"Geniality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that it behooved him to be silent during such discussions, was encouraged by her geniality to venture, "I don't see how you can learn anything in such a turmoil; or how you can keep your mind on it, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the polished surfaces of Mr. Brumley's mind. Things had been stirring in him for some time; the latter Euphemia books had lacked much of the freshness of their precursors and he had found it increasingly hard, he knew not why, to keep up the lightness, the geniality, the friendly badinage of successful and accepted things, the sunny disregard of the grim and unamiable aspects of existence, that were the essential merits of that Optimistic Period of our literature ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... arrives—the jackass—and in a sublime good-humour! He tells some cock-and-bull story about his taxi breaking down, and actually seems to think he's done rather a smart thing in turning up at all. In short, he brings in such an air of geniality and self-appreciation that the guest who arrived first has more than a notion to 'have him out' and send him to a region where dinner-parties are popularly supposed to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... him, in an immense arm-chair which he filled admirably, was William Mainwaring Thornton, of London, also a guest of Hugh Mainwaring and distantly connected with the two cousins. He was the youngest of the three Englishmen and the embodiment of geniality. He was a blond of the purest type, and his beard, parted in the centre, was brushed back in two wavy, silken masses, while his clear blue eyes, beaming with kindliness and good-humor, had the frankness ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... consuming his meat with a hearty appetite. The desire to stand well with prominent persons, to found a family, to take a place in the county, is a perfectly natural and wholesome desire; but it is a commonplace ambition. There is a charm in the simplicity, the geniality, the childlike zest of the man; but there is nothing great about it. Then comes the crash; and suddenly, as though a curtain drew up, one is confronted with the spectacle of an indomitable and unselfish soul, bearing a heavy burden with magnificent tranquillity, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very amiable face Kelson got in and took the vacant seat by the stranger. His attitude was not conducive to geniality, and so for a while there was silence. At length as they turned from the station approach on to the main road the stranger spoke. His deep-toned voice had a musical ring in it, yet somehow to Gifford's way of thinking ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... all our friends at Helena?" inquired the doctor, after he had secured a favorable report of Eva and the baby. "All well, of course, or I should have heard from them!" he went on, with the geniality that Latimer remembered so well. "And little Arthur—he must be quite ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... and his bride, appropriately, with what I'd call a sort of acceptable, fabricated geniality. You could see he was the kind that takes such things seriously, one who would go to work to make a success of any social doings he got into, would give what his set called good parties; and he spoke feelingly of the Blossom Festival, which was the great ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... craftsmanship and technical skill, in the ease and beauty of his line, his knowledge of effect, his complete mastery over the material means at his disposal, Charles Keene seems to me as superior to Leech as Leech is to him in grace, in human naturalness and geniality of humour, in accurate observation of life, in keenness of social perception, and ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... relaxed to the state of geniality, was willing to let bygones be bygones in the broadest sense of the word. He had big plans afoot—he had had them the night he came home and found Gaston and Joyce hanging over the baby. These plans had been set ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... afterwards, a gentleman of middle age, or a little beyond, appeared in the doorway, in a dress that seemed clerical, yet not very decidedly so; he had a frank, kindly, yet authoritative bearing, and a face that might almost be said to beam with geniality, when, as now, the benevolence of his nature was aroused and ready ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Let us have no unpleasantness and no gossip about the affair, by all means. I consent, then." Garavel's voice altered and he said, with more of his natural geniality, "I am very glad you take the matter so sensibly, Mr. Anthony; it was, after all, but ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... Charles had been tender with the Netherlands because of his life-long relation to its people. He looked a Netherlander rather than a Spaniard, and felt one, so that, so far as he showed favors, he showed them to this opulent people. Charles, with his many faults, had yet a rude geniality, which softened or seemed to soften his asperity toward ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... "Was this not geniality itself? No other great man I have met is like him. I played the Funeral March, which was also to his taste. Then, after a little talk, I took leave, with the consciousness of having spent two of the most ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... impedimenta of Miss Winchelsea and her friends. Miss Winchelsea "hated nonsense," but she was pleased to see the young man perceived at once that they were ladies, and helped them without any violent geniality; and how nicely he showed that his civilities were to be no excuse for further intrusions. None of her little party had been out of England before, and they were all excited and a little nervous at the Channel passage. They stood in ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... lest his distributions of parts and stations in life should be disclosed. The only bright feature was the congenial feeling which appeared at once to unite Miss Bussey and Sir Roger Deane. They sat together, and, aided by the General's geniality and Lady Deane's supramundane calm, carried the meal to a conclusion without an actual breakdown, ending up with a friendly wrangle over the responsibility for the bill. Finally it was on Sir Roger's proposal that they all agreed to meet at five o'clock and take coffee, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... in whose face geniality and humor seemed the salient characteristics. It was a mobile face, quick-changing to inward mood and thought. Thinking was in him a visible process. Ideas chased across his face like wind-flaws across the surface of a lake. His hair, sparse and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... mustache wrinkled with his smile. And as he walked by her side they began a wrangle that was none the less pleasant to Ann Veronica because it served to banish a disagreeable preoccupation. It seemed to her in her restored geniality that she liked Manning extremely. The brightness Capes had diffused over the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... tender play of feeling, the breadth of sympathy, the quick pulse of delight, which had marked the age of Elizabeth; but on the other hand life gained in moral grandeur, in a sense of the dignity of manhood, in orderliness and equable force. The larger geniality of the age that had passed away was replaced by an intense tenderness within the narrower circle of the home. Home, as we conceive it now, was the creation of the Puritan. Wife and child rose from mere dependants on the will of husband or father, as husband ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... or so beautiful, so bright, so serene, happy to be there, so inoffensive—jewels in the crown of Peace, models of pure and upright family life, homes of loyal and dutiful industry, of ready, ever-smiling geniality, with the natural welcome, the ever-proffered hand and the ever-open heart: all the others are dead cities, of which not one stone is left upon another; and the very country-side, one of the fairest in this world, with its gentle pastures, is now no more than ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... hand and withdrew. Cyril turned to Arsenius, betrayed for once into geniality by his ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... forth into an unrestrained enthusiasm of affection and service. But his was rather the even tenor of domestic devotion and friendly duty, unbroken by passion or coldness, and ever lighted up by a steady geniality. The colleagues who were associated with him for the third of a century worshipped him in the old English sense of the word. The younger committee-men and missionaries who came to the front on the death of Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland, in all their mistaken conflicts ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... the box-tree seclusion with the lower rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the resemblance of an over-benevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its intended geniality upward to the exasperated eyes ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... thought with the assistance of the landlord I could put a very creditable meal before him, and Father Donovan was always one that relished his meals, and he enjoyed his drink too, although he was set against too much of it. He used to say, "It's a wise drinker that knows when geniality ends and hostility begins, and it's just as well to stop before you come ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... have maintained a constant geniality in their humor, even in the treatment of distressing themes. For example, Josh Billings made the announcement that one hornet, if it was feeling well, could break up a whole camp meeting. Bill Nye, Artemas Ward and many another American writer have given in profusion ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and face, except that I made my hero 'about six feet,' whereas the Government gave him five feet ten. But I knew beforehand that Mr. Kelly was a clergyman; his curious career proved him to be a person of great activity and geniality—and he was of Irish birth. Even a dozen such guesses, equally correct, could not suggest any powers of 'vision,' when so much was known beforehand about the person guessed at. I now give cases in the experience of Miss Angus, as one may call the crystal-gazer. The first ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... him. He was perfectly aware of all those jealous masculine eyes, flickering now with repressed and delighted laughter over his discomfiture. He recovered himself in a moment and slipped easily and with unabated geniality into a ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... staring out into the hall with an air of careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, "How IS Bibbs?" but she said nothing at all, though he waited ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... according to his training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, and love a bit of word painting or graceful nonsense; but there are people who strive for this, and miss, after all, the true warmth and geniality that is most desirable for little people. Apropos of nonsense, we remember Leigh Hunt, who says that there are two kinds of nonsense, one resulting from a superabundance of ideas, the other from a want of them. Style in the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... charm of his manner, as he sat at our board discoursing, with an abandon and witchery I have observed in no one else, on subjects of art and letters, on men and manners, of nations past and present, until hours fled like moments, and time seemed utterly forgotten in the presence of geniality and genius. Then, starting gayly and suddenly to his feet, he remembered an engagement, and sped away so abruptly that his visit seemed to me but a vision breaking in on the monotony of our lives, too bright to have ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... kind about his attempts to be genial. It is not truly festive. There is no abandonment in it. It has no deep root in moral humour, and is merely a literary form, resembling nothing so much as the hard geniality of some clever college tutor of stiff manners, entertaining undergraduates at an official breakfast-party. This is not because his tone is bookish; on the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. But one always seems ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... his domestic circle, of wide popularity, and possessing the esteem of those who know him best, General Stager is one of those whose lot is enviable, and who has made his position thus enviable by his own force of character and geniality of disposition. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Margaret and her friends wished to converse. Prometheus was made the type of Pure Reason; Jupiter, of Will; Juno, the passive side of the same, or Obstinacy; Minerva, Intellectual Power, Practical Reason; Mercury, Executive Power, Understanding; Apollo was Genius, the Sun; Bacchus was Geniality, the Earth's answer. "Apollo and Bacchus were contrasted," says the reporter. "Margaret unfolded her idea of Bacchus. His whole life was triumph. Born from fire; a divine frenzy; the answer of the earth to the sun,—of the warmth of joy to the light ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... industrious, and if he led an independent life, dining frequently in a tavern instead of touting for briefs in society, and so harmed himself, such misadventure was counterbalanced by his industry and his prudence. Thirdly, his sweetness and geniality made him a favourite with the bench. He had much insight into human nature, he studied it, and could detect almost at once the two leading spirits on a jury; and he was always aware of the idiosyncrasies ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... add a touch of picturesque geniality, of excitement even to the pond, being as occasional in its daily life as the crossing of a deer or an otter or the circling of an osprey in summer. Any one of these causes a momentary stir, a local disturbance down in the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... charming), I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked, as though at some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the excessive recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality. It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... revised myth of the golden touch, a new version of the fairy-tale of the fair mouth dropping pearls. Then, as though grown weary of the idyllic romance she was composing, Fortune donned the tragic robes of Nemesis. Years of pain followed, which could not abate the spirits or disturb the geniality of the sufferer, but did somewhat abate the power and disturb the serenity of his work. Then came the inevitable end of all life dramas, whether comic or romantic or tragic, and friends who had known him stood round his grave and listened sadly to the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Sir Caesar, "who never gives himself a holiday; a man whose nature it is to grudge every hour of the day that isn't employed in wringing money out of a desert. Come now!"—warmed by his own eloquence to a geniality equally hearty and false, Sir Caesar swung around again upon Mr. Pope—"I daresay we may call him, to his face, about ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... All were disposed to treat him, as the stranger, with pressing hospitality; but his own free and gentlemanly bearing, and the openness with which he answered the questions put to him, as well as the hearty geniality of his conversation, made all his new acquaintances delighted with him, and eager to supply his wants as their guest. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at that any half-formed resolutions as to total abstinence ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... see how low man can fall, you must go to the tropic jungle, where geniality of climate, plenty and variety of food, are in themselves a cause of degradation to the soul, as long as the Spirit of Christ is absent from it. Not in the barren desert, but in the rich forest, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... He was exuding geniality now. But just here Mr. Augustus Cabot spoke. Judging by his face, he had enjoyed the passage at arms between his cousin and his business agent hugely. Now he entered ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... absinthe with everything he drank, and to absinthe he united opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of his liaison with the "Ondine" of his muse; she saw only the increasing delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her. Intellectually, too, she felt for him compassion. She recognized and respected in him the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the arrogance of youth, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the finality of his uncouthness was morbid and imaginary, and half his inability to get on with his fellows, no less than with the maidens who were brought down in single file to Ashbridge, was due to this. He knew very well how light-heartedly they escaped to the geniality and attractiveness of Francis, and in the clutch of his own introspective temperament he could not free himself from the handicap of his own sensitiveness, and, like others, take himself for granted. He crushed his own power to please by the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... her laughing and chatting with such unforced geniality that she muttered: "It's perfectly absurd to imagine that her husband is on the eve of bankruptcy. Even if he tried he couldn't keep such trouble utterly from his wife, and I've seen enough of people to be sure she does not dream of danger. The best people of the house are ever ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... gentlemen's seats had to them an air of neglect and desolation, and the new plantations of larch and fir with which they had then begun to be surrounded, gave an impression of rawness, barrenness, and lack of geniality. Nor less in large towns, as in Glasgow, were they struck by the dulness and dreariness in the aspect and demeanour of the dim 'common populations.' They saw and felt these things as keenly as any could do. But, unlike ordinary travellers, they were not scared or disgusted by ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... is quoted and ridiculed, religion is made contemptible, and vice under the name of "geniality, openheartedness, and merriment," is made to appear the one thing ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... the door, the air of geniality the doctor had been wearing during the brief interview vanished from his countenance, and it relapsed into its wonted look ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... their characteristics, I should say, the most exuberant and extravagant humour, coupled with strong, noble, Christian purpose,—a thorough scorn for all that is false and base, all the more withering because of the thorough geniality of the writer. Perhaps Jean Paul is of all the satirists I have named the one who at bottom presents most affinity with Lowell, but the differences are marked. The intellectual sphere of the German is vaster, but though with certain aims before him, he rather floats and tumbles ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... sporting men, latter-day coachmen, pink and paragraphic journalists, and middle-aged ladies, who, having once been, or been once, on the stage, still affect the skittish manners of a ballet-dancer. He is a man of short speech, but his humour is as broad as his drinks are long. He affects a rowdy geniality and a swaggering gait, by which he seeks to overawe the inoffensive. Though he has but a small stock of intelligence, he passes for a wit amongst his associates by dint of perpetually repeating an inane catch-word. With this, and a stamp of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... a fine russet, showing tiny, radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with geniality ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... pleasant face, which gained him as many friends as he ever cared to have; for he had a queer, reserved, unsociable twist in his character, which kept him aloof from much company, and rather spoilt his reputation for geniality and heartiness. He hated the hard work he had to go through in society; so at least he was wont to grumble, and then would add, laughing, "I daresay I am a conceited puppy to say so: but the fact is, there are not six people in the world whose company I would ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... scratched his head a little behind, with a movement that sent his straw hat forward in the direction of his nose. "I don't know as I'd do anything for him that I wouldn't do for you," he responded with an equal geniality. "I guess you'd better open that one"—and he gave a little affectionate kick to one ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... one of the fortunate beings who can draw on a spontaneous and inexhaustible fund of geniality and high spirits. He had a craving both for stimulation and for sympathy. Hence he belonged to those who are always happier in the society of women than of men. In his case this choice was not due, as it so often is, to a love ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... of his voice brought Ann's eyes swiftly to his face. All the geniality had gone out of it. It was set and stern, and there was an odd watchfulness in the glance he levelled at Robin as ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... finds in the faces of those accustomed to command. He had a large face, with large regular features, and large clear gray eyes, all of which united to express an exceeding placidity or repose. It shone with intelligence—a mild intelligence—no way suggestive of profundity, although of geniality. Indeed, there was a little too much expression. The face seemed to express ALL that ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... grim kind of geniality, at which I did not know whether to be encouraged or not: I did as he told me, and looked about me with as easy an ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... saw the mistake he had made, but he would not own it. Putting strong constraint upon himself, he assumed a gay geniality of manner which his looks belied, and boldly advanced to the door. But Mrs. Wedmore flung her arms round her husband in a capacious embrace, dragging him backward with an energy there was no ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... will—after making his wife sole executrix, he recommends her to his son Joseph, adding, "and although this perhaps is needless, I do it to mark my special confidence in his affections, skill, and abilities." From the father, our lawyer thus panegyrized received friendly geniality and broad understanding; from the mother, indomitable will, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... he in the least drop his old friends, except Owen. A coolness grew up between the latter and Eric, not unmingled with a little mutual contempt. Eric sneered at Owen as a fellow who did nothing but grind all day long, and had no geniality in him; while Owen pitied the love of popularity which so often led Eric into delinquencies, which he himself despised. Owen had, indeed, but few friends in the school; the only boy who knew him well enough to respect and like him thoroughly was ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... one another. Everybody was glad to see Martin back. No book of his been published; he carried no fictitious value in their eyes. They liked him for himself. He felt like a prince returned from excile, and his lonely heart burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed. He made a mad day of it, and was at his best. Also, he had money in his pockets, and, as in the old days when he returned from sea with a pay-day, he ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... and around when you're still too weak to move without help!" he said in very badly done geniality. "Take my arm and I'll help you upstairs. Your room's all ready for you. If you'd rather I can ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... saying something humorous, a kind of demure appreciation of itself. When it smiled, a row of white teeth flashed out: or, if the lips did not part, a dimple appeared on the right cheek, giving the whole face an air of mischievous geniality. It was an enterprising, swashbuckling sort of mouth, the mouth of one who would lead forlorn hopes with a jest or plot whimsically lawless conspiracies against convention. In its corners and in the firm line of the chin beneath it ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in such close quarters, with even such a woman-stranger. 'I hope, madam,' he said, 'a segar does not offend you?' 'La! no, sir,' replied our rustic friend most good-naturedly, 'I like it.' My father's geniality is always called forth by the touch of his segar. He said, with a smile at the corners of his mouth: 'Perhaps, madam, you would try one yourself.' 'I would!' she answered eagerly. My father hospitably selected his best segar, which she took, saying: 'Thank ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Difficult Union To a World-Reformer My Antipathy Astronomical Writings The Best State To Astronomers My Faith Inside and Outside Friend and Foe Light and Color Genius Beauteous Individuality Variety The imitator Geniality The Inquirers Correctness The Three Ages of Nature The Law of Nature Choice Science of Music To the Poet Language The Master The Girdle The Dilettante The Babbler of Art The Philosophies The Favor of the Muses Homer's Head as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... might be, Dr. Armstrong was not blind to the geniality of Miss Durant's greeting the next morning, or the warmth of her thanks for the cheap-looking dime novel. She chatted pleasantly with him some moments before beginning on the new tale; and even ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... to the hill and belled mournfully, while we ate a frugal meal of oat-bannock and wort. The Low-landers—raw lads—became boisterous; our Gaels, stern with remembrance and eagerness for the coming business, thawed to their geniality, and soon the laugh and song went round our camp. Argile himself for a time joined in our diversion. He came out of his tent and lay in his plaid among his more immediate followers, and gave his quota to the story or the guess. In the deportment of his lordship now there was none of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... these excursions, and at the thought that the reprobate must get his pocket money where he got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's generosity, he had it almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman down. He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and geniality. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kind of Gaspard, a beer-drinking German sheathing his cunning in good-nature, much as a cardinal in the Middle Ages kept his dagger up his sleeve. Wirth saw a husband for Isaure, and accordingly proceeded to surround Godefroid with the mazy circumlocutions of his Alsacien's geniality, that most adhesive of ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... they yet seldom exercise their gifts in a friendly, social, after-dinner way in their own homes. They become, in fact, so critical or so self-conscious that they prefer to pay to hear music rendered by recognized artists, and so a by no means inconsiderable element of geniality is lost to the social and ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... promised. There was something in Bernardine's manner which had won the poor girl's fancy: some unspoken sympathy, some quiet geniality. ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... within Mary's economical pocketbook, yet it seemed to Steve to have the combined richness of a Persian palace and the geniality of a nursery ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... wilds of Assam one gets unused to the grand freedom and cultured geniality of English ladies. I hardly knew what to do, but I extricated myself slowly from the folds of the hat, chucked her under the chin, and remarked, "Houp-la!" The French Governess had retired to the cabin to be ill, and we were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... geniality, smoking his cigarette in content. And as he ran from one topic to another his hearers stared at him in a kind of torpor. Never once did they exchange a glance with each other; their eyes were frozen to Maurice. The cheerful conversationalist made it evident ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... empty belly," he ended with his odious, sycophantic geniality, "makes an empty heart ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... elaborate biography could not give a better idea of Thomas Hood than we obtain from the simple Memorials now published.... These letters perfectly reflect his character with all its fun, geniality, and tenderness.... Much or little, however, all is well done.... The work is ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... friends and acquaintances who have so cordially favoured him with advice and information on so many points. In only a couple of quite unimportant instances has he experienced anything approaching churlishness. The geniality and courtesy of the book-collector are proverbial, but specimens of a different type are evidently to be found here ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... He was also fortunate in obtaining a fit and proper person for the post. Robert Hendrick was by birth and education an Ulster man; but having been for several years employed in the south-west, he had acquired something of that geniality, tact, and courtesy which is, perhaps, deficient in the hard Scotch character of the Northerns. There was nothing of professional piety or of the professional reader about Hendrick. A bright, active, smiling little man, he ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... feeling much the same general abhorrence myself, and had to hold myself in all the time for fear it should gallop over my commonsense. But Harburn, I could see, was giving it full rein. His whole manner and personality somehow had changed. He had lost geniality, and that good-humoured cynicism which had made him an attractive companion; he was as if gnawed at inwardly—in a word, he already had a ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... frame denoted great strength and endurance. His face was smooth, his heavy eyebrows met in a straight line; his eyes were dark and now beamed with a kindly light; his jaw was square and massive; his mouth resolute; in fact, his whole face was strikingly expressive of courage and geniality. A great wolf dog had followed him in and, tired from travel, had stretched himself out before the fireplace, laying his noble head on the paws he had extended toward ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... magnetism he worked with. "Canny" Scotchmen and shrewd Yankees—ay, even Swiss innkeepers—felt the touch of his quality. There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, and it would have smacked of meanness to distrust a fellow so open ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... reminder that he holds his life and goods by the sufferance of his fellows. Thereupon he begins to doubt whether it is worth while to court a verdict of so grave possibilities, or to risk offending a judge—whose customary geniality is merely the outcome of a fixed habit of inattention. In doubt whether to speak or keep silence, he takes a middle course, and while purporting to speak for himself, is careful to lay stress only on the points whereon all are agreed, to enlarge eloquently ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... prevailed down the centuries. One view interprets His character in terms of asceticism; the other in terms of aestheticism.[2] Some regard Him as the representative of Hebrew sorrow and sacrifice; others see in Him the type of Hellenic joy and geniality. There are passages in Scripture confirmatory of both impressions. On the one hand, there is a whole series of virtues of the passive order which are utterly alien to the Greek ideal; and, on the other hand, there is ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... finished his examination of the broken window in the living-room, Herman Krech contrived—partly by his sheer physical bulk and partly by the exercise of a soft assertiveness that was saved by his bland geniality from being plain rudeness—to sequester Simon Varr for a word in private. To accomplish this end he was obliged to shake off his own wife, the tanner's wife, the Jason Bolts and Miss Ocky Copley, the last lady in especial revealing the pertinacity ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... which we have been examining, and particularly in its concluding chapter, that in many of his most startling doctrines he was but half in earnest. Hume's temperament, too cool for fanaticism, had yet in it enough of a certain tepid geniality to save him from becoming a scoffer. The character which he claims for himself, and somewhat ostentatiously parades, is that of a sceptic or general doubter—a character in which, when rightly understood, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... table I was obliged to confess to myself that I was puzzled, for I had been quite unable to arrive at any distinct impression of the character of the man. For while, on the one hand, his manner to me was cordial, with the somewhat rough and unpolished geniality of a man of a coarse and violent temperament striving to conquer his natural disposition and render himself agreeable, I could find no fault with the arrangements he proposed to make for my own comfort and that of my men. And his expressions of sympathy with us in ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... most interesting personality. A great civil servant; in his later years a public man of courage and lofty ideal; in private life a staunch friend, abounding as a companion in humour and ripe knowledge. Age had not dimmed the geniality of his disposition, or an intellect lively and eager as that of a boy—lovable above all in the transparent simplicity of his character." -interest in Torbitt's potato experiment. -letters to. -on earthworms. -observations on fertilisation of Passiflora. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Bous-Bous's white back, and added, with a simple geniality that seemed to spring rather from a desire to be kind than from ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... solicitude," I said, "but I must have my walk. Play to your sombre friend, Schaaf, and see if you can soften him into geniality. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the unstable but reliable equilibrium of her temperament, was the skilled Sarah's superior. They both knew it and felt it. The lofty Hilda admitted it. Caroline herself negligently admitted it by a peculiar, brusque, unaffected geniality of condescension towards Sarah. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... astonishment, Ian held out his hand with a genial smile, which was tolerably honest, for his indulgent nature was as capable of great geniality as incapable of high moral conceptions. Then, he had before his eye, "Monmouth" and "The King ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... children men whom they neither can love nor respect. Wealth and rank no longer divert attention from personal qualities. Gold no longer 'gilds the straitened forehead of the fool.' The gifts of person, mind, and disposition; beauty, wit, eloquence, kindness, generosity, geniality, courage, are sure of transmission to posterity. Every generation is sifted through a little finer mesh than the last. The attributes that human nature admires are preserved, those that repel it are left behind. There are, of course, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... his family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much fitted for an English squire. He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked the geniality which is the very body, the outside expression of humanity. Proud of his family, he had the peculiar fault of the Goth—that of arrogance, with its accompanying incapacity for putting oneself in the place of another. Mr. Wylder possessed a huge inability ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... as though she had scrubbed a lump of crystal and found it to be a diamond. How was it she had never before discovered these depths of affection and geniality below his awe-inspiring exterior? She had not ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... dangled by his side, but his grip upon it was firm. He smiled at Bell with the same effect of a horrible, ghastly geniality. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... willing mind, heart. disposition, inclination, leaning, animus; frame of mind, humor, mood, vein; bent &c (turn of mind) 820; penchant &c (desire) 865; aptitude &c 698. docility, docibleness^; persuasibleness^, persuasibility^; pliability &c (softness) 324. geniality, cordiality; goodwill; alacrity, readiness, earnestness, forwardness; eagerness &c (desire) 865. asset &c 488; compliance &c 762; pleasure &c (will) 600; gratuitous service. labor of love; volunteer, volunteering. V. be willing &c adj.; incline, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... but the tyranny of time. Their names, the names of all mythology, became the household words of a coast that had never been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The Juno was known only for her comfortable cabins amidships, the Saturn for the geniality of her captain and the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport, and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest Indian in the obscurest village on the coast was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... voices here are generally musical; they are nasal and a little loud and, though Americans have a great deal of geniality and love of fun, I am so slow at picking up the language, that I probably miss much of the irony and finesse that characterises our better kind of humour. The Canadians, who are of British stock, have a better sense of humour; but it is always a dangerous subject to write about, and when I remember ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... eyes smile it away in a moment. He stands six feet and an inch, his back his broad, his step springy; he carries his head erect on his massive shoulders with a leonine air of good-humoured defiance. To hear him greet you, to feel his hand-shake, is to get a lesson in geniality. I never knew a man who had so whole-hearted a contempt for insincerity and affectation. It was only the other day that I saw little TOM TITTERTON, of the Diplomatic Service, introduced to him. TOM is a devil of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... excursions.' With Sir Morton at the head of the table, and the acid personality of his daughter Miss Tabitha at the foot, there was very little chance of more than merely monosyllabic conversation, while any idea of merriment, geniality or social interchange of thought, withered in conception and never came to birth. The attention of both host and hostess was chiefly concentrated on the actual or possible delinquencies of the servants ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... dreary enough: the geniality of one of the heads of a household is seldom sufficient to give ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... himself. It is not the massive, exuberant play of Jean Paul. He does not challenge the slow-riding moon to a cricket match, nor hurl the stars from their orbits in his mad game in the skies. Neither has he the brusque but more solid geniality of Lessing. Imagination fails him for the one, and a strong power of logic for the other. But he tears the clouds of ignorance and prejudice that are beneath his feet into ribbons and sends them streaming through space, filmy banners ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he speaks with an American accent?" asked Maggie gravely. The other laughed with a somewhat shrill geniality. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... struck by the geniality of his fellow-travellers for the most part, and the very intelligent way in which they answered his inquiries. He was able to say on his return that he had met with nothing but kindness from beginning to ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... reckoned, has just nothing of emotion in it but a frigid inhumanity. He competed with Guido in the fresco of the Lodovisi Aurora, a substantial work certainly, yet one that lacks the saving qualities of the Rospigliosi ceiling—grace and geniality of fancy. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... eighty-seven years old, lives out in the country on Route 3. He still works on the few acres he owns, raising vegetables for himself and a few baskets to sell. He is a gray-haired, medium sized man and his geniality is frequently noticed by white and Negro friends ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the light geniality of Horace and the pure language of the Augustan age, but we mark the complexity and finesse of a later date, a form of thought bespeaking a comprehensive grasp, and suitable to subtle minds. But as regards his humour it depends much on exaggeration, and is proportionably weak, and beyond ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... enough, then, to have it out with the girl—she was the one to whom he felt it easiest to talk frankly—and had discovered, to his immense relief, that they conceived him to be regarding them as encumbrances. At breakfast next morning, with tactful geniality, he set everything right, and thereafter they were ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... to Dickens, and indeed to all who knew him, for his relish of social life was great, and something of his keen enjoyment could not but be shared by his company. His geniality would have carried with it a pleasurable glow even if it had stood alone, and it was invigorated by very considerable acquirements. He had some knowledge of the works of eminent authors and artists; and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... about four, or not, as the case may be. That's the news. And now, Mr. Dodd, I've stretched a point for you; you can see I'm dead tired; so just you stretch away back to your bunk again." And with this attempt at geniality, his teeth would settle hard down on his cigar, and he would pass his spell below staring and blinking at the cabin lamp through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He has told me since that he was happy, which I should never have divined. "You see," ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... character in early manhood is described by friends as one of peculiar manliness, geniality, and unselfishness. It is said that, on one occasion, he put aside important work of his own in order to spend several days in the studio of a friend, whose gifts were quite inconsiderable compared with his, and whose prospects were all but hopeless,—helping ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... was more pedantic than I can represent him, and placed more scraps of Latin in his speech; but it was all uttered with a fine geniality of eye and manner which went far to conquer my distrust. Moreover, I could see he now treated me as if I was myself beyond a doubt; so that first point of my identity ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... City of Brotherly Love Baily notes the geniality of the people, who by many travelers are called aristocratic, and comments on Quaker opposition to the theater and the inconsequence of the Peale Museum, which travelers a generation later highly praise. Proceeding to New York at a cost of six dollars, he is struck by the uncouthness of the public ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... differences are growing faint. The holy merges into the unholy, and we can scarcely see the dividing line. Black merges into white through manifold shades of grey. Falsehood slopes into truth through cunning expediences and white lies. Lust merges into purity through conviviality and geniality and good-fellowship. So is one thing losing itself in another, and vivid moral distinctions are being obscured ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Henfrey had been sadly deceived by Charles Benton, and had taken him into his family as a friend. Other men had done the same. His geniality, his handsome, open face, and his plausible manner, proved the open sesame to many doors of the wealthy, and the latter were robbed in various ways, yet never dreaming that Benton was the instigator of it all. He never committed a theft himself. He gave the information—and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... evening on the Mediterranean, the wind light, the sea smooth, the temperature—though the season was that of midwinter—summer-like in its geniality. Into the harbor of Tripoli slowly glided a small, two-masted vessel, all her sails set and moderately well filled by the wind, yet moving with the tardiness of a very slow sailer. A broad bay lay before her, its surface silvered by the young moon whose crescent glowed in the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough respecters of themselves and of each other, and, what does not ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... instance, and Chitty was selected to fill the vacancy thus created in the chancery division. Sir Joseph Chitty was for sixteen years a popular judge, in the best meaning of the phrase, being noted for his courtesy, geniality, patience and scrupulous fairness, as well as for his legal attainments, and being much respected and liked by those practising before him, in spite of a habit of interrupting counsel, possibly acquired ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... is lovable, in the English temper. He combined as no other man has ever combined its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control that steady in it a wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and fairness, its frank geniality, its sensitiveness to action, its poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion. Religion, indeed, was the groundwork of Alfred's character. His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere throughout his writings that remain to us the name of God, the thought ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... was worth contemplation. He was simply a quiet, middle-aged man, bearded, and with the little wrinkles of habitual geniality and kindliness spreading from the eyes toward the temple, who stood at his post always gazing out, through his round window, while, from time to time, his hands went from here to there over his levers. He seldom changed either attitude or ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Tours's Hotel du Croissant. "Follow the commis-voyageur in France and dine well (and cheaply)" might readily be the motto of all travellers in France. The bountiful fare, the local colour, the hearty greeting, and equally hearty farewell of the patronne, and the geniality of the whole personnel gave us an exceedingly good impression of the contrast between the tourist hotel of Blois and the maison bourgeois of Tours, always to the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... set forth for Silverado on foot. Kelmar and his jolly Jew girls were full of the sentiment of Sunday outings, breathed geniality and vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the hotel to lead them here and there about the woods. For three people all so old, so bulky in body, and belonging to a race so venerable, they could ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which had been issued respecting his regiment. My presence did not seem to interfere with the fluency of his remarks or the force of his expletives, but after a moment or two he seemed to notice a look of surprise in my face, and his own broadened humorously as his manner changed from vehemence to geniality. General Bates and he were familiar acquaintances at the bar in Cincinnati, and McCook had evidently presumed upon this as a warrant for speaking his mind as he pleased. When he reported to me at this later period, I found a hearty ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... begin to make a tradition of it, the better will it be for our peace of mind and for our children. And if the continent does not satisfy us, there lie the West Indies within a few hours' sail, with all the luxuriance and geniality of the tropics. We are only half emancipated yet. We are still apt to see the world through the imagination of England, whose literature we adopted, or of Germany. To these bleak lands Italy was a paradise, and was so sung by poets who had no conception of a winter without ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily believe it; they had done things a little harder ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... sitter, he was driven to work off some of his superabundant stock on the cravat, and even the hands, which, though amicably crossed in front of the white-waistcoated stomach, are fearfully suggestive of some recent deed of blood. The pleasant geniality of the countenance is, however, reassuring. Nor—except a decided squint, by which the artist had ambitiously attempted to convey a humoristic drollery to the expression—is there ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... good baronet was in this humour no man could excel him in geniality, and, to do him justice, a kindly temper and hearty spirits were the rule with him six days out of seven. On the other hand, he was easily ruffled and his tempers were hot while they lasted. Upon the very next morning there arose ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... always cross-grained, but its volume betrayed a quite unwonted geniality to-night. And half a mile farther, where the dark river bent around Wiseman's Stone, he so far relaxed as to rest on his oars and challenge the famous echo from the wooded cliffs. Somewhat to Miss ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dear friend, in making this small selection from a great mass of material has been twofold. First, I was willing to oblige a friend and comrade who is for me the pattern of wisdom, sincerity, good humour, justice, tranquillity, and geniality. But secondly I was still more concerned (a preference which you will be very far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... believe," said he, rising from his armchair and greeting his visitor with the easy air of geniality which he could so readily assume. "Pray take this chair by the fire, Mr. Baker. It is a cold night, and I observe that your circulation is more adapted for summer than for winter. Ah, Watson, you have just come at the right time. Is ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... position, I would give up alcohol during business hours altogether. I carried out that resolution, and shall continue to do so; Figgis, with all his so-called abilities, was frequently drowsy in the afternoon. Apart from that, I hope I was not wanting in geniality. I snatched a few moments to telegraph to Eliza: "Meet train to-night. Very ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain |
