"Cheerfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since I had known him, Monkton seemed to be in high spirits. He talked and jested on all sorts of subjects, and laughed at me for allowing my cheerfulness to be affected by the dread of seasickness. I had really no such fear; it was my excuse to my friend for a return of that unaccountable depression under which I had suffered at Fondi. Everything was in our favor; ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... compelled to return to Texford. She was struck with the appearance of cheerfulness which May maintained, while she did everything she could think of to cheer the spirits ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... little brown dog did not reform. With unabated cheerfulness he continued to dig in Miss Clementina's geranium bed, and to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... meagre, but it was much needed, and as the sea had gone down during the night and the morning was beautiful, it was eaten not only in comfort, but with some degree of cheerfulness. While they were thus engaged, Goff looked up and exclaimed ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... creatures in a state of siege. The pretty wall-paper didn't help them out, nor any consciousness of the blossoming orchard in the chill spring air. The colonel noted the depression in his two defenders and, by a spurious cheerfulness, tried to bring them back to the warmer ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... support six individuals—the father and mother, with four children! It does so, indeed, by an arrangement of only one poor meal in the day; a dinner four times, and a supper three times, in the week. They endure their distress with tolerable cheerfulness, though in the same street, where they occupy the garrets of a house, resides, in an elegant hotel, a man who was once their groom, but who is now a tribune, and has within these last twelve years, as a conventional deputy, amassed, in his mission to Brabant and Flanders, twelve millions of livres. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... pity," she sighed, with a half-inquiring, half deprecatory look at this fortunate first comer. "I shall have to put him below, poor man. I'm afraid he won't like it, but—" Mr. Ransom remained silent. "But," she went on with sudden cheerfulness, "I will make it up in the supper. That shall be as good a one as our kitchen will provide. Four city guests all in one day! That's a good many for ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... therefore always borne after him. When his Majesty had got a little way down the Hall, he turned to his train-bearers, and requested them to bear his train farther from him, apparently with a view to relieve himself from the weight. As he went down the Hall he conversed with much apparent cheerfulness with the bishop of Lincoln, who was on ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... certainly the most entertaining of any humorous lecture to which I have ever listened, and it left the audience talking, with such bright, happy faces, I can see it now in my mind. And they continued to repeat the happy things you said; at least my own friends did. It was not a "plea for cheerfulness," it was cheerfulness. I hope you may give it, and make the world laugh, a thousand times. "He who makes what is useful agreeable," said old Horace of literature, "wins every vote." You have the wit of making the useful agreeable, and the spirit ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... those which are expressive of certain pleasant or solemn emotions; and the rest startling, or curious, or cheerful, or exciting, or sublime, but not beautiful, (and so in music.) And all questions relating to this grandeur, cheerfulness, or other characteristic impression of color must be considered under the head ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... frequently, and to whom even Mrs. Mavick was in a manner reconciled. She was often in the little house in Irving Place. There was nothing in her manner to remind Mrs. Mavick that she had done her a great wrong, and her cheerfulness and good sense made her presence and talk a relief from the monotony ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... agriculture and commerce betoken a powerful danger commercially over the old Europe, so have they to thank the political power and the methodical perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants from England as well as the industry, the bravery and the cheerfulness of the Germans who have placed themselves politically in the service of the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... lay in country sights and sounds: the fresh gallop over the downs, the pleasant saunter through the sweet Sussex lanes, the sweet breath of her roses and carnations, would all woo her back to health and cheerfulness. When the pretty colour came back into Lesbia's face her mother would not regret her sacrifice; and then I remembered that Charlie's friend Harcourt Manners lived about half a dozen miles from Rutherford, and always attended the Pinkerton dances, and he was a nice intelligent fellow. But I ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... use the power of Christ, or wisdom, guided as we may be by the true Wisdom and Light of men? It is in this sense that the Gospel of Christ is a leveller of ranks: we pay, indeed, our superiors full reverence, and with cheerfulness as unto the Lord; and we honour eminent talents as deserving admiration and reward, and the more readily act we thus, because these are little things to pay. The time is short, year follows year, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascinating creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two refugees, but ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... aspect so much alike, that cursory observation can scarcely detect a single feature of variety. The winter of more temperate climates, and even in some of no slight severity, is occasionally diversified by a thaw, which at once gives variety and comparative cheerfulness to the prospect. But here, when once the earth is covered, all is dreary, monotonous whiteness; not merely for days or weeks, but for more than half a year together. Whichever way the eye is turned, it meets a picture calculated to impress ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... little windows are decorated with flowering plants. Within them there is an air of simple neatness and freshness we have seldom seen surpassed; the meagre furniture seems to have been arranged by some careful hand, and presents an air of cheerfulness in strange contrast with the dingy cabins around. In each there is a neatly arranged bed, spread over with a white cover, and by its side a piece of soft carpet. It is from these we shall draw forth the principal characters ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... patient sun that everything under it shall decay, and if by reason of some swift calamity, some fiery cataclysm, the perishable shall be overtaken by a fate that fixes it in unwasting arrest, it cannot be felt that the law has been set aside in the interest of men's happiness or cheerfulness. Neither Pompeii nor Herculaneum invites the gayety of the spectator, who as he walks their disinterred thoroughfares has the weird sense of taking a former civilization out of storage, and the ache of finding it wholly unadapted to the actual ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I invited myself," he answered, with attempted cheerfulness. Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gracious impulses, are, of course, but the first instinctive movements of the social feeling. And from these we move onward over a vast field of action, to the very farthest point reached by the higher charities of Christianity. There can be no doubt that the charm, the grace, and the happy cheerfulness of society are chiefly due to women; and it is also true that the whole unwritten common-law of society is, in a great measure, under their control. The world is constantly encroaching here, enervating and corrupting social life. To ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... conquests, as well as to the protection of the trade of his subjects, which he had extremely at heart. He told the commons, that nothing could relieve his majesty's royal mind, under the anxiety he felt for the burdens of his faithful subjects, but the public-spirited cheerfulness with which their house had granted him such large supplies, and his conviction that they were necessary for the security and essential interest of his kingdoms; he therefore returned them his hearty thanks for these supplies, and assured ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The people, too, had wagged their heads over him. Like pouting children on the public square, who "won't play," whether the game proposed is a wedding or a funeral, the people had criticized John for being a gloomy ascetic, and found fault with Jesus for his shocking cheerfulness. There was no way of suiting them, and no way of making them take the call of God to heart. Long before electricity was invented, human nature knew all about interposing nonconductors between itself ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... fatigue, and the privation of food and drink, and bear exposure to the tropical sun for hours with no covering for the head, without being in the least affected. Their bearing evinces entire subjection and abasement, and they shun and distrust the whites. They do not manifest the cheerfulness of the negro slave, but maintain an expression of indifference, and are destitute of all curiosity or ambition. These peculiarities are doubtless the results of the treatment they have received for generations. The half-breeds, or Mestizos, prefer to associate with the whites rather than with the ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... said I, "that a being so wonderfully formed as I am, was created to live in idleness; while the birds, which have no hands, and nothing but their little bills to help them, work with cheerfulness, and without being told to do so? Has then the great Creator given me all these limbs for no purpose? It cannot be: I will try to go to work. I did so, and went away from the village to a spot of good land, where I built a cabin, enclosed ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... reflected cool experience of the world and of men. Yet the eyes were young, and there was no hardness in them, and the mouth seemed curiously unfashioned for worldly badinage—a very wistful, full-lipped mouth that must have been disciplined in some sad school to lose its cheerfulness ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... L. Kane, not a Mormon, dramatically dwelling upon the circumstances of the exodus from Nauvoo and the later dedication there of the beautiful temple, abandoned immediately thereafter. He wrote also of the Mormon camps that were then working westward, describing the high spirit and even cheerfulness in which the people were accepting exile from a grade of civilization that had made them prefer the wilds. Colonel Kane helped in the organization of the Battalion, in bringing influence to bear upon the President and in carrying to Fort Leavenworth the orders ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Washington forests. The former are dry, light, and cheerful; the latter, moist, dark, silent, and somewhat forbidding. The northern forests of the Coast have their attractive features, to be sure; they are fecund, solemn, and majestic, but the prevailing note is not cheerfulness, as ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... little man. But oh, Alice, if you had seen the Duke's long face through those three days; if you had heard the tones of the people's voices as they whispered about me; if you had encountered the oppressive cheerfulness of those two London doctors,—doctors are such bad actors,—you would have thought it impossible for any woman to live throughout. There's one comfort;—if my mannikin lives, I can't have another eldest. He looks ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... into the firebox, and from it hung an old iron pot. The andirons were long, narrow slabs of granite, set on edge, upon which were piled logs of pine wood, burning merrily—not because it was a cold night, but because of its cheerfulness. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... the new scenes and changes," which were to be passed, before the trees of the forest could be supplanted, by the fruits of the field, or society be reared in the solitude of the desert. With a capability to sustain fatigue, not to be subdued by toil; and with a cheerfulness, not easily to be depressed; a patience which could mock at suffering and a daring which nothing could daunt, every difficulty which intervened, every obstacle which was interposed between them and the accomplishment of the objects of their pursuit, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... population is now in no degree in excess of the means of subsistence. The rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through all classes. ... Probably no country in Europe has advanced so rapidly as Ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the people must have struck every observer.[26] ... If industrial improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay political discontent, Ireland should ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... they have been not so badly brought up, Campbell, but that they will submit with cheerfulness, and be a source of comfort to us both. Besides, we ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... with him. One should never, in even one's heart, do an injury to kine. One should, indeed, always confer happiness on them. One should, always reverence kine and worship them, with bends of one's head. He who does this, restraining his senses the while and filled with cheerfulness, succeeds in attaining to that felicity which is enjoyed by kine (and which kine alone can confer). One should for three days drink the hot urine of the cow. For the next three days one should drink the hot milk of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... as it meant not a few weeks, but the loss of a year, inasmuch as by the time the ship was ready to be launched the river would be nearly at its lowest, and there would be no resource but to wait for the next rainy season. Yet, in the face of discouragement, he maintained his cheerfulness, and, after sunset, still enjoyed many an hour of prolonged talk about current events at home, about his old College days in Glasgow, and about many of those who were unknown men then, but have since made their mark in life in the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... utility, in reference to individual comfort and to the interests of society at large, renders "marriage honourable in all;" and while it would be ungrateful to Providence, not to accept with suitable emotions of cheerfulness the blessing which has been so long and so eagerly sought, it must always be injurious to character to indulge in extravagant merriment or indecorous festivity. Let persons forming such a connection aim to chastise ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the Gigolette—good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable—all imbued with the intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what can ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... an attempt at cheerfulness, "I did not expect thee back so soon. Hush! I have made a famous bargain. I have found a broker to buy these things which we don't want just at present, and can replace by new and prettier things when the siege is over ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... crying over spilt milk, fellows," he said, trying to infuse cheerfulness into his tone. "We've got to try Billy's recipe and make lemonade from the lemon that the ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... self-conscious and superficial. It is better than nothing and unquestionably adds greatly to the sum of human happiness. But I do not think we ought to be cheerful if we are consumed with trouble and sorrow. The fact is we ought not to be for long beyond a natural cheerfulness that comes from the deepest possible sources. While we are sad, let us be so, simply and naturally; but we must pray that the light may come to us in our sorrow, that we may be able soon and naturally to put aside ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype, the main-line station. The drive, superficially pleasant, was in reality very disconcerting to him. For nine days the household had talked in apparent cheerfulness of father's visit to London, as though it were an occasion for joy on father's behalf, tempered by affectionate sorrow for his absence. The official theory was that all was for the best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... ourselves up, comrades; further resistance were but a bootless sacrifice." Not the least noteworthy of Bayard's many fine qualities were his rare good sense and his cheerfulness under misfortune. If he won, he enjoyed his victory; if he lost, he ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... long to die—yes, my dear child, to such an extent that your health plainly suffers. At other times, and I must speak candidly at the risk of offending you a little, you view your perils with a levity and cheerfulness that astound me." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his trousers, "I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... dinner with great cheerfulness and good appetite, and for an hour after it they chattered away happily. Then Elsie grew drowsy, very drowsy, indeed, and presently, nestled against Tinker, she fell asleep. Fortunately, the southern night was warm, and, in the fur-lined ulster, she could take no harm. He sat holding her to him, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... me. They keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of thousands of families in this great town (Birmingham) and neighbourhood, who are in a similar state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the instruction of the females in the work of a house, in teaching them to produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fireside, would prevent a great amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation, female ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of every art which reflects nature, but almost entirely ignorant of the ways of boys and men. An attack of consumption, with which he had long been threatened, caused him to leave Oxford in 1840, and for nearly two years he wandered over Italy searching for health and cheerfulness, and gathering materials for the first volume of Modern Painters, the book that made ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... slaughter and skin it with their teeth and devour it on the spot,—its conjure-wallahs, who, for a few pice, will run sharp foils through each other's bodies without for a moment disturbing either health or cheerfulness, or will make mangoes grow under table-cloths, "all fair and proper," while Master waits,—as the Brahmin still dodges the shadow of the Soodra, and the Soodra spits upon the footprint of the Pariah, the Baboo returns to his chariot; the fat and solemn coachman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... soon brought round, but Julie's state was critical. When she had recovered a little, she was taken back to Clarens. The doctor told her she had but three days to live. She spent those three days in perfect cheerfulness and tranquillity of spirit, conversing with Madame D'Orbe, the pastor, and myself, expressing her content that her life should end at a time when she had attained complete happiness. On the fourth morning we found ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... all kindness. Call when you will, and ask for what you please, the object solicited is sure to be granted. He never seems to rise (and he is a very early riser) with spleen, ill-humour, or untoward propensities. With him, the sun seems always to shine, and the lark to tune her carol. And this cheerfulness of feeling is carried by him into every abode however gloomy, and every society ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the lesson of Patience. That's one of the hardest studies. You can't learn much of it at a time, but every bit you get by heart, makes the next bit easier. And there's the lesson of Cheerfulness. And the lesson of Making the Best ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... air and the sunlight were after the close atmosphere of London! The shining sea—the fresh breeze blowing in—the busy brightness and cheerfulness of the King's Road—it all seemed new and delightful again! And of course amidst the general clamour and commotion of getting into the house, who was to take much notice of Nan, or watch her self-conscious shyness, or regard the manner in which she received Frank King ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Never do Fielding's courage, cheerfulness, and affection forsake him; up to the last days of his life he is laboring still for his children. He dies, and is beholden to the admiration of a foreigner, Monsieur de Meryionnet, French consul at Lisbon, for a decent grave and tombstone. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... would not allow her visitors to be overshadowed by this trouble for long. She possessed a good share of her father's cheerfulness and dry humor. She began to tell semi-humorous tales of her own experiences about the ranch and on the ranges, and this started Tom and Frank to swapping tales—some of them altogether too ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... genial mountain air, like one who had relieved his conscience of a heavy debt. Like most laymen of the Catholic persuasion, he thought himself no longer bound to maintain a grave and mortified exterior, when worship and penitence were duly observed, and he joined his friend with a cheerfulness of air and voice that an ascetic, or a puritan, might have attributed to levity, after the scenes through which ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... hold conversation with a mere laboring man. He drew Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all but the one unmentionable thing; and then he told stories about his own life. He was a great one for stories, not always of the choicest. Being sent to jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had "done time" twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What with women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Bessie's cheerfulness revived under the brisk influence of her friend, and she was ready to give an epitome of her annals, or a forecast of her hopes, or (which she much preferred) to hear the chronicles of Beechhurst. Miss Buff was the best authority for the village politics that she ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close—in its very final words—he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... their own hands again.... As in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of art and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... withhold him from any toil or any brave action. Neither his statue nor picture are extant, he never allowing them in his life, and utterly forbidding them to be made after his death. He is said to have been a little man, of a contemptible presence; but the goodness of his humor, and his constant cheerfulness and playfulness of temper, always free from anything of moroseness or haughtiness, made him more attractive, even to his old age, than the most beautiful and youthful men of the nation. Theophrastus writes, that the Ephors ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... lover. In return for this kindness the lady promised that should the object of her affections ever arrive, he should marry them both, and that she should have the precedence in the ceremony of union. The two friends having thus agreed, the vizier's daughter regained her cheerfulness, and means were taken to convince her father, mother, and friends of the consummation of the nuptials. From this time they lived in perfect happiness together, one exercising the authority of sultan to the satisfaction of the subject, and the other acting the part of a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... of garden-fronted cottages! leading us along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the full view of PITT Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic—yea, call it at once magnificent—right up to the great ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... through these relationships gives us a "New Whole" which maybe stated thus: The spirit of cheerfulness, radiating from the Locksmith's personality and expressed through his work, is reflected by ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... some of her witty jokes, but they seemed to be wasted on Anna. After jesting with the servant had failed, scolding was next tried, but nothing seemed to bring back the girl's usual cheerfulness. "Oh, Anna," said the mistress at length, "you make me think of the olden days, when such disagreeable whims on the part of frowning maids used ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with sounds so blood-curdling that Suydam put his mattress on the sofa and his sleeping-bag on top of that, and, shutting himself in, defied them. The incomparable Levy was Italian by his birth and cheerfulness, Jewish on his father's side, Turkish by the fez he wore and a life spent in guiding strangers about Constantinople. He had the face of a dean of a diplomatic corps or one of those comfortable old gentlemen in spats who have become fixtures in ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... appalling. The hardship of the work was astonishingly increased, robbed of Tuck's unfailing cheerfulness and faith. There was one moment when, toward sunset, Jim's strength almost failed him. The walls were rougher now. He had found a hand-hold but no place for the night. He clung here until his exhausted arms were able to ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... danger-spot our C.O. passed—an upright, gallant figure, saying little, exhorting not at all, but instilling confidence and cheerfulness by ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the idea with which my beloved friend is inseparably associated in my mind. His nature had all the attributes of light—its revealing power, its cheerfulness, its salubrity, its beauty, its inconceivable rapidity. He had the quickest intellect that I have ever known. He saw with a flash into the heart of an argument or a situation. He diffused joy by his own joy in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth and said in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, "Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven, in its bounty, bless and preserve you; may this be the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... as though he could not restrain the growing feeling of apprehension caused by his mother's looks and strange reticence. They were so unlike her usual cheerfulness when he came home from school or the shop, and he could see that she had grown yet paler than when he left her at the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... all the wear and tear comes on the same nerves—every blow falls on the same place. Variety, even in a bad direction, is a great relief. But living long has nothing to do with getting old gracefully. Good nature is a great enemy of wrinkles, and cheerfulness helps the complexion. If we could only keep from being annoyed at little things, it would add to the luxury of living. Great sorrows are few, and after all do not affect us as much as the many irritating, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... all the cheerfulness of a dog who had found a job which suited him, and his owner, after again warning the cook of what would happen if he moved out of the chair, left the room, shutting the door as he went. The cook heard the front door close behind him, and then all was silence, except ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... I have long felt that it would be wiser for us at once to meet a necessary evil. For God's sake, put an end to the torture of this life, which is destroying us both. Poverty, absolute poverty, with you and with your love, I can meet even with cheerfulness; but indeed, my Ratcliffe, I can bear our present life no longer; I shall die if you be unhappy. And oh! dearest Ratcliffe, if that were to happen, which sometimes I fear has happened, if you were no longer ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... fingers over the keys of the melodeon. The others wanted to be coaxed as amateurs always do. There is no backwardness that requires as much persuasion to appear before an audience as that of an amateur, but when once persuaded there is no cheerfulness that exceeds that of an amateur in responding ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, according to their abilities, when required thereto by letter from one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State; and that their right to grant the same, and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants, have been at sundry ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... the lobby of the big hotel with their new friends. Richmond without was quiet and blazing in the sun. Harry had received a second letter from his father from an unnamed point in Georgia. It did not contain much news, but it was full of cheerfulness, and it intimated in more than one place that Bragg's army was going ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... discriminate more closely than to call him fool. Had Sir Purcell sunk or bent under the thong that pursued him, he might, after a little healthy moaning, have gone along as others do. Who knows?—though a much persecuted man, he might have become so degraded as to have looked forward with cheerfulness to his daily dinner; still despising, if he pleased, the soul that would invent a sauce. I mean to say, he would, like the larger body of our sentimentalists, have acquiesced in our simple humanity, but without sacrificing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will mount to the house tops and say 'I told you so! It was an idea of my own!' What great geniuses are going to spring from the earth! I am in haste, so adieu, courage, energy, silence and especially cheerfulness! And especially cheerfulness!" Perhaps this cheerfulness of strong minds is the invincible weapon of those who, like Sommeiller and Favre, fight against apathy or the bad faith of their adversaries! Like Favre however Sommeiller had not the pleasure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... pillow there lies a sweet, patient face; the voice is cheerful and thankful; and, instead of being self-absorbed, the mind is full of unselfish thoughts for others. I recall the description given by a friend of one such invalid's chamber, which used to be filled with the most beautiful cheerfulness and activity. At a certain time of year you might see in it quite an exhibition of stockings, pinafores, dresses and other pretty things, prepared for the children of a mission-school in India. By thinking of the needs of those children far away ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... suspected any other motive than was here declared, and which might make his pupil unwilling to face the parental brow, and he had declared that nothing could have been more exemplary than the whole demeanour of the youth, who had at first gone about as one crushed, and though slowly reviving into cheerfulness, had always been subdued, until quite recently, when the meeting with his old companion had certainly much enlivened his spirits. Poor Mr. Fellowes had been rejoicing in the excellent character he should have to give, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after that one confidential talk of theirs, in which she had afforded him a glimpse of her sorrowful past. She had not alluded to the subject a second time; and, somehow, he had not been able to get behind the defenses of her smiling cheerfulness. Always she was with her father, it seemed; and the old man, garrulous enough when alone, was invariably silent and moody in his daughter's company. One might almost have said he hated her, from the sneering impatient looks he cast at her from time ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... a large woman, of middle age, with a high forehead unruffled by thought, and a clear skin unmarred by wrinkles. She had a cheerfulness that obtruded itself, like a creditor, at unpropitious moments; and her voice, though not displeasing, gave the impression that it might become volcanic at any moment. She also possessed a considerable theatrical instinct, with which she would frequently manoeuvre to the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... expense of maintaining the autocratic pomp of the Kaiser, his sons and satellites. Every member of the German family had his or her task, even to the little three-year-old toddler whose business it was to look after the brooms, dust rags and other household utensils. There was nothing of cheerfulness or even of the dignity of labor about this. It was hard, unceasing, grinding toil which crushed the spirits of the people. It was part of the system to cause them to welcome ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... management and encouragement of them, amid poverty and trouble, the characters of the boys themselves, their cheerfulness, courage, and patience, and the firm grip which they take upon the lowest rounds of the ladder of success, are told simply and ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... day to the house to offer fish for sale—cod, whitings, herrings, whatever fish chance had given to his net. Flora was glad to observe something like cheerfulness once more illumine the old sailor's face. She always greeted him with kind words, and inquired affectionately after his welfare; and without alluding to his heavy family afflictions, made him sensible that she deeply sympathised ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the cockroach flies around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... themselves as in herself. She rebelled against the outrages of poverty, and she drank to its dregs the cup of straitened circumstances. She was proud, as proud as Lucifer, and she was forced into positions which suppleness and cheerfulness might have made tolerable, if not agreeable. She wrung from these positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... delection[obs3]; relish, zest; gusto &c. (physical pleasure) 377; satisfaction &c. (content) 831; complacency. well-being; good &c. 618; snugness, comfort, ease; cushion &c. 215; sans souci[French:without worry], mind at ease. joy, gladness, delight, glee, cheer, sunshine; cheerfulness &c. 836. treat, refreshment; amusement &c. 840; luxury &c. 377. mens sana in corpore sano [Latin: a sound mind in a sound body][Juvenal]. happiness, felicity, bliss; beatitude, beautification; enchantment, transport, rapture, ravishment, ecstasy; summum bonum[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... ordinary thought and emotion, we find many instances of this principle of induction. We know that one person vibrating strongly with happiness or sorrow, cheerfulness or anger, as the case may be fends to communicate his feeling and emotions, state to those with whom he comes in contact. All of you have seen a whole room full of persons affected and influenced in this way, under certain circumstances. You have also seen how a magnetic orator, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... isolated, they sigh and mope; yet they are proud of this lukewarm longing, which does not quite avail, and keep diaries to record with protest the dulness of every day. Sentimentality is initial genius. Its complaint seems to contradict the cheerfulness of wisdom, yet it enjoys complaining; though life be not worth having on these conditions, it bottles every tear. A weak sadness fills great space in literature, stocks the circulating library, and counts its Werthers by the thousand in every age. Now we expect this malady, as we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... nevertheless, your cheerful greeting had better not convey any reference to the weather, else it will be met by a sneer which, taking you unawares, may give you a crushing sense that you make a poor figure with your cheerfulness, which was not asked for. Some daring person perhaps introduces another topic, and uses the delicate flattery of appealing to Touchwood for his opinion, the topic being included in his favourite studies. An indistinct muttering, with a look at the carving-knife in reply, teaches that daring ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... have seen trouble, and worn blinkers ever since. Of course, one just loves them for it, but I must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one so of a duck that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. Ducks have no repose. Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a cook who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a hopeful sign, and a conscience that's absentee for about eleven months of the year, and only turns up ...
— Reginald • Saki
... that sort of sunshiny nature which easily shifts to shadow, like the atmosphere of an April day. Cheerfulness held sway with her, except occasionally, when her domestic cares grew too overwhelming; but her spirits rebounded ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... so impoverished, as anything other than an inevitable dispensation of Providence. If they thought otherwise, at any rate if the contrary view were at all prevalent amongst them, they must be most gifted hypocrites, to go about with the good temper in their eyes and the cheerfulness in their voices that I ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... relieve the thoughts of the whole party, by giving them a new direction, while it was likely to produce no unpleasant results, every one was willing to enter into it; the girls bringing forth the firearms with an alacrity bordering on cheerfulness. Hutter's armory was well supplied, possessing several rifles, all of which were habitually kept loaded in readiness to meet any sudden demand for their use. On the present occasion it only remained to freshen ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... fear of the difficulty of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, which he had never before discouraged, now presented itself to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness gave him hope on the one hand by indicating a spirit superior to all disappointments, it was suspicious to him on the other, as arising from some latent certainty of being soon united to the earl. All these circumstances concurred ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... the sect in which he is enlisted are exposed, and shown to be evidently and demonstrably opposite to that system of subordination and dependence, to which we are indebted for the present tranquillity of the nation, and that cheerfulness and readiness with which the two houses ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... took off his overcoat without looking at Bailey, who bustled about getting the supper, his resolute cheerfulness once more aglow. ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a calamity as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have been more sensible of this than David Lynde himself, and that there was something extremely touching in the alacrity and cheerfulness with which he assumed ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... unwashed for five days, his eyes bloodshot for want of sleep, hungry and footsore, fresh from terrible fighting, and the loss of many friends, he was still the same unmistakable British soldier, that queer mixture of humour and blasphemy, cheerfulness and grumbling, never losing that imperturbability which has no mixture of any other quality at all. The camping ground was arranged almost as though they were going to stay there for ever. Here were the guns in order, there the relics of the ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... beautiful women and blooming maidens, all moved in a confused intermixture, jesting and laughing with each other. They were all very gay on this evening, as the regent had herself set the example. With the most unconstrained cheerfulness, radiant with joy, did she wander through the rooms, dispensing smiles and agreeable words among all whom she approached. She bore in her bosom the glowing and cherished letter of her lover, and at its lightest rustling she seemed ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... recognize the pleasure of being here. It is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness out of bare respect ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... him to sit down. "Please stay." She seemed to rouse herself with an effort. "Of course, there was only one thing George could do when he was lamed—send them on. But Clarence, who was with him, never made his fortitude and cheerfulness so clear as you have done. You even mentioned the exact words he said now and then—how ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Dame Joanna. Pulcheria, however, asked the old man what was wrong with him, for his face had suddenly clouded. His cheerfulness had vanished, his tufted eyebrows were raised, and his pinched lips seemed unwilling to part, when at length ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... makin'!" Palmerston reported to Mrs Bowldler. (With the utmost cheerfulness he continued running to and fro between summer-house and residence under the downpour.) "When Mrs Bosenna said that about a merrythought I ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... than a personal reply. The Ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said—it was the apparent heart that went with his request—which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... he never left without finding himself pledged to return in the evening. In his loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation he found it dangerously sweet to be thus petted and sought after. Cassie made no demands of him and acquiesced with apparent cheerfulness in the implication that he loved another woman. She humbly accepted the little that was left over, and, though she wept many hot tears in secret, outwardly at least she never rebelled or reproached him. She knew that to do either would be to lose him. In fact she ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... This cheerfulness, however, did not hide from his friends that he was subject to a languor which had been unknown before his journey to Russia. It was not the peevish fatigue that often brings life to an unworthy close. He remained true to the healthy temper of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the future Queen of England, in a letter to one of his correspondents, Lord Harcourt had given this description of her:—"Our queen, that is to be, has seen very little of the world; but her very good sense, vivacity, and cheerfulness, I dare say will recommend her to the king, and make her the darling of the British nation. She is no regular beauty; but she is of a pretty size, has a charming complexion, with very pretty eyes, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Caesar, took courage and held out more stubbornly. The barbarians for a long time knew nothing of the assistance he was bringing; he journeyed by night, lying by day in most obscure places, so as to fall upon them as far as possible unawares. At last from the unnatural cheerfulness of the besieged they suspected it and sent out scouts. Learning from them that Caesar was at last drawing near they set out against him, thinking to attack him while off his guard. He received advance information of this ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... desolate, neither has our Father forsaken us in our time of necessity. Surely He giveth bread to the hungry, and filleth the fainting soul with gladness!" Then spreading the tempting viands before the famished invalid, she smiled with the cheerfulness of her earlier days, as she saw with what ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... characteristic cheerfulness of the negro soldiers was as striking as their bravery. In his little book called The Nth Foot In War, Lieutenant M. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the lovely dining room, which in point of brilliancy and cheerfulness has more the character of a drawing than of a dining room. Opposite the window is an upright grand pianoforte. It is the largest ever made, with the exception of its companion made at the same time, and its richness and power of sound are very great. Over the fire is what is seldom ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... love and cheerfulness had got the upper hand when the little family party gathered again; at least that spirit had rule of all that either eyes or ears could take note of. They gathered in the 'keeping-room,' as it was called; the room used as a common sitting room by the family, though it served also the purpose ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... (even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it) made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret. There was a great similitude between his character and that of Sir Richard Steele. He had the advantage both in learning, and, in my opinion, genius: they both agreed in ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... nature now. Suffering was "making her perfect." She had a firm belief that God knew all about it, and that somehow or other it was "all right." Her mother took a great deal of pains to teach her this. She knew that no one can bear affliction with real cheerfulness who does not ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... was saying with evidently fictitious cheerfulness, "no, it was just a little headache.... It's much better. I think I can sleep now. Thank you very ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis |
