"Geniality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... diagnostician, she knew enough to realise that his methods and knowledge were up to date. Even that manner of his, though a little forbidding, had the merit of inspiring confidence. One felt he was a big man and could afford to dispense with geniality. Yet it was perfectly apparent that his practice never came first with him. Esther had not been in the house with him half a week before she made that discovery. Every free minute of the day found him engrossed in his experiments, to the utter exclusion ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... a thunderbolt, an explosion. Not a bit of it. M. Charnot smiled outright with an air of extreme geniality. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of timidity, when it touches a man, suborns him with the reminder that he holds his life and goods by the sufferance of his fellows. Thereupon he begins to doubt whether it is worth while to court a verdict of so grave possibilities, or to risk offending a judge—whose customary geniality is merely the outcome of a fixed habit of inattention. In doubt whether to speak or keep silence, he takes a middle course, and while purporting to speak for himself, is careful to lay stress only on the points whereon all are agreed, to enlarge eloquently ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... said the judge to his wife as he laid down his paper; "though I must say she is as pretty and friendly a girl as I ever saw. No matter how long she stays away, she is always glad to see everybody when she comes back. Some of old Evan's geniality must have come ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... two. And after about six glasses the man's working power is reduced by at least a hundred per cent. He merely sits there—in his arm-chair, at his club let us say—with all power, even all desire to work gone out of him, not thinking rigidly, not sustaining his thought, a mere shapeless chunk of geniality, half hidden in the blue smoke of ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... he exclaimed, with an assumption of feverish geniality, "and bring back a couple of rabbits—I mean bottles. They must ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... He wore the habiliments of a gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... heartiness into his manner when he is accosted on the street by so unpromising and dismal an object as my cousin Washington Flagg was that morning. Not at all in the way of sounding the trumpet of my own geniality, but simply as the statement of a fact, I will say that I threw a great deal of heartiness into my greeting. This man to ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... managed them well, getting a talk with each, or bringing two or three together round his chair. In these conversations there was always a good deal of fun, and, speaking generally, there was either a humorous turn in his talk, or a sunny geniality which served instead. Perhaps my recollection of a pervading element of humour is the more vivid, because the best talks were with Mr. Huxley, in whom there is the aptness which is akin to humour, even when humour itself is not there. My father enjoyed Mr. Huxley's humour exceedingly, and would ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... knows and admires as much as I do), to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head, and his eyes and the mouth under the black mustache wrinkled with his smile. And as he walked by her side they began a wrangle that was none the less pleasant to Ann Veronica because it served to banish a disagreeable preoccupation. It seemed to her in her restored geniality that she liked Manning extremely. The brightness Capes had diffused over the world glorified ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... that the trigger finger of his right hand was missing. Also, there was a nasty scar on his right cheek running from the bridge of the nose halfway to the ear. This gave surplusage to the sinister appearance he already had. To him Briscoe spoke first, attempting a geniality he did not feel. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... gentleman, knowing how to deal with gentlemen.... Though sincere and zealous in [religious] matters, Mr. Hope- Scott never, in his intercourse with the world and with men of hostile beliefs, showed the least drop of bitterness, or fell away in the smallest degree from that geniality of spirit which marked his whole character, and that courtesy of manner which made all intercourse with him, even in hard and anxious matters of business, a pleasure, not only for the moment, but ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... quoted and ridiculed, religion is made contemptible, and vice under the name of "geniality, openheartedness, and merriment," is made to appear the one thing ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... purpose to keep the vantage-ground already gained, he was geniality itself, and so entertained Miss Eulie and Mr. Walton that Annie soon relented and smiled upon him as kindly as ever. She was in too humbled and softened a mood that evening to be resentful, except under great provocation, and she was really ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the bright hours at Hof on Richter as a writer was wholly beneficent. Mr. Florian Fuelbel's Journey and Bailiff Josuah Freudel's Complaint Bible show a new geniality in the personification of amusing foibles. And with these was a real little masterpiece, Life of the Contented Schoolmaster Maria Wuz, which alone, said the Berlin critic Moritz, might suffice to make its author ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Brown's sweetness of disposition and charm of manner, his humour, and his unfailing sympathy and encouragement, made one feel toward him as to a familiar friend, yet, of his actual life I saw but little, and have few reminiscences to contribute. One can only speak of that singular geniality of his, that temper of goodness and natural tolerance and affection, which, as Scotsmen best know, is not universal among the Scots. Our race does not need to pray, like the mechanic in the story, that Providence will give ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice and manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the other, of the aristocracy. What each said was read the next day by every family in the land. Both were probably greatest in opposition, since more unconstrained. Of the two, Disraeli was superior in the control of his temper and in geniality of disposition, making members roar with laughter by his off-hand vituperation and ingenuity in inventing nicknames. Gladstone was superior in sustained reasoning, in lofty sentiments, and in the music of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... you doing at her house, may I ask?" her aunt queried further. The geniality of this interrogation hardly concealed its crudity; Jane felt herself accused of an incongruous and inexplicable intrusion into a region ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... tried "Tiddleywinks" and "Squails," and I beat him so persistently that both sides of the House were mine and my geniality entirely returned. He might have been living to this hour had he not mentioned something about the brutality of The Island of Dr. Moreau. That settled it. I had heard that absurd charge once too ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... author, and it only remains for him to thank, collectively, the large number of friends and acquaintances who have so cordially favoured him with advice and information on so many points. In only a couple of quite unimportant instances has he experienced anything approaching churlishness. The geniality and courtesy of the book-collector are proverbial, but specimens of a different type are evidently to be ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... followed at a short distance, escorting the older women, making somewhat obvious efforts to control his own irritability, and to impart some sort of geniality ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... kneeling empress; recognizes the force of character, the self-dependence, the mental hardihood of the women, the business method displayed in their exercise of sentiment, and the exquisite mixture in their proceedings of tact, calculation, and geniality. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... add a touch of picturesque geniality, of excitement even to the pond, being as occasional in its daily life as the crossing of a deer or an otter or the circling of an osprey in summer. Any one of these causes a momentary stir, a local disturbance down in the depths among the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... I left him more than satisfied at the information he had given me, and with a higher opinion than ever of his geniality and good practical sense. ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... a quivering hand, and with an air and in a tone of warm geniality he cried: "Oh, that alters the case altogether! In the case of the son of an old customer like Mrs. Dangerfield we're delighted to deduct five per cent. discount for cash—delighted. Make out the bill for three ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... very amiable face Kelson got in and took the vacant seat by the stranger. His attitude was not conducive to geniality, and so for a while there was silence. At length as they turned from the station approach on to the main road the stranger spoke. His deep-toned voice had a musical ring in it, yet somehow to Gifford's way of thinking ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... for a second or two opposite each other in a natural doubt; then a certain geniality, fundamental perhaps in both of them, made Sir Walter smile and say: "The night is foggy. Pray ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... with no [Greek: pou sto] but his own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm, such sour-faced-humor, such close-fisted-generosity. This new Graeculus esuriens will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as tools. His brain ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... middle age, or a little beyond, appeared in the doorway, in a dress that seemed clerical, yet not very decidedly so; he had a frank, kindly, yet authoritative bearing, and a face that might almost be said to beam with geniality, when, as now, the benevolence of his nature was aroused and ready to ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had not handled his man skilfully. He remembered that even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his mock-modesty and his true geniality, had ceased after a while to be tolerable. Without such a manner to grace his method, Socrates would have had a very brief time indeed. The Duke recoiled from what he took to be another pitfall. He almost ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... him in my visits to Calcutta, and in his visits to the North-west, and also of frequent correspondence with him. He was esteemed and loved as few have been. He was a man with a commanding presence, tall and well-built, and had a geniality of manner which won all hearts. He spoke and wrote English remarkably well, with a slight foreign accent and sprightliness, an elan, as our French friends call it, which told of his French birth ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... praised the knitting of Sandy; praised it to me and praised it to him. Of course her remark that he seemed to be a born knitter and ought to devote his whole time to it might have seemed invidious to a sensitive cowman, yet it was uttered with flawless geniality. But when Sandy, being set right, would have taken his work and retired, as was plainly his eager wish, his mentor said she would knit two of the new short rows herself, just to make sure. And while she knitted these two rows she talked. She knitted them ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... vain for the studied indecencies of Paris, the appalling obscenities of the Swiss towns. Munich has little to show the American Sunday school superintendent on the loose. The ideal there is not a sharp and stinging deviltry, a swift massacre of all the commandments, but a liquid and tolerant geniality, a great forgiveness. Beer does not refine, perhaps, but at any rate it mellows. No Muenchener ever ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... dropping his search for a partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,—a Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more—what could one call it?—geniality, perhaps. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... given to Uri Bram's cabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect to find the murderer of John Randolph. Except during such interruptions, Fortune lolled about the cabin, playing long games of solitaire and smoking endless cigarettes. Though his volatile nature loved geniality and play of words and laughter, he quickly accommodated himself to Uri's taciturnity. Beyond the actions and plans of his pursuers, the state of the trails, and the price of dogs, they never talked; and these things were only discussed at rare intervals and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... this morning that Semper Idem was to leave the hospital, hale and hearty, Doctor Bicknell's geniality was in nowise disturbed by the steward's report, and he proceeded cheerfully to bring order out of the chaos of a child's body which had been ground and crunched beneath the wheels of ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... was only on the boat. Back on the land, in my house, I took no before breakfast eye-opener, no bed-going nightcap. And I haven't drunk hot toddies since, and that was many a year ago. But the point is, I LIKED those toddies. The geniality of which they were provocative was marvellous. They were eloquent proselyters for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamed—I, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... his gay laugh and merry jest, he had broken up the everlasting monotony of their garrison-life; by his powerful intellect and rich fancy he had, in some degree, dissipated their weariness and stupidity. They felt pity for his youth, his beauty, his geniality, his energetic self-confidence; his bold courage imposed upon them, and they were watching curiously and anxiously to see the finale of this contest between the poor, powerless, imprisoned youth, and the haughty, stern commander, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... always cross-grained, but its volume betrayed a quite unwonted geniality to-night. And half a mile farther, where the dark river bent around Wiseman's Stone, he so far relaxed as to rest on his oars and challenge the famous echo from the wooded cliffs. Somewhat to Miss Marty's ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been examining, and particularly in its concluding chapter, that in many of his most startling doctrines he was but half in earnest. Hume's temperament, too cool for fanaticism, had yet in it enough of a certain tepid geniality to save him from becoming a scoffer. The character which he claims for himself, and somewhat ostentatiously parades, is that of a sceptic or general doubter—a character in which, when rightly understood, there is nothing to be ashamed of. To take nothing on trust, to believe nothing without ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... a man of great charm and geniality in society; even to Americans, though he detested America with the energy of fear—the fear of all who see its prosperity sapping the foundations of their class society. He died in 1865; and in 1867 his biography was published by Sir Theodore Martin, his collaborator. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Englishmen in their own tongue, his fame was celebrated by the French poet, Eustace Deschamps, as the "great translator" who had sown the flowers of French poesy in the realm of Aeneas and Brut the Trojan. His broad geniality stood in strong contrast to the savage patriotism of Minot. In becoming national, English vernacular art did not become insular. Chaucer wrote in the tongue of the southern midlands, the region wherein were situated his native London, the two universities, the habitual residences of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... off some of his superabundant stock on the cravat, and even the hands, which, though amicably crossed in front of the white-waistcoated stomach, are fearfully suggestive of some recent deed of blood. The pleasant geniality of the countenance is, however, reassuring. Nor—except a decided squint, by which the artist had ambitiously attempted to convey a humoristic drollery to the expression—is there anything ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the king had entered upon at the Hague remained without result; the Duke of Burgundy took the command of the armies of Flanders, with Vendome for his second; it was hoped that the lieutenant's boldness, his geniality towards the troops, and his consummate knowledge of war, would counterbalance the excessive gravity, austerity, and inexperience of the young prince so virtuous and capable, but reserved, cold, and unaccustomed to command; discord arose amongst the courtiers; on the 5th of July Ghent ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... most unexpectedly the Grand Duke himself, and if his appearance was amazing, as it was to judge by the girl's face, his geniality was sensational. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... and belled mournfully, while we ate a frugal meal of oat-bannock and wort. The Low-landers—raw lads—became boisterous; our Gaels, stern with remembrance and eagerness for the coming business, thawed to their geniality, and soon the laugh and song went round our camp. Argile himself for a time joined in our diversion. He came out of his tent and lay in his plaid among his more immediate followers, and gave his quota to the story or the guess. In the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... end, and the hour arrived for relaxation. His expression, his very nature, seemed to have undergone a fundamental change. Gondremark at home appeared the very antipode of Gondremark on duty. He had an air of massive jollity that well became him; grossness and geniality sat upon his features; and along with his manners, he had laid aside his sly and sinister expression. He lolled there, sunning his bulk before the fire, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Moderne" is musical champagne. A very neat series of little variations is sheafed together, and called "Mosaics." Mr. Smith has written two pieces well styled "Mazurka Poetique;" the later (opus 48) is the more original, but the sweet geniality and rapturously beautiful ending of opus 38 is purer music. "Les Papillons" is marked with a strange touch of negro color; it is, as it were, an Ethiopiano piece. Its best point is its cadenza. Smith has a great fondness for these brilliant precipitations. They not only give further evidence of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... an immense arm-chair which he filled admirably, was William Mainwaring Thornton, of London, also a guest of Hugh Mainwaring and distantly connected with the two cousins. He was the youngest of the three Englishmen and the embodiment of geniality. He was a blond of the purest type, and his beard, parted in the centre, was brushed back in two wavy, silken masses, while his clear blue eyes, beaming with kindliness and good-humor, had ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... noted for his great geniality and his extraordinary capacity for making friends. Yet there was a strain of remarkable gravity, even austerity, in his character. There came times when he wished to be alone, to hear no human voices about him. It was ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... leg most highly, and rejected the other portions as unfashionable to be eaten. The Romans, however, ventured a little further, and ate the breast, whilst we consider the bird as wholly palatable. It is an inhabitant of all the temperate countries of Europe, but, on account of the geniality of the climate, it abounds most ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... more than the common additional expenses of married life. He should have a father-in-law whose character at best had had only a local and provincial respectability, which it was now daily losing by habits which were both sensual and vulgarising; a man, too, who was strangely changing from joyous geniality into moody surliness. Besides, he doubted if, in the evident change in the prosperity of the family, the fortune to be paid down on the occasion of his marriage to Ellinor could be forthcoming. And above all, and around all, there hovered the ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was to hail the dark, thin youth with rude geniality. The young fellow hesitated, almost shrank, but came shyly forward in the end. Langholm noted that he looked very ill, that his face was as sensitive as it was thin and pale, but his expression singularly sweet ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... something approaching geniality, "I am counting on your honour to say nothing of this outside. I am gambling on your evident class ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... is not in the past alone that we should be awestruck with horrors: we, who have a slave-trade still on earth. But, to go back to the essay, I like what you say about the theory of constructing the Christian character without geniality; only you do not go far enough. You are afraid. People are for ever talking, especially you philanthropical people, about making others happy. I do not know any way so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with. I do not ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... loudly as Joseph Wilmot. All gloomy memories seemed to have melted away from this man's mind. His former moody silence had been succeeded by a manner that was almost unnaturally gay. A close observer would have detected that his laugh was a little forced, his loudest merriment wanting in geniality: but Henry Dunbar was not a close observer. People in Calcutta, who courted and admired the rich banker, had been wont to praise the aristocratic ease of his manner, which was not often disturbed by any vulgar demonstration of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sandy-complexioned man in whose face geniality and humor seemed the salient characteristics. It was a mobile face, quick-changing to inward mood and thought. Thinking was in him a visible process. Ideas chased across his face like wind-flaws across the surface of a lake. His hair, sparse and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of wine. He toasted everybody, exhorting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... department better than any other orator, ancient or modern. Whether he praises his country, its religion, its laws, its citizens, its senate, or its individual magistrates, he does it with enthusiasm, a splendour, a geniality, and an inconceivable richness of felicitous expression which make us love the man as much as we admire ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... neglected Reuben Gray's account-books. They had been brought to him by Gray every week to be posted up. But it was the second week in November before Ishmael was able to walk to Woodside to see Hannah's babes, now fine children of nearly three months of age. Of course Ishmael, in the geniality of his nature, was delighted with them; and equally, of course, he delighted their mother ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... her chance. The old woman, whose geniality never endangered her shrewdness, bid the girl undress and get into bed first. The meek beauty obeyed. She was undressed, but not in bed, when there came a rain of knocks ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... seemed heavy with more than cloth. Beyond them stood the unreliable Signora, bowing good-evening to her guests, and supported by 'Enery, her little boy, and Victorier, her daughter. It made a curious little scene, this attempt of the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South. And even more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival the solid comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much fitted for an English squire. He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked the geniality which is the very body, the outside expression of humanity. Proud of his family, he had the peculiar fault of the Goth—that of arrogance, with its accompanying incapacity for putting oneself in the place of another. Mr. Wylder possessed a huge inability of conceiving the manner in which ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... celebrated Women of Israel been so correctly appreciated, or eloquently delineated. Those high attainments of piety, those graces of spirit, which have placed them in the rank of examples for all subsequent generations, are spread before us with a geniality of spirit and a beauty of style which will secure the warmest admiration; at the same time their weaknesses and errors are not overlooked ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of Mr. Bradlaugh is in connexion with the funeral of Mr. Austin Holyoake. The death of this gentleman was a great loss to the Freethought cause. He was highly respected by all who knew him. The geniality of his disposition was such that he had many friends and not a single enemy. For some years he was Mr. Bradlaugh's printer and publisher, and a frequent contributor to his journal. He was foremost in every good work, but he was one of those modest men who never get the credit ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... how far his companion in conversation was able to go; but ready as he was with either argument or banter he never, unless provoked, forced the proof of his power on others. For others, indeed, of all classes and characters, so that they were true, he had nothing but kindness, geniality, forbearance, the ready willingness to meet them on equal terms. Those who had the privilege of his friendship remember how they were kept up in their standard and measure of duty by the consciousness of his ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... single other clan had declared for him. Old Macdonald of Boisdale entertained Charles as an honoured guest in his bare but hospitable Highland house. All the people of the district crowded to see him as he sat at dinner. The young Prince delighted all present by his geniality and the interest he showed in everything Highland, and when he insisted on learning enough Gaelic to propose the king's health in their native language, the hearts of the simple and affectionate ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... in early manhood is described by friends as one of peculiar manliness, geniality, and unselfishness. It is said that, on one occasion, he put aside important work of his own in order to spend several days in the studio of a friend, whose gifts were quite inconsiderable compared with his, and whose ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... degree; his own expenditure was restricted within the narrowest limits. But he loved, and was honestly proud of, his beautiful home—St. Giles's House, near Cranbourne; and when he received his guests, gentle or simple, at "The Saint," as he affectionately called it, the mixture of stateliness and geniality in his bearing and address was an object-lesson in high breeding. Once Lord Beaconsfield, who was staying with Lord Alington at Crichel, was driven over to call on Lord Shaftesbury at St. Giles's. When he rose to take his leave, he said, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... character; idiosyncracies and characteristics. 167 Notion of sleep. "Castila!". 169 Tagalog and Visayo hospitality. The native's good qualities. 172 Native aversion to discipline; bravery; resignation; geniality. 175 Mixed races. Native physiognomy; marriages; minors' rights. 176 Family names. The Catapusan. 179 Dancing; the Balitao; the Comitan. The Asuan. 180 Mixed marriages. The Half-caste (Mestizo). 181 The Shrines and Saints. The Holy Child of Cebu. St. Francis of Tears. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... this! Mr. Sabin was a judge, and he appraised him rightly. He saw through that courteous geniality of tone and gesture; the ready-made smile, although it seemed natural enough, did not deceive him. Underneath was a man of iron, square-jawed, nervous, forceful. Mr. Brott was probably at that time the ablest politician of either ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kissed his superior's hand and withdrew. Cyril turned to Arsenius, betrayed for once into geniality by his delight, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... head of his table, peeling oranges and slicing pineapples for the ladies in his vicinity, sat the Bourgeois himself, laughing, jesting, and telling anecdotes with a geniality that was contagious. "'The gods are merry sometimes,' says Homer, 'and their laughter shakes Olympus!'" was the classical remark of Father de Berey, at the other end of the table. Jupiter did not laugh with less loss of dignity ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... westerly of the three, Joanna Baillie, dramatic writer, and her sister Agnes lived. Mr. Shaw, writing in the "Dictionary of National Biography," says: "Geniality and hospitality were the characteristics of the two sisters during their residence at Hampstead, and even when one became an octogenarian and the other a nonagenarian they could enter keenly into the various literary and scientific controversies of the day." This is next door to the house ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... life-long relation to its people. He looked a Netherlander rather than a Spaniard, and felt one, so that, so far as he showed favors, he showed them to this opulent people. Charles, with his many faults, had yet a rude geniality, which softened or seemed to soften his asperity toward those ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... fed. Here and there, one like Washington Irving will nourish a love transplanted to Heaven, and bring around him the sweet faces and delicate natures of women, to minister to a thirsting heart, and preserve, as he did, his geniality and tenderness to the last; but such as he are comparatively few. An old bachelor, voluntarily single, always betrays a nature badly fed in one of its important departments. So, too, those who marry, but who are not blest with children, betray the lack of food. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... certain air of geniality diffused around a taxi arrival, but a car!—two or eight cylinder—owned, borrowed, or stolen, well! there you win in honours, no matter what kind of private address you camouflage ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... and education did not reach the standard of her blue-blooded critics. She had something that stood her in greater stead than breeding and education: she had the power of enslaving gallant hearts and holding them in thrall with many artful devices. They liked her Bohemianism, her wit, her geniality, her audacious slang, and her collection of droll epithets that fittingly described her venomous critics of a self-appointed nobility. When she could not reach the heights of such superior persons she proceeded to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... themselves masters of the globe. They subdued Greece itself and, flowing eastward, seized upon the countries which Alexander and his successors had ruled. The whole known world, indeed, became theirs from the Straits of Gibraltar to the utmost East. They did not possess the genius or geniality of the Greeks; their qualities were strength and justice; and their arts were not those of the poet and the thinker, but those of the soldier and the judge. They broke down the divisions between the tribes of men and compelled ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with geniality and ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a most indomitable geniality, indeed, to outface the rigid piety of Jean Paul Victor. His missionary work had carried him far north, where the cold burns men thin. The eternal frost of the Arctics lay on his hair, and his starved eyes ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... manner, than he thinks of believing, on a warm summer day, that the sun has a special liking for himself, and is looking so beautiful and bright all for himself. It is perhaps unjust to accuse the man, always overflowing in geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an impostor or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepressible gush of love to all his race: but why convey to each individual of the race that he loves him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... good enough. He had been wise enough, then, to have it out with the girl—she was the one to whom he felt it easiest to talk frankly—and had discovered, to his immense relief, that they conceived him to be regarding them as encumbrances. At breakfast next morning, with tactful geniality, he set everything right, and thereafter they were all extremely ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the geniality of the two ladies. About the country of their visitors, their calling, and the objects of their journey, they put a thousand questions. The European costume, and especially the straw hats, interested them greatly. Yet there was a certain air ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked just in time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of the scrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it; but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... amuse yourself there, if you find it amusing, as long as you like; you can never see it." You can never see it. This seemed to my friend insufferable, and I had to shuffle away the book again, so that we might look at the fresco with the unruffled geniality it deserves. We agreed afterwards, when in a more convenient place I read aloud a good many more passages from the precious tracts, that there are a great many ways of seeing Florence, as there are of seeing most beautiful and interesting things, and that it is very ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... author, addressing his guests with all the geniality of which he was master (for they seemed somewhat stiff and ill-at-ease), "gives me peculiar gratification. I regret not having asked some of my friends, the critics, up here to make your acquaintance. I am sure you would all come to ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... and said: "I am glad to see you again, Elfrid," with a warm contiguous intimacy that betrayed a broken tooth. Mrs. Larkins got out tea things, and descanted on the noble simplicity of their lives, and how he "mustn't mind our simple ways." They enveloped Mr. Polly with a geniality that intoxicated his amiable nature; he insisted upon helping lay the things, and created enormous laughter by pretending not to know where plates and knives and cups ought to go. "Who'm I going to sit next?" he said, and developed voluminous amusement by attempts to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... hour he had made himself persona grata to everybody in the car except his dark-eyed neighbor across the way. That this dispenser of smiles and cigars decided to leave her out in the distribution of his attentions perhaps spoke well for his discernment. Certainly responsiveness to the geniality of casual fellow passengers did not impress Mr. Collins as likely to be an outstanding, quality in her. But with the drummer from Chicago, the young mining engineer going to Sonora, the two shy little English ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... shrewdness, and of the unstable but reliable equilibrium of her temperament, was the skilled Sarah's superior. They both knew it and felt it. The lofty Hilda admitted it. Caroline herself negligently admitted it by a peculiar, brusque, unaffected geniality of condescension towards Sarah. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of color on his daughter's face, the leap of light into her eyes, had warned him. He had no wish to lose his daughter. Chayne, too, might be inconveniently watchful. Garratt Skinner desired no spy upon his little plans. Consequently he set himself to play the host with an offensive geniality which was calculated to disgust a man with any taste for good manners. He spoke in a voice which Sylvia did not know, so coarse it was in quality, so boisterous and effusive; and he paraded Walter Hine and Captain Barstow with the pride of a man ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... were told, 'has robbed the district of an indefatigable public worker. County Council, Board of Guardians, and Liberal interests all occupied his leisure time.' 'One of his friends' is described as saying to the Star reporter, 'You do not need to go far to learn of his big-souled geniality. The poor folks of the workhouse will miss him badly.'[82] When one has waded through masses of evidence on American municipal corruption, that phrase about ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... of old not only to command, but to assume the responsibility of his orders; when they were carried out, his manner was a happy mixture of the haughty sternness of a soldier and the complacent suavity of the courtier, tempered both by the spirit of frankness and geniality born of the free life of a Virginia planter ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Mrs. Gallilee's overflowing geniality instantly flooded the absent doctor. He was rude, he was ugly; but what an inestimable friend! what admirable advice! In Ovid's state of health he must not write letters; his mother would write and thank the doctor, and ask for introductions to local grandees ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... against Thackeray. It is a quarrel with history and with the nature of literary life. Artists and authors have always been the good fellows of the world. That mental organization which predisposes a man to the pursuit of literature and art is made up of talent combined with ardent social sympathy, geniality, and passion, and leads him to taste every cup and try every experience. There is certainly no essential necessity that this class should be a dissipated and disreputable class, but by their very susceptibility to enjoyment they will always be the pleasure lovers and seekers. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... and composed to please his own high standards, never thinking of outward effect nor testing the pulse of the fickle public. As a man there is no doubt that he was warm-hearted and vigorous, but his was not the nature to come forward with captivating geniality. On the contrary he expects the hearer to come to him, and is too reserved to meet you more than half-way. That this austerity has proved a bar in the way of a wide-spread fame, while to be regretted, is unavoidable; ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... over to the door and admitted a tall, frail young man whom Thorndyke welcomed with quiet geniality, and settled in a chair by the fire. I looked curiously at our visitor. He was a typical neurotic—slender, fragile, eager. Wide-open blue eyes with broad pupils, in which I could plainly see the characteristic "hippus"—that incessant change of size that marks the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... silently rather than expose those who were really at fault. And so, even in that lighthearted battalion, his sterling worth compelled respect. All honoured his efforts and wished him God-speed. "While there were many," says Colonel Turnley, "who seemed to surpass him in intellect, in geniality, and in good-fellowship, there was no one of our class who more absolutely possessed the respect and confidence of all; and in the end Old Jack, as he was always called, with his desperate earnestness, his unflinching straightforwardness, and his high sense of honour, came to be ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Nick's smile was geniality itself. "It is," he answered; "a very strong recommendation." He thrust out a friendly hand. "Good-night, my son, and ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... saw everything, knew everything, and said nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo—again, they silently reflected, like the liebe Gott—had a different sense of geniality from theirs; he couldn't apparently smile; they doubted if he even ever wanted to. Their genialities faltered ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... his head a little behind, with a movement that sent his straw hat forward in the direction of his nose. "I don't know as I'd do anything for him that I wouldn't do for you," he responded with an equal geniality. "I guess you'd better open that one"—and he gave a little affectionate kick to one ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... from the same causes) would have talked nonsense. The very gifts so rare and so exquisite by which these extraordinary men were adorned—the graceful negligence, the delicacy of tact, the impassioned abandon[48] upon subjects suited to their modes of geniality, though not absolutely or irreversibly incompatible with the sterner gifts of energetic attention and powerful abstraction, were undoubtedly not in alliance with them. The two sets of gifts did not exert a reciprocal ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... we set forward for Silverado on foot. Kelmar and his jolly Jew girls were full of the sentiment of Sunday outings, breathed geniality and vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the hotel to lead them here and there about the woods. For three people all so old, so bulky in body, and belonging to a race so venerable, they could not but surprise us by their extreme and almost imbecile youthfulness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devotions and studies by flapping his wings and crowing in his own little way, so as to be a sort of chorus to the acts of the saint. The old man enjoyed this extremely; and his biographer, with more geniality than hagiographers usually show, sympathises with this innocent recreation, applying the example of the bow that was not always bent, in a manner suggestive of suspicions that he was not entirely unacquainted with profane letters. One day, when ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... scenery that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... philosopher of my acquaintance. He took great joy in a Jack-o-lantern. The ruddy countenance of the pumpkin was the very picture of geniality. Good-will gleamed from the round eyes, and the mouth was one luminous smile. No wonder that he asked the privilege of taking it to bed with him. He shouted gleefully when it was left ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... The Scotch seem to me to get drunk at very unseasonable hours. I have seen more drunken people here than during all my residence in England, and, generally, early in the day. Their liquor, so far as I have observed, makes them good-natured and sociable, imparting a perhaps needed geniality to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is peculiar to himself. It is not the massive, exuberant play of Jean Paul. He does not challenge the slow-riding moon to a cricket match, nor hurl the stars from their orbits in his mad game in the skies. Neither has he the brusque but more solid geniality of Lessing. Imagination fails him for the one, and a strong power of logic for the other. But he tears the clouds of ignorance and prejudice that are beneath his feet into ribbons and sends them streaming through ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... situated financially, happy in his domestic circle, of wide popularity, and possessing the esteem of those who know him best, General Stager is one of those whose lot is enviable, and who has made his position thus enviable by his own force of character and geniality of disposition. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the light geniality of Horace and the pure language of the Augustan age, but we mark the complexity and finesse of a later date, a form of thought bespeaking a comprehensive grasp, and suitable to subtle minds. But as regards his humour it depends much on exaggeration, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... with astonishment at this, the first round in the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, and by her industry, geniality and frugality, got on tolerably well. In due course she rented a small house backed by a small green, and advertised for a gentleman lodger. She soon got one; and soon got rid of him. However, she was never ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... first instance, and Chitty was selected to fill the vacancy thus created in the chancery division. Sir Joseph Chitty was for sixteen years a popular judge, in the best meaning of the phrase, being noted for his courtesy, geniality, patience and scrupulous fairness, as well as for his legal attainments, and being much respected and liked by those practising before him, in spite of a habit of interrupting counsel, possibly acquired through ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... five days and Mr Le ffacase was increasingly delighted as the proceedings went down, properly edited and embellished to excite reader interest, in the columns of the Daily Intelligencer. He even unbent so far as to call me a fool without any adjectival modification, which was for him the height of geniality. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... among the Protestants as among the Roman Catholics, only there is a trifle more geniality in the bibulous propensities of the latter. Much less affects an Irishman than a Scotsman. The latter, when he has absorbed all the whisky he can assimilate in a bout—and no bad amount it is, let me observe—will go ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... good-natured reader will hardly return to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like manner few persons except the Browning enthusiast, who is not responsible ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... but seeing nothing but geniality and interest in her face, explained elaborately in the porch that he was a Catholic priest, practically; though the word minister was more commonly used; and that it was the old Church still, only cleansed from superstitions. Mary shook ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... to make no demands on my faithful and able coadjutor. This call is a purely friendly one—no subscription lists of any sort or description in my pocket," the clergyman had said in his resonant bass when clasping her hand.—A large, dark, clean-shaven man of forty, a studied effect of geniality and benevolence about him, slightly tempered, perhaps, by cold and watchful blue-grey eyes, fixed—so said his detractors—with unswerving determination upon the shovel-hat, apron, and gaiters ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... overlooked one important circumstance," said the upper one, smiling in a very intolerable manner, at the same time causing his head to move slightly from side to side in the fashion of one who rebukes with assumed geniality; and, turning over the written paper, he displayed upon the under side the Imperial vermilion Sign. "Perhaps," he continued, "the omniscient person will still continue in his remarks, even with the evidence of the Emperor's unerring pencil to ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... her laughing and chatting with such unforced geniality that she muttered: "It's perfectly absurd to imagine that her husband is on the eve of bankruptcy. Even if he tried he couldn't keep such trouble utterly from his wife, and I've seen enough of people to be sure she does not dream of danger. The best people of ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Balfour said: "I think you know each other," the manager of the Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed genially and said: "Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart." The geniality was genuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in it a veiled taunt. To him it seemed ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite, he saw them off on the pier with great geniality. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... New England contemporaries. In him, as I have suggested, the Quaker calm was bound by the frosty Puritanic air, and he was doubly cold to the touch of the stranger, though he would thaw out to old friends, and sparkle in laugh and joke. I myself never got so far with him as to experience this geniality, though afterwards we became such friends as an old man and a young man could be who rarely met. Our better acquaintance began with some talk, at a second meeting, about Bayard Taylor's 'Story of Kennett', which had then lately appeared, and which he praised for its fidelity ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... absinthe he united opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of his liaison with the "Ondine" of his muse; she saw only the increasing delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her. Intellectually, too, she felt for him compassion. She recognized and respected in him the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the arrogance of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abrupt geniality about him. His tortoise-rimmed glasses gave him an oddly owlish look, like a small boy taking liberties ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... goodness dwelt in this man had been untrue, but recent events and the first shattering reverse that life brought him proved sufficient to sour his very soul and eclipse a sun which aforetime shone with great geniality because unclouded. Fate hits such men particularly hard when her delayed blow falls. Existences long attuned to success and level fortune; lives which have passed through five-and-thirty years of their allotted span without much sorrow, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... perceive nothing incongruous in the fact that Mr. Persimmon Sneed should be blindfolded. But as Con Hite looked at the elder man, standing helpless, his head held slightly forward, the sight apparently struck his risibilities, and his wonted geniality rose to the occasion. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... it is most agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat voluptuously developed, especially about the throat and chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly curves inward, thereby acquiring an indescribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue—unlike anything else that ever was wrought in that severe material of marble—conveys the idea of an amiable and sensual ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moment. He stands six feet and an inch, his back his broad, his step springy; he carries his head erect on his massive shoulders with a leonine air of good-humoured defiance. To hear him greet you, to feel his hand-shake, is to get a lesson in geniality. I never knew a man who had so whole-hearted a contempt for insincerity and affectation. It was only the other day that I saw little TOM TITTERTON, of the Diplomatic Service, introduced to him. TOM is a devil of a fellow in Society. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... book . . . in which an honest attempt is made to do justice to the Welsh literature," for knowing far more than most educated Welshmen about that literature, and for describing his travels and encounters "with much of the freshness, humour and geniality of his earlier days," for writing in fact "the best book about ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... with one another. Everybody was glad to see Martin back. No book of his been published; he carried no fictitious value in their eyes. They liked him for himself. He felt like a prince returned from excile, and his lonely heart burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed. He made a mad day of it, and was at his best. Also, he had money in his pockets, and, as in the old days when he returned from sea with a pay-day, he made the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... to his land and his home the assertion that he is arrogant and autocratic is so far away from truth as to be ludicrous. Again I must say that I have never met a ruler, in monarchy or republic, in whom genuine democratic geniality was ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various |
