"Optimism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a growing sympathy and affiliation between them, large with possibilities of improvement for Alleghenia. As he turned into the Rathbawnes' gateway, he could have laughed aloud for very lightness of heart. His optimism was not even impaired by running, in the hall, full ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... penny readings at the village schoolroom would read extracts from "Pickwick," and would laugh so heartily himself that he would have to stop and wipe his eyes. "If you must read novels," he would say, "read Dickens. Nothing to offend the youngest among us—fine breezy stuff with an optimism that does you good and people you get to know and be fond of. By Jove, I can still cry over Little Nell and am ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... Croesus had for some years given himself up to the enjoyment of his gains and to an ostentatious display of his magnificence. It was a rude shock to the indolent and self-complacent dreams of a sanguine optimism, which looked that "to-morrow should be as to-day, only much more abundant," when tidings came that revolution had raised its head in the far south-east, and that an energetic prince, in the full vigor ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... this respect the problems with which we are confronted appear to me more serious and complex than official optimism is sometimes disposed to admit, I have no hesitation is saying that there is no cause for despondency if we will only realize how strong our position in India still is, and use our strength wisely and sympathetically, but, at the same time, with firmness and consistency. It is important to note ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... in the science of charity and forgiveness can never be a great sin. If it is one, the recording angel will probably drop a tear. This tendency to optimism is, we think, more like that magic wand which the great idealist waved over a troubled sea, or like those sudden sunsets after a storm, which not only control the wave, but gild the leaden mass with crimson and unexpected ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... is, however, scarcely perceptible in his last book, Jacob, which is written in anything but a hopeful mood. It is, rather, a protest against that optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice. The harsh and unsentimental logic of reality is emphasized with a ruthless disregard of rose-colored traditions. The peasant lad Wold, who, like all Norse peasants, has been brought up on the Bible, has become deeply impressed with ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... he should discover a barrier other than he had a mind to surmount, he could always return to the old road. Fate might point, but she should never push him against his will. Thus he argued, confident within his soul. He had the optimism, the trust of youth to his balance. He had not yet learned the deepest of Fate's subtleties, the apparent candour which conceals ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... was constantly becoming more imminent. The country was perfectly at sea; and while all hope of reconciliation was fading from day to day, Mr. Seward insisted that peace would come within "sixty days." His optimism would have been most amusing, if the salvation of the country had not been at stake. The President himself not only still hoped, but believed, that there would be no war; and notwithstanding all the abuse that had been heaped upon Mr. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... effect of massing facts as to physical defects of school children should not be to cause alarm, but to stimulate remedial and preventive measures, to invoke congratulations and aggressive optimism, not doleful pessimism and palliative measures born ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... simple, wholesome and unadulterated foods. Nature's plain beverage, water, is all that man should imbibe. No evil thoughts must be allowed to enter the mind. Cheerfulness, self-control, kindliness and optimism are great aids in promoting health. Pessimism, worry, anger, fear and violent emotions are poison to the system. There should be nothing in life to fear. The unselfish know no fear. Those who teach it, or cause others to fear are common enemies to health ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... owns a half interest in the claim which is sure to turn out at least half a million..... Then you will perhaps think of Robert Service's "Spell of the Yukon" and you will understand the enthusiasm and spirit of optimism. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... cried Stoddard, almost startled. "Why, Johnnie—I never expected to hear that sort of thing from you. I thought your optimism was as deep as a well, and as ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... nest of graft. Even the Church of Jesus was for centuries so corrupt that all good men felt its reform in head and members to be the greatest desideratum in Christendom. Evil is more durable and versatile than youth and optimism imagine. The belief in a satanic power of evil expresses the conviction of the permanent power of evil. In early Christianity the belief in the devil was closely connected with the Christian opposition to the idolatrous and wicked social order of heathenism. In the Apocalypse the dragon ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Mark's was ground enough for a difference of his wife's. He was always nervous about the child, and as they were predestined by nature to take opposite views, the only thing for the mother was to cultivate a false optimism. In Mark's absence and that of his betrayed fear she would have been less easy. I remembered what he had said to me about their dealings with their son—that between them they'd probably put an end to him; but I didn't repeat this to Miss Ambient: the less so that just then her brother emerged ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. Panic hardens into pessimism; or else, what is often equally depressing, optimism. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... the American people; we have conveyed no adequate impression of the manly optimism, the courageous confidence in the ultimate virtue of goodness and sound principles, on which the belief in the destiny of their own country is based. The nation has prospered by its virtues. Every page of their history preaches to the people that it ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... compass, helmsman or course, and the treasury locker was being rapidly reduced to remainder biscuit. Mr. Madison was inaugurated in March. In his first message, May 23, 1809, he exposed the financial situation with an indecision which was as marked a trait of his character as optimism was of that of Jefferson. In his message of November 29, 1809, he said "the sums which had been previously accumulated in the Treasury, together with the receipts during the year ending on September 30 last, and ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... Armstrong's book with unruffled urbanity. He wrote: "This authoress belongs to a select but rapidly increasing band of thinkers. There may be schisms in the new school with regard to details, but on the whole it is a united one. The members are unanimous in their fearless optimism. One and all they preach the same hopeful doctrine, that the attainment of a high standard of immodesty by woman will in time make morality possible ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... in the empiric world faulty estrangements and separations, and therefore viewed the redemption by Christ as the reunion of things unnaturally separated—the "recapitulatio" ([Greek: anakephalaiosis]).[484] This speculative thought, which involved the highest imaginable optimism in contrast to Gnostic pessimism, brought Irenaeus into touch with certain Pauline trains of thought,[485] and enabled him to adhere to the theology of the Apologists. At the same time it opened up a view of the person of Christ, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a picture and becomes an important sermon. And as for Spenser, the didactic symbolism of his "Faerie Queen" might be lost forever with no great disadvantage to posterity if his splendid "Epithalamion" could be preserved. Browning's optimism has always left me cold, and I never could quite understand why most of his readers have set him down as a great philosopher. All may be well with the world, but I could never see that Browning's poetry proved it in any way. When the time comes for a cultivated English world—a thoughtful English-speaking ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... having a garden I have had my troubles with the rocks, but the worst time came when, in a mood of enthusiastic and absolutely unintelligent optimism, I decided to have a bit of smooth grass in the middle of my garden. I wanted it very much. The place was too restless; you couldn't sit down anywhere. I felt that I had to have a clear green spot where I could take a chair and a book. I ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... to press matters too far. But the allies are too wary to leave such a matter to Metternich: at Teplitz they bound themselves to common action; and the proposal only shows them the need of pushing on fast while their foe is still unprepared. Once more his old optimism asserts itself. The first French success, that at Brienne, leads him to hope that the allies will now be ready to make peace. Even after the disaster at La Rothiere, he believes that the mere arrival of Caulaincourt at the allied headquarters ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... have detected in the dialogue a note of assumed optimism and suspected that the four old men seated like images on the piazza rail were trying to buoy up one another's courage, and in the assumption he would not, perhaps, ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... accomplished, and the endowment fund paid, all difficulties, it was thought, would vanish, and the College would go forward to its intended place. But before it lay troubled years of uncertainty and anxiety. It was only the firm determination and the undefeated optimism of those who believed in its destiny that kept it from being merely the hope or the dream of a Scottish pioneer rather than a place of everlasting influence in our national life. The struggle of those years was not always without great disappointment, and even bitterness. ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... upon which it plays; it is not an irresponsible temperamental quality which seeks the joyful or comic facts of life and ignores its sad and tragic aspects. The zest of spirit which one finds in Shakespeare, for instance, is not a blind optimism thoughtlessly escaping from the shadows into the sunshine. On the contrary, it is drawn by a deep instinct to study the most perplexing problems of character, and to drop its plummets into the blackest abysses of experience. Literature deals habitually with the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoor being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to him—there begins a romance, troubled ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... first of these documents was remarkable for its optimism, the second might justly be described as a {25} masterpiece of faith pure and undefiled by any contact with sordid facts. Its theme is the magnitude of the compensations which Greece might expect in return for her entry into the War: "I have a feeling," says the author, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... lives which seem to be, perhaps are, stained with a black so deep that no intervening whiteness can affect it; and he declares that this possibility of absolute human suffering is a constant chastener to his own joys. But when called upon to reconcile the avowed optimism of his views with the actual as well as sympathetic experience of such suffering, he shows that he does not really believe in it. One race, he argues, will flourish under conditions which another would regard ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... far apart. And this was not, as some bloodless moderns have sneeringly insinuated, a mere repetition of the proximity between the benevolent stage and the quarrelsome stage of drink. It was a piece of pure optimism; he believed so readily that men were going to be good to him that an injury to him was something more than an injury: it was a shock. What was the exact nature of the American shock must, however, be more ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... whose optimism is indicated by her pseudonym, "Esperance," puts her finger on the spot, or, rather, on one of the spots, in a very sensible letter. "It appears to me," she says, "that the great cause of mental inefficiency is lack ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... compromise. He left a hypothesis to be worked out by others; this done, he would criticize with all the rigour of logic, and with a profound distrust of imagination, metaphor and the attitude known as the will-to-believe. As he grew older his metaphysical optimism waned. He felt that the increase of knowledge must come in the domains of physical science. But this empirical tendency as regards science never modified his metaphysical outlook. He has been called ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Sir Richard's lately-born optimism fell from him like an ill-fitting garment. Taking the glasses back he adjusted them once more with fingers that absolutely trembled; and when after a long and steady stare he lowered them and turned to his companion his face ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to make a machine which can hover, can hold itself in the air by brute force of its propeller blades beating the air. The thing sounds impossible to adapt, say some aeronautical engineers. Those who have seen the experiments, however, express great optimism. ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... He demands Home Rule for his nationality, but still more Home Rule for his home. Most of all he demands Home Rule for himself. He claims the right to be saved, in spite of Moslem fatalism. He claims the right to be damned in spite of theosophical optimism. He refuses to be the Cosmos; because ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... dawn the humming of the airplane motor woke Mary V. She sat up in bed and listened, a little fear gripping at her heart; a fear which she fought with her reason, her hopes, and all her natural optimism. Surely Johnny would not be foolish enough to attempt a flight that morning. He must be just trying put the motor. He would know he was not yet in condition to bear any physical or nervous strain, sick ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... lips to song and the heart to unselfish service. He knew himself to be good-looking and not altogether a barbarian. No morbid hopelessness clouded his broad horizon. He knew himself and cherished his strength and his optimism. He ate slowly, which is no insignificant item on the credit side of the big ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the excessive building in settled districts, the construction of roads ahead of immediate needs or possible traffic. The fact is that the railway policy was part and parcel of the whole business policy of the period, the outcome of the same new-born optimism which induced many a municipality to build pavements and sewers before the population warranted, or manufacturers to extend their plants too rapidly, or banks to open branches that did not pay. Progress comes in zigzag fashion; now ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... however, and in June he was able to go to Divonne to take a cure. After a very characteristic attack of optimism, he suddenly appeared at Champel and astonished everyone by his frightful eccentricities. One evening, however, he felt better, and read to the poet Dorchain the beginning of his novel "The Angelus," which he declared would be his masterpiece. When he had finished, he wept. "And we ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... This optimism or complacency in Wordsworth will be understood if we compare his spirit and treatment with that of the illustrious French painter whose subjects and whose life were in some ways akin to his own. Millet, like Wordsworth, went to the realities of humble life for his inspiration. The peasant of the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... pretended to estimate them beyond thirty days ahead, and to do even that was considered rather a gamble. Real estate joined the parade of advance. Little holes in sand-hills sold for fabulous prices. The sick, destitute, and discouraged were submerged beneath the mounting tide of vigorous optimism that bore on its crest the strong and able members of the community. Every one either was rich or expected soon to be so. Opportunity awaited every man at every corner. Men who knew how to take advantage of fortune's gifts were ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... making of notes for the story was a rather tame occupation compared with the possibilities of actual adventure on the road. He had a good saddle-horse, plenty of optimism, and enough money to pay his way wherever he chose to go. Incidentally he had a notebook and pencil. What more did a man need to make life ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... fog on either side, and the veiled lights of red brown and old gold glowing through them now and again, we were on the top of one of those long, consecutive, and genteel rows of houses which are still to be found lifting their heads above poorer districts, the remains of some rage of optimism in earlier speculative builders. Probably enough, they were entirely untenanted, or tenanted only by such small clans of the poor as gather also in the old emptied palaces of Italy. Indeed, some ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... it. He instanced Ireland in the eighteenth century,—the population had been killed off until only two millions remained, and in the nineteenth century the population stood at eight millions. I listened, letting the priest talk on, delighting in his incurable optimism; and when the servant opened the door and told the priest he was wanted, I saw him put on his old coat, grown green with age; I said to myself, "No man in the world is better at his own job than this one; hope is what they want;" and returning to the study ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... frivolous and offensive criticisms which were once in vogue among us. But neither nation prefers (and it would be an ill sign if either did prefer) the institutions of the other; and we certainly do not contemplate the great Republic in the spirit of mere optimism. We see that it has a marvellous and unexampled adaptation for its peculiar vocation; that it must be judged, not in the abstract, but under the fore-ordered laws of its existence; that it has ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... on the rocks where both 'human critters' were unselfish! But I hope this poor, foolish woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so very bad," she said, with determined optimism. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... recourse to those, ambiguous words, "optimism" and "pessimism," does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very contrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a doctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and the so-called optimists are not the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... the marked shift of population from agricultural communities to urban centers, overchurching has weakened all denominations to the point where missionary effort is necessary to restore again a wholesome religious life. Regardless of the cause of overchurching, whether from the undue optimism of the newer sections of the country or changed conditions in the older, or other conditions, the problem of overchurching must be dealt with in the true spirit of comity and cooperation for the sake of the ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... on the coast states bring back the story of optimism that seems to be characteristic of the enterprising people who migrated west in the early days. This spirit of optimism is not found in all parts of our country, and yet it is of high value. In New England for instance, in each ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... For all his optimism, for all his young, undrained strength, a doubt began to grow in the mind of Pierre le Rouge. At length, remembering how that weight of gold came in his pockets, he slipped his left hand into the bosom of his shirt and touched the icy metal of the cross. Almost at once he ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... moderate as that represented by the profit to be won from the ore in sight, and what value should be assigned to this unknown portion of the deposit admits of no certainty. No engineer can approach the prospective value of a mine with optimism, yet the mining industry would be non-existent to-day were it approached with pessimism. Any value assessed must be a matter of judgment, and this judgment based on geological evidence. Geology is not a mathematical science, and to attach a money equivalence to forecasts based on such evidence ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... bachelor, and arranged that his income should die with him. He afterwards hoped to repair the wrong he had thus done to his children, by outliving the other shareholders and obtaining a part of the immense capital of the Tontine. Fortunately for himself he possessed extraordinary optimism, and power of excluding from his mind the possibility of all unpleasant contingencies—qualities which he handed on in full measure to Honore. He therefore kept himself happy in the monetary disappointments of his later ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... look on the world as an arena for the exploits of heroes at the cost of ordinary mortals may applaud the scheme. But could men who were responsible to France regard it as anything but a final proof of Napoleon's perverse optimism, or a flash of his unquenchable ambition, or a last mad bid for power? He showed signs of anger on hearing of their refusal, but set out for Rochefort at 6 p.m.; and thus the Prussians were cheated of their prey by a few hours. Bertrand, Savary, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Aunt Cordelia's optimism, also her plumpness. "No doubt she can," agreed Miss Clara, politely, but without enthusiasm. Miss Clara had stepped from the graduating rostrum to the schoolroom platform, and she had been there some years. And when one has been there some years, and is already battling with seventy little ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... prospect of writing a new book, great or small, upon any one of his favourite subjects always acted upon him like a tonic, as much so as did the project of building a new house and laying out a new garden. And in all this his sunny optimism and his unfailing confidence in his own powers went far ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... were better, business was better. He could not fail to see that trade was picking up. In dry goods, in hardware, in manufactures there seemed to be a different spirit, and he could imagine that it was a spirit of optimism. There, in that great city where the Heart of the Nation beat, where the diseases of the times, or the times' healthful activities were instantly reflected, Jadwin sensed a more rapid, an easier, more untroubled run of life blood. All through the Body of Things, money, the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... him. He was not a rebuke, but a stimulus, and banished morbidity. Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift that she supposed herself to have already lost—not youth's creative power, but its self-confidence and optimism. He was so sure that it was a very pleasant world. His complexion was robust, his hair had receded but not thinned, the thick moustache and the eyes that Helen had compared to brandy-balls had an agreeable menace in them, whether they were turned towards the slums or towards the ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... to have something like a "Committee of Public Safety." Marvellous race, the English! Lord Derby seems to be an outstanding personality just now. Have you noticed how each month of the war is marked by some new phase of public opinion? Optimism, pessimism, spies, Zeppelins, economy, pink forms, voluntaryism, conscription, munitions—each of these has been for a time the centre of public interest, and each has swiftly fallen from its pedestal to be replaced by some other phase. Curiously enough, the talk at home has ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... thing I have seen to-day has been a man," she boldly said. "Your faith, your optimism, your dreams in the face of the awful facts of life, and with it a tenderness of sympathy I never thought in you, have been a revelation to me. I feel more and more ashamed of the years I ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... inconsistent economic performance, the Peruvian economy grew by more than 4 percent per year during the period 2002-2006, with a stable exchange rate and low inflation. Risk premiums on Peruvian bonds on secondary markets reached historically low levels in late 2004, reflecting investor optimism regarding the government's prudent fiscal policies and openness to trade and investment. Despite the strong macroeconomic performance, underemployment and poverty have stayed persistently high. Economic growth continues to be driven by the Camisea natural gas megaproject and by ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... evils, but in cultivating aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much of our popular religion seems to be expressly directed to deaden our sympathies with our fellow men by encouraging an indolent optimism; our thoughts of the other world are used in many forms as an opiate to drug our minds with indifference to the evils of this; and the last word of half of our preachers is, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... false optimism at this juncture would be criminal, and it may as well be admitted at once that negotiations are proceeding with difficulty. As we go to press we learn that a protracted meeting, lasting from 2 P.M. until after midnight, has been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... if you don't want a drenching!" warned Hilary. "Besides," she added, with inconsequent optimism, "anything may happen before then. Why, I may even be married to ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... did look at Vida Sherwin in detail. You couldn't. Her electric activity veiled her. She was as energetic as a chipmunk. Her fingers fluttered; her sympathy came out in spurts; she sat on the edge of a chair in eagerness to be near her auditor, to send her enthusiasms and optimism across. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... perished but the mere, shredding flesh, one quality persisted equally with the other—the symbol of Essie Scofield was no more actual than Susan. He had breakfast early, with Graham Jannan; and, in a reviving optimism, arranged for the Jannans to bring Miss Brundon to Myrtle Forge for a night before her departure. He whirled away, in a sparkling veil of flung snow crystals, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of youth in her knocked on my rather jaded heart, and I opened to it. That was beautiful and strange. I talked with her, and I felt myself younger, ingenuous rather than cynical, inclined even to a radiant, though foolish, optimism. She was very natural, very imperfect in worldly education, full of fragmentary but decisive views on life, quite unabashed in giving them forth, quite inconsiderate in summoning ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... of this revulsion from old-time pessimism to modern optimism lies in the fact that the Higher Thought enthusiast may cut from under his feet the solid ground of reality; that he may become a dreamer instead of a thinker and doer; and that he may mistake selfish, emotional sentimentalism for ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Archie didn't need them. You can't have everything, and Archie, according to Lucille's account, was practically a hundred per cent man in soul, looks, manners, amiability, and breeding. These are the things that count. Mr. Brewster proceeded to the lobby in a glow of optimism and geniality. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... healthy growth in the life of a race or a nation without a self-reliant spirit animating the whole body; if it amounts to optimism, devoid of egotism and vanity, so much the better. This spirit necessarily carries with it intense pride of race, or of nation, as the case may be, and ramifies the whole mass, inspiring and shaping its thought and effort, however humble ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... hear of any distressing story—finds all this world of fear, from which he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra, in his own "thick-coming fancies;" and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... in that most delightful sort of impertinence, which consists in the other person's not seeing it. "You wouldn't be likely to have heard of that yet. It occurred only before dinner to-day. But we have also talked optimism, pessimism, sociology, evolution—Mr. Mayrant would soon become quite—" I stopped myself on the edge ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... apt to talk of things as they ought to be, and not as they actually were. With all Jane's quiet good sense, there were points on which she could be enthusiastic, and on this evening the successful cousin was struck by the warm expressions of an optimism in which he could not share, uttered by one who had good cause for complaint ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... ground for the philosophy of optimism than for the philosophy of pessimism? Matson, p. 443: ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... the difficulties of shopping on a limited purse, and her husband's fretfulness and fault-finding, might have soured a less unselfish disposition: she had married, however, "for better or for worse," and took the altered circumstances with cheery optimism. She was a great lover of nature and of scenery, and the nearness of the moors, with their ever-changing effects of storm and sunshine, and the opportunities they gave for the study of birds and insects, proved compensation for some ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... private conviction that when Prouty acquired anything beyond a blacksmith shop and a general merchandise store it got more than it needed. Conceived and born in windy optimism, it had no stamina. The least observant could see that, like a fiddler crab's, the progress of the town was backward. But these truths were admitted only in moments of drunken candor or deepest depression, for to hint that Prouty ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... let that same friend be taken away by death, he would scarcely give two days to regret: 'Encore un tiroir ferme', he would say, and there would end his sensibility. Always ready to give and willing to serve, he was a good companion, and benevolent and gay in his temper. He carried his optimism to excess, and was always content with everybody and everything. He had fine natural abilities, and the gift of expression, being a good story-teller." He was married in 1793, the most gloomy period of the Reign of Terror, and went every day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... be given him. A rich, pleasure-loving, Oriental temperament, which tended to pour itself forth in dreams instead of action; vivid emotional sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best, tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short of his possibilities, though he was ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... form of entertainment until shortly before the Civil War when the word 'variety' was at once adopted and became familiar as something peculiarly applicable to the troubled times. The new and always cheerful entertainment found the reward of its optimism in a wide popularity. But as those days of war were the days of men, vaudeville made its appeal to men only. And then the war-clouds passed away and the show business had to reestablish itself, precisely as ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... be another example of the gross optimism of these religions denouncing suicide, in order to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... himself was led and helped by this same Providence, which specially watched over the launching of his projects for the welfare of mankind. No, my feeling was of quite another kind. Nothing was farther removed from me than this sometimes quite childish optimism. It was not enough for me to advertise the sufferings of a few individuals and, when possible, alleviate them; I sought the causes of them in brutality and injustice. Neither could I recognise the finger of a Universal Ruler in a confusion of coincidences, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... retrenchment, and the anxious cultivator of all industrial arts, to prepare a war budget, and to meet as well as he might the exigencies of a conflict which had so cruelly dislocated all the ingenious devices of financial optimism." ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... much finer thing. But I'll try to answer the other question. The prairie isn't dreadful; it's a land of sunshine and clear skies. Heat and cold—and we have them both—don't worry one there. There's optimism in the crystal air. It's not beautiful like these valleys, but it has its beauty. It is vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you pass the breaking, it's primevally old. That gets hold of one somehow. It's wonderful after sunset in the early spring, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... June Mason moving about and singing; she at least was happy with her little mauve pots and her cheery optimism. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... far more than her own successes; and the Treaty of Ghent did not so much as mention impressment, captures, or any of the other matters mainly at issue when the war was begun. Peace, however, brought gratitude, enthusiasm, optimism. Defeats were quickly forgotten; and Jackson's victory at New Orleans atoned for the humiliations of years. After all, the contest had been victorious in its larger outcome, for the new world conditions were such as to insure that the claims ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... repeated expeditions had discounted the exuberant optimism of this description, the Englishmen's faith did not wane. While for many years there lurked in the mind of the Londoner, the hope that some of the products of the Levant might be raised in the fertile ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... to be delegated to a younger man and that man was Joshua. Eleazar, on the other hand, was the only available candidate for the high priesthood, and Moses took the opportunity of making the investiture on Mount Hor. So Aaron passed away, a sacrifice to the optimism of Moses. Next came the turn of Moses himself. The whole story is told in Deuteronomy. Within, probably, something less than a year after Aaron's death the "Lord" made a like communication ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... little bird told me," replied Nyoda lightly. "Cheer up. All the famous authors had their first work rejected. You have achieved the first mark of fame." Migwan smiled wanly. Her tragedies always seemed to lose their sting in the light of Nyoda's optimism. She told her about the necessity for a typewriter. "I could have told you that to begin with, if you had asked my humble advice," replied Nyoda. "But if a miserable writing machine is all that stands between you and fame and fortune, your fortune is already made. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... beguile themselves—each for the sake of the other—with all the tricks and chimeras of optimism, but that was only the masquerade of the clown who laughs while his heart is sick and under whose toy-bright paint is the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... on to the balcony which overlooked the lake, and, leaning her arms on the balustrade, yielded to the current of her thoughts. Notwithstanding Lady Susan's cheery optimism, she was considerably worried about Tony. She could see so exactly what it was that fretted him—this eternal dancing attendance on Sir Philip, who insisted on the boy's accompanying him wherever he went, and she felt a sudden angry contempt for the selfishness of old age which could so ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... off the Indians, who wanted the bright wire for ear-rings and bracelets; and the bears, which mistook the humming of the wires for the buzzing of bees, and persisted in gnawing the poles down. With the most heroic optimism, this Rocky Mountain Company persevered until, in 1906, it had created a seventy-thousand-mile nerve-system for ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the keynote of what the summer has left with us. As Canadians, looking at this Western Canada which has arrived and thinking of the lands of Canada's fertile Northland far beyond, for the future we are full of optimism, and of the present ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Handel never merged the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... time!" said a genial person, travelling in the tobacco trade. The professor eyed him with suspicion, as a man deranged by optimism. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... bright, and her shadows of too mild a gray, that the sky of her landscapes is too sunny, and their atmosphere too redolent of peace and abundance. Local affection may be accountable for half of this excess of brilliancy; the author's native optimism is accountable for the other half. I do not remember, in all her novels, an instance of gross misery of any kind not directly caused by the folly of the sufferer. There are no pictures of vice or poverty or squalor. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... me to be a thousand chances against it," Hadria continued. "Artistic power, to begin with, is a sort of weakness in relation to the everyday world, and so, in some respects, is a nice conscience. I think Emerson is shockingly unjust. His beaming optimism is a worship of success disguised under lofty terms. There is nothing to prove that thousands have not been swamped by maladjustment of character to circumstance, and I would even go so far as to suggest that perhaps the very greatest of all ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... two lads (Charles was only eight) took their stand in the lobby, but despite their eager cries each was able to sell only a single copy. Gustave consoled himself with the fact that the price was too high, while Charles, with an optimism that never forsook him, answered, "Well, we have each sold one, anyhow, and that ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... high position: I strip you of it; there you are, free. There is too much optimism beneath this official costume, too much subordination, too much idleness. Science demands an insurrection of thought: now, the thought of an official is his ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... determined our actions, although the Civil War is proof of its power. Again and again it has gone aground roughly when the ideal met a condition of living—a fact that will provide the explanation for which I seek. But optimism, "boosting," muck- raking (not all of its manifestations are pretty), social service, religious, municipal, democratic reform, indeed the "uplift" generally, is evidence of the vigor, the bumptiousness ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery, yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content, belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the poet's desire to please. One can better fancy ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and I believe the Emperor Francis will have received from his journey a fuller confidence in the feelings of the Emperor Napoleon towards him, as well as a large crop of good counsels." With all his optimism, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was compelled to notice the secret feelings of the Empress of Austria. After saying in his despatch to Count Otto that the Emperor Francis had been able to see with his own ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... not wish to copy or imitate him—he had infected me with a deep distrust for dependence—I only wished to live my own life in the same eager spirit. As he had said to me once, the motto for every man was to be Amor Fati—not a reluctant acquiescence, or a feeble optimism, or a gentle resignation, but a passion for one's own destiny, a deep desire to make the most and the best out of life, and a strong purpose to share one's best with all who were journeying at ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had a fashion of turning his very misfortunes into pleasantries. Surely prosperity would be wasted on a person so gifted with optimism. I felt it to be kind and proper, however, to express the hope that he had reached the end of his adversity, and to assure him that I would do anything I could in ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with—just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never cared for anybody else, and ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... a pack of cards, or ever take them off in piles either. (That much at least you do know.) You also make it a point above everything that the silver must be very clean; Sigrid seems to understand, and with the optimism of youth, you approach the dinner hour without misgiving. The table, set with your wedding silver and glass, looks quite nice. You are a little worried about the silver—it does look rather yellow, but perhaps it is just a shadow. Then you notice there are a great many forks on the table! ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... recurred to her, which she comprehended more clearly. She recalled the portrait of her grandmother, the complexion, the hands, the hair of her father, and she experienced that shame of her birth and of her family much more common with children than our optimism imagines. Parents of humble origin give their sons a liberal education, expose them to the demoralization which it brings with it in their positions, and what social hatreds date from the moment when the boy of twelve blushes in secret at the condition of his relatives! With Lydia, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... been trying to form some sort of answer to this question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to quite a number of young men in khaki—ex-engineers, ex-lawyers, ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts—and the net result of these interviews has been a buoyant belief ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... printer's apprentice at twelve, but as he received no salary, the need of a purse could not have been urgent. He must have carried it pretty steadily, however, from its appearance—as a kind of symbol of hope, maybe—a token of that Sellers-optimism which dominated his early life, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Old Bots this way and that with much shouting, prodding and jerking of reins. And he drove where perhaps no man had ever driven before. His smiling confidence in Old Bots, in his rattling, creaking old cart, in his own ability as a driver were all characteristic of his joyous optimism. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... manifestation of the Divine Will. If God Himself is the Life that stirs within all life, the Reality underlying all phenomena—if we live and move and have our being in Him, and His Spirit dwelleth within us—the direct outcome of such a belief should be a sacred optimism, an assurance that the cosmos "means intensely, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the Chief was in high spirits. It was characteristic of his indomitable kindliness and optimism that, though he ended every term in a state of exhaustion, having strained his energy and endurance to the breaking-point, he invariably began the new term in a spirit of geniality and hope. It was not till years later that Gordon came to understand the depth of unselfish idealism ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... in his mind certain statements which he proposed to make to the big men of the Comas. He had assorted and classified those statements before he entered the castle of the great corporation. With youth's optimism he had anticipated a certain measure of sympathy—had in some degree pictured at least one kindly man in the Comas outfit who would listen ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... be molded into new forms. It was written when the strife raged fiercest between ancient and modern ideals; and, finally, it was written in all the plenitude of my powers, when my soul was sanest and most joyful in the possession of an enviable optimism and an all-embracing love and sympathy for humanity that, to my misfortune, can never again find place within ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... spoke of the coming cock-fight with characteristic optimism—not shared by Harkness, and but partially approved by O'Neil. Details were solemnly discussed, questions of proper heeling, of silver and steel gaffs, of comb and wattle cutting, of the texture of feather and hackle, and of the "walks" ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... of the American people is their superb practical optimism; that marvellous hopefulness which keeps the individual efficiently at work. This hopefulness of the American is, however, as short-sighted as it is intense. As a rule, it does not look ahead beyond the next decade or score of years, and fails wholly to reckon with the real ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... that respect, and usually seeks to turn its virtue into capital. But in a land where, as old King Solomon, who knew his crowd, remarked, "All men are liars," you must have some sort of weathervane by which to guide your national optimism, so I settled on that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... children sit on our knee and pelt us with questions that go to the roots of our philosophy, we get rid of the bother of it by telling the children to go away and play; but when a Tolstoi puts such questions, we cannot get rid of him so easily. Russian novelists are a thorn in the side of complacent optimism. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... not find in the capital the optimism that reigned in the mind of Pope. McClellan was withdrawing his army from Virginia, but the eyes of the nation were turned toward Pope. Many who had taken deep thought of the times and of men, were more alarmed about Pope than he was about himself. They did not like those jubilant ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... extract we see the optimism which runs through Carlyle's earlier writings,—the faith in creation which is to succeed destruction, the immortal hopes which sustain the soul. He believed in the God of Abraham, and was as far from being a scoffer as the heavens are higher than the earth. He had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... point of view the greatest thing in this life is its mystery. From the moral point of view the greatest thing in man is the optimistic interpretation of that mystery. There is no reasonable optimism outside of Christianity. ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... has a secret optimism for its object. All surrender of life, all denial of pleasure, all darkness, all austerity, all desolation has for its real aim this separation of something so that it may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed. I feel grateful for the slight ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... pony, and the best house-dog. His parish was the most virtuous, his church the most picturesque, his vicarage the prettiest, certainly, in the whole shire,—perhaps, in the whole kingdom. Probably it was this philosophy of optimism which contributed to lift him into the serene ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be clear. I take it that you are under the sway of a contemporary mood, that your position is an accidental phase of to-day's materialism. Broadly, our quarrel is that of pessimism and optimism, only your pessimism is unconscious, which makes it the more dangerous to yourself. You are too sad to know that you are not happy or to care. Does my diagnosis surprise you? Analyze the argument of your last letter. You trace the growth of the emotion ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... his eye, a permanent smile on his face, and a confirmed bachelor, with no small pride in his consistency. The good people of Sauveterre thought he did not look stern and solemn enough for his profession. To be sure he was very highly esteemed; but his optimism was not popular; they reproached him for being too kind-hearted, too reluctant to press criminals whom he had to prosecute, and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... of the prophecy or the anxious doubt of the vision would come true, only the future could tell. In 1822, at all events, optimism was the watchword and the total exclusion of Spain from South America the goal of Bolivar and his lieutenants, as they started southward to complete the work of emancipation which had been ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... was a block outside, and the few yards between us and the door seemed interminable. I had none of the optimism of those others. I was filled with vague fears of some impending disaster. Suddenly, with a shiver, I recognized Cullen, scarcely a couple of yards away, also watching, wedged in among the throng. His lips were drawn closely together; ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dark to see clearly into the pit below, but John could tell from the coarse optimism and rugged vitality of the remarks and voices that they proceeded from middle-class Americans of the more spirited type. Then Mr. Washington put out his cane and touched a button in the grass, and the scene below sprang ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Theocritus, such statues as the Aphrodite of Melos and the Victory of Samothrace, are great lights for all time. But the works of maturity have seldom the charm which marks those which are full of the optimism ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... earnings. In fact, what with tempting investments, the importunities of a highly luxurious taste in life hitherto unsuspected, and an occasional gambling flyer, his balance was precarious, so to speak. With the happy optimism of one to whom the rosy present casts an intensified glow upon the future, he confidently anticipated a greatly and steadily augmented income, since the circulation of The Patriot was now the terror of its rivals. That any radical alteration could be made in his method ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he entered, looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost greedily, of expectation and virile optimism. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... uncompromising an optimism is not essential to this religion. Its distinction lies rather in its acceptance of the manifest plurality of souls, and its appeal to the faith that is engendered by service.[305:29] ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... came in the morning that after all Wilson was re-elected, Susan tacked to catch another breeze of optimism. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of optimism; I willingly agree to it. I believe that optimism is often right here below. We need hope; we need sometimes to receive good news; we need to see sometimes the bright side of things. The bright side is often the true side; if Love ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... insatiable thirst for action and for renown was to be the source of Napoleon's strength and also of his weakness. But only a few clear-sighted men made these reflections when the Empire began. The masses, with their easy optimism, looked upon the new Emperor as an infallibly impeccable being, and thought that since he had not yet been beaten, he was invincible. Josephine indulged in no such illusions; she knew the defects in her husband's character, and dreaded the future for him as well as for herself. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand |
