"Optimistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gun of the campaign, and summoned to the field various contending forces, armed with ridicule, argument, or an optimistic diplomacy, urging an immediate surrender of the ground claimed. Bills favoring the enfranchisement of women were discussed both in the Territorial Council Chamber and in the lower House of the legislature. The subject was taken up ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... and smoothed the delicate dark fur of her muff. She hardly knew how to begin at the very beginning like this. She did not want to hurt any one's feelings. How could she tell this childlike, optimistic creature that to put Mathilde to living in surroundings like these would be like exposing a naked baby on a mountaintop? It wasn't love of luxury, at least not if luxury meant physical self-indulgence. She could imagine suffering privations very happily ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... lengthened. With him letter writing was never an effort. He wrote as easily as he talked, colloquially, without any attempt at style or set phrase. Soon he found himself tersely describing the water situation, forecasting the probabilities. As these were not too cheering, he frowned and added an optimistic sentence or two for general effect. He concluded with a hope that she would some time honour his country with a visit, when his ranch and all it contained—including its owner—would ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the encomiums of his fellow artists and of the critics. His parents were denying themselves in order to provide the means for his support, and, while he was duly appreciative of their goodness, he could not help taking it more or less as a matter of course. He was optimistic with regard to the future, falling into the common error of gifted young artists that, because of their artistic success, financial success must of necessity follow. He had yet to be proved in the school of adversity, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... forces that count, and which prevail to keep all but the least serious within bounds. German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted together, so impossible to break into except through the recognized channels, that few men have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spirits, the demonic confidence in themselves, that ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the optimistic old woman admitted. "I have to get along with only two teeth, one in the upper jaw and one in the ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... disappointed to think I was to return to Paris, but felt certain that inasmuch as the orders recalling me had been sent before Mr. Bullitt's arrival, there was every possibility of my being returned to Petrograd. He was most optimistic about the future and felt that the Allies must soon take some definite stand regarding Russia, and that the result of the Paris negotiations would almost surely be favorable to the Soviet Government. He said that the present war conditions and the limited ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... detrimental in the civilizing fabric, and that their range of incapacity tempts and demoralizes the strong. To give them equality is to sink to their level, to protect and cherish them is to be swamped in their fecundity. The confident and optimistic Radicalism of the earlier nineteenth century, and the humanitarian philanthropic type of Liberalism, have bogged themselves beyond hope in these realizations. The Socialist has shirked them as he has shirked the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... or rather, he is to be carted abroad by some optimistic friends whose hopes he does not share—to a celebrated repair shop for damaged pots. Whether he shall return, patched and mended into temporary semblance of a useful Vessel; whether he shall continue to be merely the same old Luckless Pot, or whether he shall return at all, O Pipkin, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... it was drifting hard, and part of the morning was spent theorizing on our prospects in an optimistic vein. This humour gradually wore off as the thick drift continued, with a fifty-mile ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... system of philosophy, and seemed to show the influence now of Plato, now of Kant, or of German thought as filtered through the brain of Coleridge, he was, like his American master, associate and friend, steadily optimistic, idealistic, individualistic. The teachings of William Ellery Channing a little before, as to the sacred inviolability of the human conscience—anticipating the later conclusions of Martineau—really lay at the basis of the work of most of the Concord transcendentalists and contributors ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... may be only, a proof of the innate goodness of civilised humanity, it is still beyond all doubt that Christianity has broken down, and that this breakdown has been brought home to everyone by the terrible catastrophe which has befallen the world. Can the most optimistic apologist contend that this is a satisfactory, outcome from a religion which has had the unopposed run of Europe for so many centuries? Which has come out of it worst, the Lutheran Prussian, the Catholic Bavarian, or the peoples who have been nurtured by the Greek Church? If ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when two boys not yet fairly in their 'teens meet, at first aggressively, and then, each gradually overcoming this apprehension of the other, decide upon a close acquaintance and long comradeship? Their talk is firmly optimistic and they constitute much of the world. As for Ab and Oak, when there had come to them an ease in conversation, there dawned gradually upon each the idea that, next to himself, the other was probably the most important personage in the world, fitting companion ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... statues; and poured soot on them. They boasted of their schools, but the schools were dirty, like the children within them. This was not the fault of the children or their mothers. It was the fault of the idealists, who said: "The more dirt, the more prosperity." They drew patriotic, optimistic breaths of the flying powdered filth of the streets, and took the foul and heavy smoke with gusto into the profundities of their lungs. "Boost! Don't knock!" they said. And every year or so they boomed a great Clean-up Week, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... not sell for fear of causing a financial collapse. Drew had taken away about seven million dollars of his money and an artificial stringency had been created in Wall Street by this exodus of most of its available cash. But Vanderbilt weathered the storm and, as his generally optimistic attitude inspired confidence, the sky ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... upside down for Nancy, and she lost, once and for all her position as its centre. The world, instead of a safe and cheerful place, became full of possible dangers for the baby, Albert the eighth. Nancy, instead of a self-reliant, optimistic woman, was only a weary, feeble, ignorant person who doubted her own power to protect this ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... understand, is consecrated to the unrealities so precious to us. We come here and for a little while allow our dreams to peer timorously at life. In the streets west of here we are what we are—browbeaten, weary-eyed, terribly optimistic units of the boobilariat. Our secret characterizations we hide desperately from the frowns of windows and the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the beech-tree opposite a wren was raising optimistic outcry. The sun had won his way through a black-bellied shred of cloud; upon the terrace below, a dripping Venus and a Perseus were glistening as with white fire. Past these, drenched gardens, the natural wildness of which was judiciously ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... conscious that our religion is not solely Christ's work. Every drop of blood of a Christian martyr is a stone in the work. Every suffering man with heroic Christian hopes, and every dying human being with optimistic Christian belief is a collaborator of Christ, or is a founder of our Church. The Church is not at all solely Christ's work, she is the collective work of many and many millions who, in the name of Christ, decisively took part in this mystic ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... lingered a shadow flitted across the curtain in its direction, and then another, until in his mind's eye he beheld Margaret Elizabeth and Uncle Bob seated beside the hearth. For aught he knew, it might be Augustus McAllister making an evening call, but the Candy Man was just then too determinedly optimistic to harbour ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... newspapers on President Wilson's note of June 9 was reported by THE TIMES staff correspondent in Berlin on June 12 as being "surprisingly restrained and optimistic." Captain L. Persius, the naval critic of the Berliner Tageblatt, which is close to Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, writing under the caption, "On the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... family in a settled social equilibrium (rarely the case in America), or one that is going up in the human scale, is apt to acquire connections, quite apart from the accidents of birth and social gifts, because the mental attitude is an open and optimistic one, attracting to itself humanity instead of timidly withdrawing into itself. Strength attracts and weakness repels in the long run here as elsewhere. The Clarks, who had never been considerable or numerous, had in the course of three ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... the man of letters must in some way reconcile himself to the paradox that he is at once the acolyte and the rival of the ancients. Young is optimistic enough to believe that it is possible to surpass them. In the mechanic arts, he complains, men are always attempting to go beyond their predecessors; in the liberal arts, they merely try to follow them. The analogy between the continuous advance of science and a possible continuous advance ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... that he did not receive an answer at once, although he realised what a blow it would be to her. He understood that, to begin with, it would destroy all her dreams, as it had already destroyed. But he relied on her optimistic nature, which he had never known surpassed, and on the depth of her purpose in all that she undertook. He knew that she drew strength and resolution from all that was deepest in their ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... catch up," said Emmy Lou's Aunt Cordelia, a plump and cheery lady, beaming with optimistic placidity upon the infant populace seated in parallel rows at ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... main business in life was that of appreciating. She was the confidante, the counsellor, the optimistic teacher, and the appreciative audience for six children and a husband, besides a lot of neighbors who carried their troubles to her. She performed more mental work than it takes to manage a billion dollar trust. She kept six children, not only out of ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... with, let us make two very optimistic assumptions—first, that technical progress in Germany shall have developed to a point at which we are no longer impossibly outclassed and distanced by foreign nations, and, secondly, that by a timely and far-reaching reform of education and culture (the lowest ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... apparently the ally of Charles as well as of Louis, and consequently had reason to dread an attack from both, is strikingly shown in his correspondence. The plan of an equilibrium of the four chief Italian powers, as understood by Lorenzo the Magnificent, was but the assumption of a cheerful optimistic spirit, which had outgrown both the recklessness of an experimental policy and the superstitions of Florentine Guelphism, and persisted in hoping for the best. When Louis XI offered him aid in the war against Ferrante of Naples and Sixtus IV, he replied, 'I cannot set my ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... about our corporations and corruption that I see with my pessimistic eye; but the other eye sees the American man himself—the type that our eighty millions on the whole melt into and to which my heart warms each time I land again from more polished and colder shores—my optimistic eye sees that American dealing adequately with these political diseases. For stronger even than his kindness, his ability, and his dishonesty is his self-preservation. He's going to stand up for the 'open shop' and sit down on the ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the ships restored his spirits considerably. Whenever Christopher had to do with boats and sea preparations he was in his element. He now grew optimistic, and, with his usual fatal habit of promising great results, he told his Sevilla acquaintances that he expected to circumnavigate the world. Fatal habit, yes; but it meant that he still kept that rich imagination, without which he never would ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... of the bitterness and antagonism of the typical "Southern rights" woman; nor of her two daughters, Octavia and Augusta, whose languid atrabiliousness seemed a part of the mourning they still wore. The optimistic gallantry and good fellowship of the major appeared the more remarkable by contrast with his cypress-shadowed family and their venomous possibilities. Perhaps there might have been a light vein of ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... I think my optimistic nature, my ability to shed trouble and to laugh through life, making "all my ducks swans," as friends say I do, must have been inherited from this delightful old masquerading grandfather whose name I am proud to bear.[3] A sunny disposition is worth ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... persons interested in this question be really desirous of seeing it settled and are willing to listen to reasonable proposals, I believe that a way may be found for its solution. There is good reason for my optimistic opinion. Even the Labor Unions, unless I am mistaken, would welcome an amicable settlement of this complicated question. In 1902, while at Washington, I was agreeably surprised to receive a deputation of the leaders of the Central Labor Union of Binghamton, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... to be able to think of her in the keeping of a good man—like Stafford—who, if pig-headed and bigoted, was yet calculated to stick to a woman and make her happy. Looking straight at himself and his past, Travers could not be sure that he would stick to any one. Also there was the Rajah, optimistic, and trusting, so much so that it left an unpleasant taste in the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... glaring at each other, Jim with his hands clenched at his sides, and Mr. Harbison with his arms folded and very erect. Dal took Jim by the elbow and led him downstairs, muttering, and the situation was saved for the time. But Dal was not optimistic. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but indeed I did not feel any too optimistic. Holding down Hynds House was no easy task, and the town was not disposed to make it easier for us. While we had been busy renovating, while our hands were so full of work that every minute was occupied, we hadn't felt ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... atmosphere of home, which a man instinctively responds to with a certain clinging affection, however crude may be the shelter he calls his own. Cash secretly regretted the thirsty death of his radishes and lettuce which he had planted and tended with such optimistic care. Bud wondered if Daddy might not stray half-starved into the shack, and find them gone. While they were there, he had agreed with Cash that the dog must be dead. But now he felt uneasily doubtful It would be fierce if Daddy ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... isn't much chance of that happening," he said in his usual optimistic manner. "If things get pretty bad we can make a foray on the pantry of the shack where our friend puts up when over here. Knowing that he's fond of his grub, with oceans of the long green to lay in the best of supplies with, I rather think he keeps a well-stocked larder at all times. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... four-years' rain of bullets and there were few enough of us left to build again. And of us all he had the most constructive power. With the same buoyant courage that he had led our regiment in battle did he lead the remnant of us in reconstructing our lives. He was gay and optimistic, laughed at bitterness and worked with infectious spirits and superb force. We all depended on him and followed him keenly. We loved him and let ourselves be laughed into his schemes. It was his high spirits and temperament that led to his gaming and tragedy. Nearly thirty years he's been dead, ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... years of his youth and early manhood, and threw him constantly into fits of melancholy and inner brooding. He could neither dismiss the subject from his mind, nor could he bring into the area of his mortal consciousness that serene contemplation and optimistic line of reasoning which marks all ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... of the erroneous conduct of life by men of extraordinary powers. In each poem the chief personage aspires and fails, yet rises—for Browning was not of the temper to accept ultimate failures, and postulated a heaven to warrant his optimistic creed—rises at the close from failure to a spiritual recovery, which may be regarded as attainment, but an attainment, as far as earth and its uses are concerned, marred and piteous; he recovers in the end his ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... knowledge that he lacked means of obtaining illumination deterred him nothing; he had some hope of finding matches in one of the adjacent rooms, but, failing that, was prepared to ascend the stairs on all fours, feeling every inch of their surface, if it took hours. Ever an optimistic soul, instinctively inclined to father faith with a hope, he felt supremely confident that his search would not prove fruitless, that he would win early ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Eastern and Western continents was uninterrupted. It was a proud day for America. Even while the Martians had been upon the earth, carrying everything before them, demonstrating to the confusion of the most optimistic that there was no possibility of standing against them, a feeling—a confidence had manifested itself in France, to a minor extent in England, and particularly in Russia, that the Americans might discover means to ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... the past the soul has risen, one need not be unduly optimistic to presume that, in spite of opposition, it will meet no enemies which it will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not be able to scale. Prophecy is the art of reading history forward. The spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can ever permanently ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... I don't think that any of us really believed that we should die, though whether this was because we had all, except poor Quick, survived so much, or from a sneaking faith in Maqueda's optimistic dreams, I cannot say. At any rate we ate our food with appetite, took exercise in an inner yard of the prison, and strove to grow as strong as we could, feeling that soon we might need all our powers. Oliver was the most ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... locked during the winter, the German authorities had good reason to feel optimistic about the coming spring campaign. They knew that they had increased their munition output enormously, and their spies told them that Russia had practically run out of ammunition, while England had ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... to the lingering belief that if syphilis is done away with, licentiousness will overrun the world. Long before syphilis appeared in Europe there was sexual immorality. In the five centuries in which it has had free play over the civilized world, the most optimistic cannot successfully maintain that it has materially bettered conditions or acted as a check on loose morals, though its relation to sexual intercourse has been known. As a morals policeman, syphilis can be obliterated without material ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... listened to him with her eyes fixed steadily on his own. As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell his message. But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer grounds for any optimistic foresights. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... preparations against any such enterprise. Lord Curzon, writing before Russia's strategic railways were complete, thought it feasible for Russia speedily to throw 150,000 men into Afghanistan, feed them there, and send on 90,000 of them against the Indus[348]. After the optimistic account of the problem of Indian defence given by Mr. Balfour in the speech above referred to, it is well to remember that, though Russia cannot invade India until she has conquered Afghanistan, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was taken, sometimes a certain strata of wind enabling them to get close enough to the earth to use their eyes, while again they had to use the telescopes. They covered a wide section but as day after day passed, and they were no nearer their goal, even Tom optimistic as he usually was, began to have a tired and ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... the contest that he couldn't see the backs. Neil saw the game from the bench, and Paul, once more at left-half, played an excellent game; but, try as he might, could not outdo Gillam. When it was over Neil declared the honors even, but Paul took a less optimistic view and ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... be expected from one who had such an aversion for Calvinism, the view of human nature taken by the author is what some would call optimistic, and the tone with regard to the religious honesty of non-Catholic Americans extremely hopeful. Perhaps herein was Dr. Brownson's reason for an adverse, or almost adverse, criticism on the book in his Review. He had given the Questions of the Soul a thoroughly flattering reception, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... seen, upon reading these cases, that a rather pessimistic attitude is taken toward some of them. It would be nice to present a series of cases all of which recovered, and it would be easy to do that by picking the cases. Such a series would be optimistic in its trend; it would however have the small demerit of being false to life. Though the majority of women suffering from nervousness may be relieved or cured, a number cannot be essentially benefited. Some of them have temperaments utterly incompatible with matrimony, others ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... and its aftermath of minor massacres in the ground we had gained—the new horror of that new salient—had sapped into the confidence of those battalion officers and men who had been assured of German weakness by cheery, optimistic, breezy-minded generals. It was no good some of those old gentlemen saying, "We've got 'em beat!" when from Hooge to the Hohenzollern redoubt our men sat in wet trenches under ceaseless bombardment of heavy guns, and when any small attack they made by the orders of a High Command which believed ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... was born at Bound Brook, N.J., in 1832. For many years he preached to large and enthusiastic congregations at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. At one time six hundred newspapers regularly printed his sermons. He was a man of great vitality, optimistic by nature, and particularly popular with young people. His voice was rather high and unmusical, but his distinct enunciation and earnestness of manner gave a peculiar attraction to his pulpit oratory. His rhetoric has been criticized for floridness and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... representative "to stand up with the best of them," and certainly some of the constituents would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer. It is part of that general desire to appear well, the optimistic and thoroughly American belief, that even if a man is working with his hands to-day, he and his children will quite likely be in a better position in the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no need of being too closely associated with common working ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... joyous, optimistic, pagan spirit, full of courage and gaiety; full too, it must be confessed, of a humorous terror now and then, and yet capable enough sometimes of looking very formidable antagonists squarely in the face and refusing to quit the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... read it, for the disappointment was severe. He thought that Sylvia might have remembered that he could not leave the farm after spring had begun. The man felt wounded and, for once, inclined to bitterness. His optimistic faith, which idealized its object, was bound to bring him suffering when dispelled by disillusion; offering sincere homage to all that seemed most worthy, he had not learned tolerance. Though his appreciation was quick and generous, he must believe in what he admired, and it was, perhaps, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... have read these two papers, you will know that one magazine is as remote in character from the other as San Francisco is from London. But each has happened to fare far afield in search of readers, and between them I may have converted a few to my optimistic view of every-day incident. To educate the British Matron and Young Person was, perhaps, no more difficult than to open the eyes of the California Native Son. The fogs that fall over the Thames are not very different ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... inordinate elevation in public consideration of rich men simply because they are rich, are characteristics of this little point of time on which we stand. They are not the only characteristics; in a reasonably optimistic view, the age is distinguished for unexampled achievements, and for opportunities for the well-being of humanity never before in all history attainable. But these characteristics are so prominent as to beget the fear that we are losing the sense of the ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... complete, or, I should suppose, in better humour with themselves and less disposed to envy the responsibilities of bigger places. It is truly the capital of its smiling province; a region of easy abundance, of good living, of genial, comfortable, optimistic, rather indolent opinions. Balzac says in one of his tales that the real Tourangeau will not make an effort, or displace himself even, to go in search of a pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sources of this amiable cynicism. He must have ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... people (as they think) right side up everywhere, without really noticing them much, but I do think that a great deliberate corporate body like The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ought to be more optimistic about the Church—wait and work for it a little more, expect ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and had a thoroughly happy and profitable holiday. The happiness and profit were shared by her uncles, it is unnecessary to state. When she questioned them concerning business and the outlook for the coming summer, they seemed optimistic and cheerful. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a hill or two with me," Jack urged. "You've got worse kinks in your system, to-day, than I've got in my legs. You won't? Well, better go back and take another sleep, then; it may put you in a more optimistic mood." He went off up the street towards the hills to the south, turning in at the door of a tented eating-place for ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... thought of liberty became a passion with us. Still, we never minimized the danger nor allowed ourselves to become too optimistic. We knew what was ahead of us if we were caught: the cells and ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... food. He brought out the brandy for his mother, who drank a little with her supper, and helped himself liberally twice or thrice until the bottle was half emptied. The glamour of the spirit made him optimistic, and he spoke with ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... this good lady took a very optimistic view of her own capacities and powers in general, and spoke—from the psychic point of view—with the honest pride that a flesh and blood charwoman might display on going over premises that she had thoroughly ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... must issue an optimistic report—this very day!" he said, smiling. "The cash-box is nearly empty—good! Then we will state that the workers have abundant means to carry on the fight for another year if need be, and then we'll go ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... defects had not yet been remedied nor incompetent officials supplanted, and he gave a rather hopeless view of the future of their country. Somewhat in this gloomy mood, he wrote home for a newly established Tagalog newspaper of Manila, his views of "Love of country," an article not so optimistic as ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... phthisis and mental disease, Ziehen remarks that the tuberculous are often observed to be optimistic but that other cases show a hypochondriacal depression with egocentric narrowing of interests. He speaks of a sort of rudimentary delusional disorder looking in the direction of jealousy in certain cases. Pronounced mental disorder occurs rarely in ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... would dangerously excite public opinion in Russia. He said he thought not. He remained of opinion that crisis could be localised. I said that telegrams from Russia in this morning's papers did not look very reassuring, but he maintained his optimistic view with regard to Russia. He said that he had given the Russian Government to understand that last thing Germany wanted was a general war, and he would do all in his power to prevent such a calamity. If the relations between ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... know, some optimistic persons who believe, or affect to believe, that Christianity is in due course destined to replace the ancient faiths in Japan. They point to what was effected by St. Francis Xavier in the sixteenth century, and they imagine that the Japan of the twentieth century ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... away somewhere where his agitated condition would not be noticed. He felt quite faint at the shock of seeing his name on the list of the first fifteen. There it was, however, as large as life. "M. Barry." Separated from the rest by a thin red line, but still there. In his most optimistic moments he had never dreamed of this. M'Todd was reading slowly through the list of the second. He did everything slowly, ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... it must do something for the aesthetic education of those employing it. Public-houses are now almost the only shops that use the ancient signs, and the mysterious attraction which they exercise may be (by the optimistic) explained in this manner. There are taverns with names so dreamlike and exquisite that even Sir Wilfrid Lawson might waver on the threshold for a moment, suffering the poet to struggle with the moralist. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... judgment of economic influences leads him to be optimistic or otherwise as to the profit of forestry in general, he is most interested in the particular forest with which he has to deal. He can neither accept nor dismiss the proposition intelligently, much less put his ideas into ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... encore to "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," she gave a peculiarly optimistic poem regarding the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... result of the perception of Ideals, or a Conscience. The world in general regards Will as mere blind force, applicable to good or bad indifferently. But the more truly and fully it is developed, or as Orson is raised to Valentine, the more moral and optimistic does it become. Will in its perfection is Genius, spontaneous originality, that is Voluntary; not merely a power to lift a weight, or push a load, or force others to yield, but the Thought itself which suggests the deed and finds a reason for it. Now the merely ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... optimistic, he had the genius for keeping tragedy at bay; for enduring, for instance, such a dark cloud constantly threatening as blindness without claiming pity. It is easy for such people to impart charm in whatever art they practise. And it is not true, as modern novelists and playwrights seem ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... pessimistic view of the situation, and believe that we shall witness "blood to the horses' bridles." No one can deny that things are desperately bad, and that something must be done soon to relieve the strain or the very worst may be apprehended; yet the author prefers to see things through optimistic eyes, and believes that God will raise up a Moses, (or Doctor Jones, if you please,) who will lead us to a higher and better state than this world has yet ever known. The old adage 'It is always darkest just before dawn,' is beautifully applicable to the present state of the ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... reasonings were in accordance even with the most optimistic philosophy, Sir Adrian himself at other times might have doubted. But he was tender in thought this stormy night, with the grateful relaxation that a happy break brings in ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... he struck his colours. 'Yes,' said he, 'I'm afraid that is a bad man.' And then looking at me shrewdly: 'I wonder if it isn't a very unfortunate thing for you to have met him.' I showed him radiantly how it was the world we must know, the world as it was, not a world expurgated and prettified with optimistic rainbows. 'Yes, yes,' said he; 'but this badness is such an easy, lazy explanation. Won't you be tempted to use it, instead ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remarks were made with a good-nature decidedly optimistic, as could be seen, when the fiacre finally drew up at the given address. It was that of a very modest restaurant decorated with this signboard: 'Trattoria al Marzocco.' And the 'Marzocco', the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... to begin anew and it was some time before affairs emerged from the chaotic state into which the war had plunged them. The average planter had little or no faith in free negro labor, yet all who were now able were willing to give it a trial. The more optimistic land-owners believed that the free negro could in time be made an efficient laborer, in which case they were willing to admit that the change might prove beneficial to both races. At first, however, no one knew just how to work the free ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... "my father was robust and active in spite of his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a decline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were that I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every day something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... other kind of ignorance. We know that there is a Jewish problem; we only hope that there is a Jewish solution. If there is not, there is no other. We cannot believe again that the Jew is an Englishman with certain theological theories, any more than we can believe again any other part of the optimistic materialism whose temple is the Albert Memorial. A scheme of guilds may be attempted and may be a failure; but never again can we respect mere Capitalism for its success. An attack may be made on political corruption, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... you. I'll appoint you first lieutenant. I guess that nurse is all right, though she doesn't seem to be unduly optimistic." ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... optimistic enough to take a villa at Beaujon on a fifteen years' lease, and had it refurnished in sumptuous fashion on credit. The first two instalments of the rent were met. When, however, the landlord called to collect the third one, he was put off with the excuse that: "Mr. Heald was away ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... it aloud on Christmas Day, and it seemed tremendous. Not in my most wildly optimistic moments did I think Hiordis, the chief female character—a primitive, fighting, free, open-air person—suited to me, but I saw a way of playing her more brilliantly and less weightily than the text suggested, and anyhow ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... political action, so self-centered that he forgot the world's tragedy and merged it into his own, making great things little and little things great, one of "life's ironies," the everlasting refutation of the optimistic notion that when there is a crisis fate produces a man ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... observed with relief that the name of James Bansemer was not mentioned. The reports from the bedside of the robber's victim were most optimistic. She was delirious from the effects of the shock, but no serious results were expected. The great headlines on the first page of the paper he was reading set his mind temporarily at rest. There was no suggestion ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... times as he found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was also erratic—though that was natural, since the stars were completely berserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate between bitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that something could be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went on working and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keep himself occupied that drove him, or perhaps it was the pleading he ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... felt warranted in taking an optimistic view of these vague words. "It's awfully good of you"—he began, lamely, and then paused. "I wonder,"—he took up a new thought with a more solicitous tone,—"I wonder if you would mind returning to me that ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of the saws is taken, and that is perhaps the most telling of these infant memories, many of which are slight and naive. It is interesting, however, to find that his earliest impressions of life at home were of an optimistic character. "Skien," he says, "in my young days, was an exceedingly lively and sociable place, quite unlike what it afterwards became. Several highly cultivated and wealthy families lived in the town itself or close by on ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... caricatures; they are efficient, useful men and women whose individualities have been crystallized into distinct outlines by their limited environments and intimate relations. The book is happily optimistic, presenting, indeed, the commonplaces of narrow lives but breathing also the underlying spirit of ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... represents a strange mixture of epigenesis and pangenesis, and is not entirely devoid of "virtues." It is, however, a bold attempt to explain embryonic development in terms commensurate with his time, and it embodies the same optimistic belief that the mechanism of embryogenesis lay accessible to man's reason and logical faculties that similarly led Descartes and Gassendi to comprehensive interpretations of embryonic development comprising a maximum of ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... was for issuing forth to vociferate and slap members upon their backs and jovially arrange committeeships on the giffgaff principle of give us the Speakership and you shall become a Chairman. The optimistic Mr. Harley, whose methods were somewhat coarse and who did most things with an ax, was precisely of that hopeful sort who would advertise an auction of the lion's hide while it was yet upon the beast. Senator Hanway, with ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of the earth is an English weakness; but to show that it is not a coldness or a harshness it is quite sufficient to say that no one shared it more than that gigantic English sentimentalist—the great Charles Dickens. The end of "David Copperfield" is unreal not merely because it is an optimistic ending, but because it is an Imperialistic ending. The decorous British happiness planned out for David Copperfield and Agnes would be embarrassed by the perpetual presence of the hopeless tragedy of Emily, or the more ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... and this is an asset of no mean significance. It is a well-known psychophysical fact that the human body does much better work when the mind is free from care, and that in any profession or vocation, other things being equal, the worker who is cheerful and optimistic will perform his labor much more efficiently at the expense of considerably less mental and bodily energy than he who is ill-humored, worried, fretful, and unable to take a joke. But the foreman who possesses this quality ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... a tribute, however trivial, which serves at least to express my appreciation of your zeal in re-establishing what seemed to the less optimistic a lost cause. I may to-day confess without much embarrassment that after fifteen years of foiled endeavors my (various) publishers and I had virtually decided that the printing of my books was not likely ever to come under the head of a business venture, but ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... "He's likely considerable puzzled himself. But he's of a optimistic turn of mind, Cal is, and white folks too. He surmises things will break right some day, knowing his own dad and havin' visited round a day or two with yours. 'I don't know what they're at,' he ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... other hand, there are the letters from Bolingbroke to Pope quoted above; there is the undoubted fact that Pope, Shaftesbury,[167] and Bolingbroke so far agreed with one another that they were all ardent disciples of the optimistic school; and, it must be added, there is the utter absence of anything distinctively Christian in that poem in which one would naturally have expected to find it. For, to say the least of it, the 'Essay on Man' might have been written by an unbeliever, as also might the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... 12 kinds of Mennonites and the 22 kinds of Lutherans, but they are in Rev. Mr. Carroll's list. Altogether, 76 splits under 5 flags. The Literary Digest (February 14th) is pleased with Mr. Lindh's optimistic article, and also with the signs of the times, and perceives that "the idea of Church unity ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... German, but of late several have been translated into the English language, and now the students of philosophy and religion are agog with accounts of a new philosopher who is at once a great ethical teacher and an optimistic prophet. There is no doubt that Eucken has a great message, and those who cannot find time to make a thorough study of his works should not fail to know something of the man and his teachings. The aim of this ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... with the significant things of their lives, and have demonstrated, the writer believes, that from humble origin black men and women may confidently be counted upon, with proper encouragement, to win success. The chapters are autobiographical, significantly optimistic, with just pride in what has been done, and outlining, as did "Up from Slavery"—which was commended as a proper model—experiences from childhood, the school-life of the writer, and the results achieved in the direction of putting ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... fortunes might be in some mysterious way the custodian of hers. The money was placed to her credit—a liberal sum for a girl so young. The large house in which she lived was sufficient to prove to the optimistic Randolph that this income was something personal and distinct from her family. That his unknown benefactor was in the habit of mysteriously rewarding deserving merit after the fashion of a marine fairy godmother, I fear did not strike him as ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ashamed of them. He is neither indolent nor fussy; neither a cynic, nor an intriguer, nor a fool; he is neither wrong-headed nor stubborn; he is honest and sincere to a degree that does him honour as a man, if it has sometimes proved perilous and blameworthy in him as a monarch. He is optimistic, and on good grounds. He is no physical or intellectual giant, but he is a man of more than average all-round intelligence and capacity. If this appreciation is correct, or even approximately correct, it is a testimonial, whatever may be its ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... rooms, and there you are! My great grandfather was too poor a trader to succeed in pelts, so he invested a little money in rocky pastures around upper Manhattan: this has kept the clerks of the family bankers busy ever since. I am an optimistic vagabond, enjoying life in the observation of the rather ludicrous busyness of other folk. In short, Doctor, I am a corpulent Hamlet, essentially modern in my cultivation of a joy in life, debating the eternal question with myself, but ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... was an optimist's hope, shared by few except pilgrims of World's Fairs, and frankly dropped by the multitude, for, east of the Mississippi, the St. Louis Exposition met a deliberate conspiracy of silence, discouraging, beyond measure, to an optimistic dream of future strength in American expression. The party got back to Washington on May 24, and before sailing for Europe, Adams went over, one warm evening, to bid good-bye on the garden-porch of the White House. He found himself the first person who ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... an optimistic description of the youthful Napoleon's accomplishments, for he was, as a matter of fact, so backward in Latin that his removal to Paris was opposed by the sub-principal of the college. According to the testimony of his schoolfellow ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... high civilization—and this is a part of life—and then they wonder why we are so unreasonable. It goes on, and they shut their eyes to it. The newspapers and magazines hush it up. No, no, don't give this to the readers, they want something pleasant, something optimistic! Suppress it! Don't let the light of publicity smite it and clear it up! Let it go on! Let the secret sore fester. It smells bad, it looks bad. Keep the surgeon away. We might lose subscribers, we might be accused of muck-raking. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... law," said Dick Jones, in his optimistic tone, "an' so we needn't worry 'bout it. But if you two gen'rals should happen along through the mountains uv western No'th Calliny after the war I'd like fur you to come to my cabin, an' see Mary an' the baby an' me. Our ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to remedy ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... early December 1997 the Central Bank let interest rates rise sharply. As the year ended, Russian authorities were attempting to put the best face on the financial situation, while at the same time scaling back their previous optimistic growth projections for 1998 to 1%-2%. Because of Russia's severe macroeconomic constraints, resources allocated to the military sector have declined sharply since the implosion of the USSR ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... listened to a Unitarian before or since. He continued an arduous work for some fifteen years, but it wore him out before his time. He was an erudite scholar and a prolific writer. Discarding the claims of Christianity to be the only 'divine revelation,' he based his clear and always optimistic theism on the broad facts of human experience. Ardently interested in social and political questions, he poured satire without stint on the religious defenders of slavery, and himself dared all risks along with the foremost abolitionists. Such a man ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... as they drove along they talked of the improvement on the farm and the profit they ought to be able to earn with the new equipment. Bob was the optimist and his uncle the pessimist in these discussions, but optimistic Bob was not without his pencil and memorandum book and usually had the better of the argument because of his uncle's disinclination to take the time to figure out the advantages and disadvantages ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... hour later, John landed in New York from the ferry, his mood had changed. The sun and the breeze had done their work. He looked on life once more with a cheerful and optimistic eye. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... simple and optimistic—it told of the beneficent qualities of rain, as it would appear to one whose roof did not leak. Somewhere in the course of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... why should they not be enthusiastic and optimistic? The whole state is piled high with mountains which look just like the ones in which so much gold and other valuable minerals have been discovered; if they are the same on top, why are they not the same ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... messages to Santa Ysobel and the Palace Hotel had failed to locate him. When I believed I had Skeels firmly clasped in the jaws of the Ensenada trap, I had sent a complete report of my doings up to that time, and the optimistic outlook then, to Barbara with instructions for her to get it to Worth. She would ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... fixed on the blue sky. His mind was at rest about the syndicate report now that it had been mailed to London. His thoughts wandered to his own affairs, and he wondered whether he would make money out of the option he had acquired at Ottawa. He was not an optimistic man, and he doubted. ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... This was the optimistic spirit Cousin and I left behind us when we set out at sunset. Cousin was in a new mood. There was a certain wild gaiety, rather a ferocious gaiety, in his bearing. His drawn face had lost some of the hard lines and looked almost boyish ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... was a lucky one in a way!" gasped the optimistic Peggy, as soon as she caught her breath, "it ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... at Desert Valley Ranch, the long, still, hot days were fraught with much new interest. Life was new and golden, viewed from this fresh viewpoint. Helen had come hitherward from her city haunts with trepidation; even Longstreet, serenely optimistic regarding the ultimate crown of success to his labour, was genuinely delighted. The days ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... lived here long," he wrote his mother, "I think I should become as optimistic as the Secretary of Agriculture, even though the total produce of the original thirteen states should supply a still smaller fraction of the necessities of life required by their population. The Congressional Library is by far the finest structure I have ever seen. I cannot help feeling ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... ashen, like the face Of some poor wretch who drains life's cup too fast Yet, swaying to and fro, as if to fling About chilled Nature its lithe arms of grace, Smiling with promise in the wintry blast, The optimistic Willow spoke ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... are permanently optimistic, others pessimistic. Some are always joyful, others as constantly see only the dark side of life. Some are always serious and solemn, others always gay, even giddy. These permanent emotional attitudes constitute temperament, and are due to fundamental differences within the ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... I could believe it!" Bet was not optimistic. "I don't believe he did it. He's heard of the theft of the fan and acts a little embarrassed. I ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... though it had been struck on a triangle. Then a silence of exactly nine seconds and repeat. As regularly as clock-work this performance goes on. Time him as often as you will, you can never convict him of a second's variation. And he is so optimistic and willing, and his notes are so golden with the yellow ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... than the liberal, popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so.... That it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if they will only try; that all partial evil is universal good; and other optimistic figments." "I suppose that all men with a clear sense of right and wrong have descended into hell and stopped there quite long enough to know what ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... refuse to look them in the face? Or, if they do, turn at once away to construct some other kind of world? For that is the most extraordinary thing of all, that men invent systems, and that those systems are optimistic. It is as though they said: 'Things must be good. But as they obviously are not good, they must really be other than they are.' And hence these extraordinary doctrines, so pitiful, so pathetic, so ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind, therefore, that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from such a blow. But, under all the circumstances, would she be allowed to join in the procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not, and the committee confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's daughter certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony, but that they hoped Mrs. Fogg would allow ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as she expressed it, "to gather up some children," was decidedly optimistic about the plan. "Nobody ever uses hydrangeas, because you can't make artificial ones to fill in with," she said, "so you can get barrels of them." Mrs. Burgoyne was enthusiastic over hydrangeas, "But it's not the fancy touches that scare me," she confessed; ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... light—the light of pity—shone in the eyes of the girl. "Poor fellow, he does look kind o' peaked; but this climate will bring him up to the scratch," she added, with optimistic faith ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... at the fashion-plate features and the fashion-plate apparel of his visitor, he entirely forgot his optimistic scheme of supplanting Asimof with Gurin and he grew suddenly livid with ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... insight into his much slandered soul, which is always that of a great poet. They will readily understand that this poet only became a satirist through the vivacity of his imagination, through the strength of his poetic vision, through his optimistic belief in humanity and its possibilities; and that it was precisely this great faith which forced him to become a satirist, because he could not endure to see all his pure ideals and the possibilities ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine |
