice to Phil's amiability of character requires, however, that we should state that he never sought to terminate an argument with his fists unless he was invited to do so, and even then he invariably gave his rash challenger fair warning, and offered to let him retreat if so disposed. But when injustice ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Professor, with his wonted amiability, "which you are not. No, I can only call it a senseless and ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Henrietta was altogether herself, save for a pretty pensiveness, and emerged with all her accustomed amiability from ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... features of the land useful for sea-marks, of villages and tribes and modes of barter and precautions to take: with the instructive tales about native chiefs dyed more or less blue, whose character for greediness, ferocity, or amiability must have been expounded to him with that capacity for vivid language which seems joined naturally to the shadiness of moral character and recklessness of disposition. With that sort of spiced food provided for his anxious thought, watchful for strange men, strange beasts, strange ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and who daily, in the privacy of his own apartment, examined his soft cheeks by the aid of his sisters' "back-hair glass." He was a handsome boy, too; tall, and like David—"ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and his face, though clouded then, bore the expression of general amiability. He was the eldest son in a large young family, and was being educated at one of the best public schools. He did not, it must be confessed, think either small beer or small beans of himself; and as to the beer and beans that his family thought of ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... comparatively tardy. The epistles of the lady, through the partiality of her brother, were frequently shown to Clive, and they bespoke her to be what from all accounts she was—a woman of very superior understanding, and of much amiability of character. Clive was charmed with her letters, for in those days, be it remembered, the fair sex were not so familiarized to the pen as at the present period. At that time, to indite a really good epistle as to penmanship and diction, was a formidable ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... said no word to his companion about that Barbara Golding who played such a gracious part in the home of the Osgoods. He had arranged the movement of the story to his fancy, but would it occur in all as he hoped? With an amiability that was almost malicious in its adroit suggestiveness, though, to be sure, it was honest, he had induced the soldier to talk of his past. His words naturally, and always, radiated to the sun, whose image was now hidden, but for whose memory no superscription on monument or cenotaph ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the silence that neither desired but both were too stubborn to break; but it could not break the habit of being together. So Bud was perfectly aware of the fact that he would be missed, and he was ill-humored enough to be glad of it. Frank, if he met Bud that day, was likely to have his amiability tested to ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... was perennially importuning Laurence to take a stroll down to Booyseus, "Just for a constitutional, you know." And the latter would laugh, and good-naturedly acquiesce. It was a cheap way of setting up a character for amiability, he would say to himself satirically; for as yet Holmes hardly suspected he was almost as powerfully drawn thither as Holmes was himself—more powerfully, perhaps—only, with the advantage of years and experience and cooler brain, he had ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... on his recovery, he has afterwards exhibited the most undoubted sorrow and repentance. How often is the same disposition exhibited by children from the same cause, and how speedily, on recovering their health, is their amiability restored! So we must not be over-harsh in judging of the poor elephants, who have not the reasoning powers even of ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the age of eight years. A lady who had remarked the amiability of his manners and his precocious natural abilities, recommended him to the Bishop of Auxerre. Through the influence of this prelate, Fourier was admitted into the military school which was conducted at that time by the Benedictines of the Convent of St. Mark. There he prosecuted his literary ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... general not small—the mouth invariably adorned with two rows of brilliant white teeth,[16] and their long black hair, arranged in plaits, falls gracefully over the bosom and shoulders. Add to all this a captivating grace of manner and deportment, joined to an exceeding degree of gentleness and amiability, and it will be readily admitted that the Limena is a noble specimen ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... natural amiability of his disposition eminently fitted him for the high social position he attained; but the fervor he felt for his work made him forget everything foreign to it until the hour arrived when he must leave his painting-room. He was fond of receiving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... than the romantic emotions of either a wife or a husband. Though she had ceased to love George, she could still be amiable to him; and it occurred to her at times that if one had to choose between the two not necessarily inseparable qualities of love and amiability, George was not losing greatly by the exchange. When, however, at the end of three months, George's capricious symptoms disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and his attentions lapsed into casual expressions of a nonchalant kindness, she drew a ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... he was not sure that he wanted them. Yet he had always thought that he possessed a strong paternal instinct, an interest in young life, in opening problems. Had that all, he wondered, been a mere interest, a thing to exercise his energy and amiability upon, and had his enjoyment of it all depended upon his real detachment, upon the fact that his responsibility was only a temporary one? It was all very bewildering to him. Moreover, his quiet and fertile imagination flashed suddenly through pictures of ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sir—my dear Mr. Wyant—you find me in an abominable position—that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have taken advantage of you—yes! I have counted on your amiability, your chivalry—too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was to oblige a lady"—he laid a hand on his heart—"a lady whom I would die to serve!" He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate English swept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with some difficulty, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... entertainment which combined two of his abiding interests, public debate and private theatricals. That was a setting in which he could completely exemplify his favourite recipe for the modern world, that it should be approached in a spirit of intellectual ferocity and personal amiability. But what marked his own contributions to these affairs was the intellectual "ferocity," in the weight and content of his criticism. Most of the eminent men who consented to take part came to play a game for the sake of the Hospitals, and because they rarely unbent like that in public they were ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... much loved by all who were brought into contact with him was his great amiability, thorough kindness of heart: his care was always not to hurt or wound another's feelings; and even in the heat of debate, and under great provocation, I never heard him utter an unkind word, or put a harsh construction on the conduct of any one, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... fine spaniel and a cross of the terrier and bull dog. In our days of polish and refinement, we had a Lord Stair, a Sedley, a Sir John Stepney, a Sir William Hamilton, and many others, as our ambassadors, representing our nation as the best bred in the world; and by their grace and amiability, gaining the admiration of the whole continent. We had, in remoter times, our Lords Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and Lyttleton, our Steele, &c, the celebrated poets, authors, and patterns of fashion and elegance of the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... or ware, or yo, or boku, according to rank or circumstance, but in the language of woman, it is warawa. And women's language is very soft and gentle; and I do not think it is possible to translate such softness and amiability of words into any other language. So I can only give you an imperfect ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... telling me the other day of the martyrdom he had suffered from this class. He spoke with much feeling, as he is the soul of amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and afflicted with a hopelessly bad memory for faces. For the last few years, he has been in the habit of spending one or two of the winter months in Washington, where his friends put him up at one club or another. Each winter on ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... haven't had a medal yet?' and repeating to all of them: 'Ah! If I belonged to the committee, I'd make them walk straight.' He sent every one away delighted, closed the door behind each visitor with an air of extreme amiability, through which, however, there pierced the secret sneer of an ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... talents had made him indispensable in every company, declared that for that day he was the marquise's cavalier, a title which his sister-in-law, with her usual amiability, confirmed. Each of the huntsmen, following this example, made choice of a lady to whom to dedicate his attentions throughout the day; then, this chivalrous arrangement being completed, all present directed their course towards the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... his privy adviser to win Clotilde, Lucien found the courage of the parvenu; he came to the house five days in the week, he swallowed all the affronts of the envious, he endured impertinent looks, and answered irony with wit. His persistency, the charm of his manners, and his amiability, at last neutralized opposition and reduced obstacles. He was still in the highest favor with Madame de Maufrigneuse, whose ardent letters, written under the influence of her passion, were preserved by ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... was a fine figure of a woman, so long as he viewed Niafer through the closed window of Ageus. Dom Manuel looked contentedly enough upon the wife who was the reward of his toil and suffering in Dun Vlechlan, and the child who was the reward of his amiability and shrewdness in dealing with the stork, all seemed well so long as he regarded them ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... end of his cigarette, and gave a lift of shoulder, which might mean anything or nothing, and so was irritating to a degree. He did not pursue the subject further, and so several belated retorts were left tickling futilely the tongues of the Happy Family—which does not make for amiability. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... spruce in his attire. Evidently he intended to pass the night at the Priory, since they had let the trap go back to the village. She was glad that he had come, for his presence would act as a restraint upon the Girdlestones. In spite of her guardian's amiability at breakfast, she could not forget the words which he had used the morning before or the incident of the poison bottle. She was as convinced as ever that he meant mischief to her, but she had ceased to fear him. It never ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her sharply; suddenly suspecting that his auditor was not perfectly sympathetic. She smiled a little at the images passing through her mind, and Leonard, taking her remark for badinage, allowed his own features to relax to their original amiability. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... people he behaves simply, almost modestly, but with dignity; they find him rather a bore, but respect him for being, as they say, 'a perfect gentleman.' With Russians he is more free and easy, gives vent to his spleen, and makes fun of himself and them, but that is done by him with great amiability, negligence, and propriety. He holds Slavophil views; it is well known that in the highest society this is regarded as tres distingue! He reads nothing in Russian, but on his writing table there is a silver ashpan in ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... feared Bough, and shrunk from his anger with unutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy hand was more bearable than his smile and his jesting amiability. Now, when she went down to the kraals on an errand, or to the orchard or garden for fruit or vegetables, or to the river for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious, padding footsteps coming after her, and would ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... appropriate it to myself. And each one of us ought to help to remedy the guilt, and just because others do not do so. The fact that society is guilty aggravates the guilt of each member of it. "Someone ought to do it, but why should I? is the ever re-echoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. Someone ought to do it, so why not I? is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution." Thus spoke Mrs. Annie Besant ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... gather when other bees are idle. I have this fall secured from Mr. Frank Benton a Carniolan queen, and shall try crossing the Carniolans with the Syrians. Perhaps we can thus secure a strain with the amiability of the Carniolan, and the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... amiability that induced Orthodocia to get up hurriedly and look out of the window. "Did the radies arrive to the Duke of Westminster?" looking from one ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... sense, the bosom friend of Jesus. Probably it was not because of any special gentleness or amiability on John's part, though he may have had something of these traits. It was more likely because of the deep, intelligent sympathy between the two, a sympathy not only of personality, but deeper and stronger because of a mental and spirit likeness growing ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... in its highest degree the sister of goodness. Suffering and amiability may exist together, and writers have loved to depict their conjunction; there is a human and touching harmony in the picture. But perfect happiness is an attribute of angels; and those who possess it, appear angelic. Fear has been said to be ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... It is offering a great deal both on her part and her husband's to take charge of these two, but it would never do. She is almost a child herself,—a bride and beauty under twenty,—excessively admired, very likely to have her head turned. No, it would be too absurd. All her kindness, amiability, desire to make Marian her friend and companion, would only serve to ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... verdict of the world. No novelist has more deeply imbued his work with his own genius and spirit, and none have had a more beneficent genius, nor a more beautiful spirit to impart than the author of "The Deserted Village." The exquisite style, the delicate choice of words, the amiability of sentiment, so peculiarly his own, and so well suited to express the simple beauty of his thoughts, give a charm to the work which familiarity can only endear. Dr. Primrose, preserving his simplicity, his modesty, and his nobility of character ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... must be set down to Sylvia's credit that the circumstance of successful competition gave her no satisfaction. She often heartily wished Eleanor out of it. She could never meet the candid sweetness of the other's eyes without a qualm of discomfort, and she suffered acutely under Eleanor's gentle amiability. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... two alarms, and had to retire on a fort one night. Almost immediately we were sent off to our kopjes, where we spend our nights. The kopjes round here are really horrible things: to ascend and descend them one requires legs of flexible iron, and the amiability and patience of Job. At night one has to pick and choose a little, before getting a satisfactory "doss." To arrange your couch you must, of course, remove all the movable stones, and as regards the fixtures it is strange how in a short time one's body seems instinctively to accommodate itself ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... and the amiability of his face began to cloud over. He sat up very suddenly and spread his plump hands ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... a Hawaiian lady of high character and extreme amiability, and both King and Queen have been exemplary ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... which was in some sense just, necessarily gave a tone to her language and a coloring to all her thoughts, such as good sense and amiability should equally strive to suppress and conceal—unless, as in the case of Margaret Cooper, the individual herself was without due consciousness of their presence. It had the effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured damsel, who ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... and loquacity; the oddest fact about its members being withal that it didn't make them bores, I seem to feel as I look back, or at least not worse bores than sundry specimens of the other growth. There can surely never have been anything like their good faith and, generally speaking, their amiability. I should have but to let myself go a little to wish to cite examples—save that in doing so I should lose sight of my point; which is to recall again that whether we were all amiable or not (and, frankly, I claim it in a high degree ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... might be ill without a word said; but we are well, and sing better than in France. The air is excellent, and this is a terrestrial paradise, where the difficulties and troubles of life come so lovingly, that the more one is piqued, the more one's heart is filled with amiability." ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... though not wholly insensible to the brilliant prospects opened to him in such a connection, yet, to do him justice, Mainwaring would have been equally entangled by a similar avowal from a girl more his equal in the world. It was rather from an amiability bordering upon weakness, than from any more degrading moral imperfections, that he had been betrayed into a position which neither contented his heart nor satisfied ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in any way sought to run counter to his former partner; on the contrary, it arose simply from the fact that Charles was the more capable man of the two. And as Alphonse had now to work on his own account, it was soon clear to any one who observed him closely, that in spite of his promptitude, his amiability, and his prepossessing appearance, he was not fitted to be at the head of an ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... happily wedded, Mr. Thome and his wife were overwhelmed with sorrow by the sudden death, on the last day of April, 1869, of their second daughter, Mrs. Maria E. Murphy, wife of Mr. Thos. Murphy, of Detroit. A lady of singular amiability, purity, and Christian excellence, she was endeared by her sweet graces to rich and poor, to young and old, throughout ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... in New York. The whole country was in alternate emotions of hope and despair as the daily bulletins announced the varying phases of the illustrious patient's condition. The people also were greatly impressed at his wonderful self-control, heroic patience, endurance, and amiability. ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... life has now become so inextricably entangled. He was standing on the kerb, and staring at the number on the door in a doubtful way, as I opened it. His eyes—they were dull grey eyes, and reddish under the rims—fell to my face, and his countenance immediately assumed an expression of corrugated amiability. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... stern, imposing-looking personage that Mr. Verdant Green had expected to see in the ruler among dons, and the terror of offending undergraduates, the master of Brazenface was a mild-looking old gentleman, with an inoffensive amiability of expression and a shy, retiring manner that seemed to intimate that he was more alarmed at the strangers than they had need to be at him. Dr. Portman seemed to be quite a part of his college, for he had passed the greatest portion of his life ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... shown by her making a trip, in the summer of 1824, to Vermont and back—a distance of sixteen hundred miles. The journey had to be performed by stage, and consumed two months in going and returning. She made a second journey to New England when Rutherford was nine years old. Her amiability of disposition made her the favorite guest at the homes of her neighbors. The straightened circumstances of a family deprived of its head required the aid of industry and economy. She was known, in village parlance, as a "good manager." Afflictions which would ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... no sense of humour. Lack of this sense is everywhere held to be a horrid disgrace, nullifying any number of delightful qualities. Perhaps the most effective means of disparaging an enemy is to lay stress on his integrity, his erudition, his amiability, his courage, the fineness of his head, the grace of his figure, his strength of purpose, which has overleaped all obstacles, his goodness to his parents, the kind word that he has for every one, his musical voice, his freedom from aught that in human nature is base; and then to say what ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... activity A venerable and interesting figure It is curious and interesting Gives the impression of aloofness Perfectly void of offence Regard with misgiving A stroke of professional luck An unscrupulous adventurer He spoke with extreme reticence Robust common sense Deficient in amiability Done with characteristic thoroughness A vein of philanthropic zeal Definite, tangible, and practical Too much effusive declamation A man of keen ambition It gives infinite zest Singular qualifications for public life ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... and Mrs. Morgan were there for a couple of weeks in the winter—that she was never more sweet and gracious and lovely than in this first season at the capital. I don't know that the town was raving, as they said, about her beauty and wit—there is nothing like the wit of a handsome woman—and amiability and unostentatious little charities, but she was a great favorite. We used to talk about it by the fire in Brandon, where everything reminded us of the girl we loved, and rejoice in her good-fortune and happiness, and get rather heavy-hearted in thinking that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
