"Optimism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the circumstances as they exist, a condition at once revolting and appalling to every sense of humanity and justice. We cannot afford to remain ignorant of the real status of life in our midst, any more than we can afford to sacrifice truth to optimism. It has become a habit with some to make light of these grim and terrible facts, to minify the suffering experienced, or to try and impute the terrible condition to drink. This may be pleasant but it will never alter conditions or aid the cause of reform. It is our duty to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... to be regarded as a family asset. Even the religious teaching of Jews and Christians about the value and responsibility of children has not been influential enough to compel a recognition of their worth, though their innocence and purity, their faith and optimism are qualities indispensable to the race of mankind if social relations ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... carefully, you would begin to discern a certain rhythm, a certain harmony. You would at length be able to compose from them a specific dance—a dance not quite like any other—a dance formally expressive of new English optimism. If you are not optimistic, don't hope to become so by practising the steps. But practise them assiduously if you are; and get your fellow-optimists to practise them with you. You will grow all the happier through ceremonious expression ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... carried his optimism so far as to look upon Marie Antoinette's marriage as a happy precedent. In the same despatch he wrote to the Duke of Cadore: "The names of Kaunitz and Choiseul are on every one's lips, and every one hopes to see a renewal of the peaceful days that followed the alliance concluded ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... knack and uses his art with consummate skill in this collection, where will be found dramatic tragedy and profound pathos in strong contrast with keen humor and brilliant wit, all permeated by an uncompromising optimism. No man has probed the heart of the immigrant more deeply, and his interpretation of these Americans of tomorrow is at once a revelation and an inspiration: ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... teachers make their pupils so anxious and troubled that, owing to their close attention to the tone, and the breath, and the pronunciation, they sing their songs in an utterly wooden manner, and so in fact they, too, are lost in optimism and in tears; whereas, for singing, a happy confidence in the ability to succeed is essential. Others pursue an opposite course, and are guilty of worse faults, as you will see if you look around. Some ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... that he was committed to rather a dishonest part; he was pledged not to give a shock to her optimism. This might cost him, in the coming days, a good deal of dissimulation, but he was now saved from any further expenditure of ingenuity by certain warning sounds which admonished him that he must keep his wits about him for a purpose more urgent. There were voices in the hall of the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... shoulder. He started when he saw her standing over him, a strange figure in the dull light. She was clad in a long gray dressing-gown, her hair uncurled, red rims round her eyes and dark streaks under them, her mouth swollen and trembling. That night had been a rude shock to her optimism. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... illustrative facts takes place, and all is fog again. There is a great deal of good writing in the book, and it leaves nothing to be desired in the way of advanced sentiment. But we fail to perceive its bearing upon the progress of ideas. It may flatter a superficial scientific optimism, but it will obstruct rather than promote the interests of philosophic thought, for this reason, that it inclines the reader to suspend his convictions upon some fated progress of events which will of itself do the world's thinking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... left-hand errors which are equally dangerous. We must seek as much to be kept from the superficial Optimism, which never is able to gauge the extent of the evil, as from the hopeless Pessimism which can neither praise God for what He has done, nor trust Him for what He is ready to do. The former will lose itself ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... hoped that teachers who may read these pages may find running through them a strand of optimism that will give them increased faith in their own powers, a larger hope for the future of the school, and an access of zeal to press valiantly forward in their ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... table for the breakfast, which we had ordered an hour earlier, in order to make the day as long as possible. Miss Cassandra, who was the only really cheerful member of the party, reminded us of the many days of sunshine that we have had in Touraine, adding with her usual practical optimism, "And thee must remember, my dear, that constant sunshine makes the desert," this to Lydia, but we all took the wise saying to heart and were quite cheerful by the time we had finished our breakfast, perhaps also for the more material reason that Walter, through various gratuities and ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... exception may be made in Senator Aldrich's case, whose successor, Henry F. Lippitt, appears to be a man much like his predecessor. Whether the change will be beneficial or otherwise remains to be seen, but my optimism is so great I do not believe that anything but good can come permanently to this great country of ours. I confess to a liking for the ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... the old gentleman demanded, with as great an affectation of sternness as he could muster. To say the truth, it was not much; for Colonel Hugonin, for all his blustering optimism, was sadly ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... marvellous, both for quantity and quality. His very last letters to several of us consisted of a number of pages all written with perfect clearness and regularity with his own hand. It was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of his own unfailing faith and sunny optimism that he kept even those who were nearest to him full of hope as to his complete recovery of strength till within a few days of his death; and then, gliding down into the valley, surprised all by sinking suddenly into ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... in before long, as with so lively, light-hearted a temperament, it was bound to do, the healthy scepticism, healthy optimism of untried three-and-twenty rising to the surface buoyant as ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... optimism; I willingly agree to it. I believe that optimism is often right here below. We need hope; we need sometimes to receive good news; we need to see sometimes the bright side of things. The bright side is often the true side; ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... With the optimism of youth, those present began to hope that dust might be thrown into the eyes of Dirty Dick. And, with a little discreet delay, the Demon might recover, when he could be relied upon to play his part ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Chapdelaines so were thinking, and each in his own fashion; the father with the unconquerable optimism of a man who knows himself strong and believes himself wise; the mother with a gentle resignation; the others, the younger ones, in a less definite way and without bitterness, seeing before them a long life in which they could not miss ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... always brings before me the rush and hurry of the world of people, and the wood pewee its under-current of eternal sadness. Into the mood induced by the melancholy pewee song breaks how completely and how happily the cheery optimism of the chickadee! Brooding thoughts are dissipated, all is not a hollow mockery, and ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... and prominent temples of the idealist supplied the answer. Deacon Hooper was a New Englander, trained in the bitterest competition for wealth, and yet the Yankee in him masked a fund of simple, kindly optimism, which showed itself chiefly in his devoted affection for his wife. He had not thought of his age when he married, but of her and her poverty. And possibly he was justified. The snow-garment of winter protects ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... brought about a peaceful solution, but, convinced as he was that the Entente did not mean war, he drew the shortsighted conclusion that Austria, without considering the Entente, might force a march into Serbia and yet not endanger the world's peace. His optimism was disastrous. On July 13 he (the Chancellor) was, according to Tirpitz, informed of the essential points in the proposed Austrian ultimatum. Bethmann, as already stated, says that he did not see the ultimatum ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... learn to love him; so he promised himself in his optimism and the assurance of his own love. He had unbounded faith in himself, and was working hard in these days, not only upon his stories, but upon the clue which the discovery of the belated letter afforded him. He had carefully gone through the parish list to discover ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... weeks before I was a man with some confidence in my fellows; life had its charms, hope sustained me. Rosy views are for those whose faith has not been shattered. Optimism could find no support in my bitter experiences. Hermits may find seclusion in crowds, thought I. No one could find me at my new address, and it was my intention to seek no new friends, and to avoid every one I knew. I did not want ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... out of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with—just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never cared for anybody else, and I ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... us, it is consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine which Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We mean those practical preachers of Optimism, or the belief that Whatever is best, the cads of omnibuses, who, from their little back pulpits, not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of 'God and His prophet' in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at the entry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the human race. Simplicity of thought and staunch adherence to an uncompromising philosophy of optimism distinguish the work of Dr. Frank Crane. His writings are helpful, encouraging, inspirational. His followers are legion. Thousands of Evening Journal readers in New York City and suburbs look forward to ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... is the glorious Summer Night, which came near the middle of the book. There is a cheering doctrine of mystical optimism which will have it that a sufficiently intense devotion to any ideal never fails of at least one moment of consummate realisation and enjoyment. Such a moment was granted to Matthew Arnold when he wrote A Summer Night. Whether ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... compensates for the inconveniences arising from narrow means. Novelty of scenery and surroundings has a charm that is constantly recurring. The kindness and helpfulness of fellow-countrymen and countrywomen make the wheels of daily life roll smoothly. The freemasonry of art, its optimism and hope, and the pleasure and interest of its practice, investigation, and discussion wing the hours and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... even probable. Jane's faith in the ultimate winning power of numbers and wealth was at times shaken, not by the blunders of governments or the defection of valuable allies, but by the unwavering optimism ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the old easy style which had been his principal asset had deserted him. It was stiff and pedantic, and what was worse—bitter; and he tore it up savagely after he had read it through. He tried desperately to recover some of his old time optimism—and he failed. He told himself again and again that it was up to him to see big, to believe in the future, and he cursed himself savagely for not ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... and sunk. Faith in one snuffed out is not in logic to lose faith; for all are more than one. Trust Arthur; he was right. Pessimism is no sane mood. All history conspires to justify his attitude. Himself inspires optimism in us, and the three queens wait for him, and the black funeral barge that bears him, not to his funeral, but to some fair city where there seems one voice, and that a voice of welcome to this king; and besides all this, his name lights our nights till now, as if he were ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... And a capital report it was. I remember thinking at the time what a neat turn of phrase the fellow had. I admit he depended rather on his fine optimism than on any examination of the mine. As a matter of fact, he never went near it. And why should he? It's down in South America somewhere. Awful climate—snakes, ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... them well into middle life, women who had known the drudge of unremitting toil since childhood. Their speech was faulty; their manners would not have passed muster amid her old associations; but their quiet optimism was unbounded, their courage was an inspiration. She too would be brave! For the sake of the brave man who sat at her side, guiding his team in the deepening darkness; for the sake of the new home that they two should ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... until the lonely places were brought together and made sociable. They drove off the Indians, who wanted the bright wire for ear-rings and bracelets; and the bears, which mistook the humming of the wires for the buzzing of bees, and persisted in gnawing the poles down. With the most heroic optimism, this Rocky Mountain Company persevered until, in 1906, it had created a seventy-thousand-mile nerve-system for ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... blood and customs during the viceregal period, as to actual affinities with the race of Spain. But this gravity has nothing in common with pessimism, antagonistic though it be to those outbursts of irresponsible optimism engendered under northern skies by copious ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of Bonaparte, that he was destined to be known as Francis, Duke of Reichstadt, and to be buried in the Church of the Capuchins in Vienna, in Austrian uniform, is it possible to repress a sad smile at the simple optimism of courts? In 1811 illusions were universal. "Amid all our triumphs," says General de Sgur, "when even our enemies, at last resigning themselves to their fate, seemed hopeless, or had rallied to the side of our Emperor, what pretext was there for ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... you speak despondently of us. And there's been such a fine note of optimism in the exercises. (speaks with the heartiness of one who would ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... this aesthetic philosophy of religion lies in its absolute discrediting of moral distinctions. Optimism has so far overreached itself as to sacrifice the very meaning of goodness. In order that the ideal may possess the world, it has been reduced to the world. God is no more than a name for the unmitigated reality. Like Hardy's Spirit of the Years, he is the mere affirmation ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... common light of day. America does not know what she is doing, neither do I know, nor any man. But the impulse that drives her, so mean and poor to the critic's eye, has perhaps more significance in the eye of God; and the optimism of this continent, so seeming-frivolous, is justified, may be, by reason lying beyond ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... extremes of the game he sneeringly called golf lawyers. When he said that he made a hole in nine, he meant nine or thereabouts—approximately nine; nice people, he thought, should let it go at that. So he became feared on the course, not only for his actual prowess but for his matchless optimism in casting up his score. He was a pleased man, and considered golf a good game; and he never forgot that Wilbur Cowan had made him the golfer he was. More than ever was he believing that Harvey D. Whipple had chosen wrongly from available ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... comprehended more clearly. She recalled the portrait of her grandmother, the complexion, the hands, the hair of her father, and she experienced that shame of her birth and of her family much more common with children than our optimism imagines. Parents of humble origin give their sons a liberal education, expose them to the demoralization which it brings with it in their positions, and what social hatreds date from the moment when the boy of twelve blushes in secret at the condition of his relatives! With Lydia, so instinctively ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... the men looked at the other. They seldom did now; it was useless pain. Filled with the incomparable optimism of the consumptive, neither man realized his own condition, but marked the days of his friend. Morris, unbelieving, spoke of his friend's return; yet, growing weaker each day himself, spoke in all hope and conviction of his future ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... "You remind me of my sister, Miss Harlowe. She is forever preaching patience and optimism and all the other virtues in which I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... respect, and usually seeks to turn its virtue into capital. But in a land where, as old King Solomon, who knew his crowd, remarked, "All men are liars," you must have some sort of weathervane by which to guide your national optimism, so I settled on that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... came without such wars as desolated Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, the heavy burdens which rested upon the taxpayer and the constant danger that the work of civilization would be rudely interrupted hardly justified the optimism of the earlier decades. The pronunciamento of the Czar Nicholas in favor of restricting the growth of armaments and the consequent establishment, in 1900, of an international tribunal of arbitration at the Hague held out hopes ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... usually, determined our actions, although the Civil War is proof of its power. Again and again it has gone aground roughly when the ideal met a condition of living—a fact that will provide the explanation for which I seek. But optimism, "boosting," muck- raking (not all of its manifestations are pretty), social service, religious, municipal, democratic reform, indeed the "uplift" generally, is evidence of the vigor, the bumptiousness of the inherited American tendency to pursue ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... this book by my excellent friend Mr. C.F.G. Masterman, in the 'Speaker.' The tendency of that criticism was to the effect that I was discouraging improvement and disguising scandals by my offensive optimism. Quoting the passage in which I said that 'diamonds were to be found in the dust-bin,' he said: 'There is no difficulty in finding good in what humanity rejects. The difficulty is to find it in what humanity accepts. The diamond is easy enough to find in the dust-bin. The difficulty is ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... watching eyes. It seemed to me that the morale and fitness of the shivering crew was of more value at the moment than caution; and around the roaring fire, feeling my soaked clothes warming to the blaze and drinking boiling hot tea from a mug, it seemed that we were right. Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting Hjalmar dress her hands which had been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... him? Not in the least. He had youth, he had health, he had hope, he had his beloved talent and the secret training he had given himself toward its cultivation. His "heart-strings were a lute"—he felt it, and with an optimism rare for him he also felt that he had but to strike upon that lute and the world must needs ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... nature as the unfailing fountain of health. When naturalism came to the fore it was customary to designate the opposing tendencies as idealism and realism; the contrast is better expressed by the terms optimism and pessimism. In the last ten years clear prevision of the tasks of the future and a sense of the duty of national training for these tasks, such as we admire in the Americans, has developed in Germany. A hopeful outlook fosters the joy of living; ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... not expected this. He realized now that he should have done so. His failure to take in the possibility of her going was part of his infernal optimism, of his inability even now to take her situation at its face-value. Sam ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... sort of desirable quality that is a good thing to have, but all the optimism in the world is valueless in face of impregnable difficulty. And the difficulty of tracing Chatfield and his sick companion in a city the size of Bristol did indeed seem impregnable when Gilling and Copplestone had been attacking it for twenty-four hours. They had spent ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... incompatible with the imminence of death, and one day, driven by the very human instinct to hear her optimism endorsed, she scoffed a little, tentatively, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... that they would be "throwin' dirt" within two weeks had failed of fulfilment because the pump motors had sparked when tried out. So small a matter had not disturbed the cheerful optimism of the genius, who declared he could remedy it with a little further work. Days, weeks, a month went by and still he tinkered, while Bruce, watching the sky anxiously, wondered how much longer the bad weather ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... sermon he spoke of the beauties of life, the freshness of spring, its message of eternal happiness for those who had earned the golden reward of the Hereafter. He preached optimism, the subject of the unceasing care and love of the Father above; he told of the spiritual joy which comes only with a profound faith in the Almighty, who observes even of the fall of ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... Mery continue to secure bargains at Marseilles. A most important event at this period is the noticeable decline in the novelist's health. Though these attacks of neuralgia and numerous colds were regarded as rather casual, had he not been so imbued with optimism—an inheritance from his father—he might have foreseen the days of terrible suffering and disappointment that were to come to him in Russia. Nature was beginning to revolt; the excessive use of coffee, the strain of long hours of work with ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... a journey, made largely by motor-car and destroyer, which took us from the Adige to the Vardar and from the Vardar to the Pruth, along more than five thousand miles of those new national boundaries—drawn in Paris by a lawyer, a doctor and a college professor—which have been termed, with undue optimism perhaps, the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to see evil anywhere, might lack, after all, the secret of genuine cheerfulness. It left in truth a weight upon the spirits; and with that weight unlifted, there could be no real justification of the ways of Heaven to man. "Let thine ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Cavour appears to have thought that in Italy, where the whole nation was in a sense Catholic, the Church might as safely and as easily be left to manage its own affairs as in the United States, where the Catholic community is only one among many religious societies. His optimism, his sanguine and large-hearted tolerance, was never more strikingly shown than in this fidelity to the principle of liberty, even in the case of those who for the time declined all reconciliation ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... men were still inclined to rebel. They felt that they were in great numbers and that they were strong: they believed—with that optimism of excited youth—that their will must prevail in the end. In their opinion the Caesar had done nothing to atone for his crime against the praefect of Rome, or for his dastardly cringing before ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a deep distrust for dependence—I only wished to live my own life in the same eager spirit. As he had said to me once, the motto for every man was to be Amor Fati—not a reluctant acquiescence, or a feeble optimism, or a gentle resignation, but a passion for one's own destiny, a deep desire to make the most and the best out of life, and a strong purpose to share one's best with all who were journeying ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... naturally falls into sub-divisions; during its middle part in particular, progress and triumphant romanticism, not yet largely attacked by scientific scepticism, had created a prevailing atmosphere of somewhat passive sentiment and optimism both in society and in literature which has given to the adjective 'mid-Victorian' a very definite denotation. The adjective and its period are commonly spoken of with contempt in our own day by those persons who pride themselves on their complete sophistication and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... let us understand that there are no insurmountable obstacles standing in the path of our progress, that we are competent to solve the things that confront us, that they will be solved, and that humankind will be benefited by the virtue of our assuming an optimism in which we are fully ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... and he had daughters to care for him and keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery, yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content, belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the poet's desire to please. One can better fancy him at the door of his shop looking down the High Street ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... nor tell on what grounds she based her optimism. She would go back to the shanty that evening, she said, and stay until the following afternoon. Grace would undoubtedly go to the old tavern to prepare for the homecoming. Let Mrs. Higgins take her place ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... men approached the agitated mother from the juvenile gathering. Their faces were solemn. Their own optimism had given way before the protracted delay. Tim Gleichen and Peter Furrers came first, Andy, the choreman, brought ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... after leaving St. Paul, had poured into his ear such fabulous tales of a mine of untold wealth which needed but the expenditure of a few thousands to place it upon a dividend-paying basis, that, after making due allowance for optimism and exaggeration, he had thought it might be worth his while to stop off and investigate. The result of the investigation had been anything but satisfactory for either the promoter or ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... rapid-fire game. Every inning had held them, one moment breathless, the next wildly clamorous, and another waiting in numb fear. What did these last few moments hold in store? The only answer to that was the dogged plugging optimism of the Denver players. To listen to them, to watch them, was to gather the impression that baseball fortune always ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... two books, one a kind of autobiography, the other a work on prison reform. It was a moment of enthusiasm for reform, of optimism and of energy. Dickens was stirring the minds of Englishmen to discover the evils in their land and rush to their overthrow. Darwin was writing his Origin of Species, which in some curious way increased the hopeful energy ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... little startled as he snapped on the lights and grunted out something which optimism might translate into an affectionate husbandly greeting. She came dutifully forward and raised her face, still exquisite and cool from the outer air, for her lord's home-coming kiss. That resolved itself ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... me indoors, chance to an old book. I have been reading Noctes Ambrosianae again. Bad buffoonery as much of it is and full to the throttle of the warm-watery optimism induced by whisky, yet as fighting literature it is incalculably better than its modern substitute in Blackwood. The sniper who monthly tries to pinch out his adversaries there—Mrs. Partington's nephew, in fact—wants the one quality which will make that kind of ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... however, and in June he was able to go to Divonne to take a cure. After a very characteristic attack of optimism, he suddenly appeared at Champel and astonished everyone by his frightful eccentricities. One evening, however, he felt better, and read to the poet Dorchain the beginning of his novel "The Angelus," which he declared would be his masterpiece. When he had finished, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... made; a friend will show you a marvelous specimen and explain that he or she owns a half interest in the claim which is sure to turn out at least half a million..... Then you will perhaps think of Robert Service's "Spell of the Yukon" and you will understand the enthusiasm and spirit of optimism. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Arkansas, in the Carolinas; echoes from Cumberland Gap, echoes from Corinth. She read all the Richmond news—hot criticism, hot defence of the President, of the Secretary of War, of the Secretary of State; echoes from the House, from the Senate; determined optimism as to foreign intervention; disdain, as determined, of Burnside's "On to Richmond"; passionate devotion to the grey armies in the field—all the loud war song of the South, clear and defiant! She read everything in the paper. She read the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... as in France,—everywhere, indeed, where men refuse to accept the superstitions and doctrines of the mob. But the Americans are not content to possess the Liberty which satisfies the rest of the world. With characteristic optimism they boast the possession of a rare and curious quality. In Europe we strive after Freedom in all humility of spirit, as after a happy state of mind. In America they advertise it—like a ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... profoundly reacted, as oppression always does, on the character of the oppressor; and it is difficult to believe that the Isle of Saints and of primitive Universities would not have produced some good fruits of its own. In the Norman conquest of England historical optimism sees a great political and intellectual blessing beneath the disguise of barbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The Conquest was the continuation of the process of migratory invasions by which the nations of modern ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... sounds that were echoing in his heart. Everything about the old house spoke of degeneration, decay; yet in the midst of it lived a man who asked no odds of life, who took what came, and who lived with a zest, an abandon, a courage that were baffling. Self-deception, egotism, cheap optimism—could they bring a man to this state of mind? Hinton wondered bitterly what Opp would do in his position; suppose his sight was threatened, how far would his foolish self-delusion serve ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... now, the resolve once made, she did not lose her sense of tranquil optimism, her mild happiness, her widespreading benevolence. The result of this talk with John aroused in her an innocent vanity, for was it not indirectly due to herself that John had been able to see a way out of ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... of complacent optimism, acquiescing in all human experiences as special essentials of the infinite plan, shrinks from such crucial test. This is surely a noted exception. A daughter's tender heartstrings are too ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... the time would come soon. He somewhat felt a great responsibility in the matter. This sense of responsibility caused him to assume more and more optimism as his nervousness increased. Each day of waiting found him covering his disappointment and anxiety with a more ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... intensity of the industrial labor is matched by the intensity of Bible study, prayer and evangelism. The degradation and repulsion of the leading industry of the place are equalled by the unworldly nobility and optimism of the leading church. This church does not attempt to mend the community—which might be found impossible—but only to serve the community by supplying ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... guarantee the "higher unities" in which all contradictions should be reconciled. In Spencer's hands the theory of evolution acquired a more decidedly optimistic character than in Darwin's; but I shall deal later with the relation of Darwin's hypothesis to the opposition of optimism ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... "Truth," "The New Thought," and similar movements all achieve their really marvelous results in much the same way. All proclaim doctrines of exuberant optimism, having a tendency to banish fear-thoughts and self-consciousness and self-depreciation, and to set up in their stead ideas of courage and of achievement and of individual power. If these teachings are successful—that is to say, if they inherently possess ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... he could not resist. In his later years, especially, the prospect of writing a new book, great or small, upon any one of his favourite subjects always acted upon him like a tonic, as much so as did the project of building a new house and laying out a new garden. And in all this his sunny optimism and his unfailing confidence in his own powers went far ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of November 2, election day, officers, leaders, workers, members of the Party and many prominent men and women gathered at City headquarters in East 34th Street to receive the returns, Mrs. Catt and Miss Hay at either end of a long table. At first optimism prevailed as the early returns seemed to indicate victory but as adverse reports came in by the hundreds all hopes were destroyed. The fighting spirits of the leaders then rose high. Speeches were made by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Catt, Miss Hay, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... perception of the darker elements of the world and human nature. This view may be emphasised by the most remarkable writings of the period. Butler's Analogy (1736) has been regarded by many even of his strongest opponents as triumphant against the deistical optimism, and certainly emphasises the side of things to which that optimism is blind. Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, at the end of the period (1739), uttered the sceptical revolution which destroys the base of the deistical system. Another writer is notable: William Law's Serious Call is ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... mother would resent Ruth. Because Bonbright loved her so truly he was unable to see how anybody could resent her very much. He was blinded by young happiness. Optimism had been born in him in a twinkling, and set aside a knowledge of his parents and their habits of thought and life that should have warned him. He might have known that his father could have overlooked anything but this—the debasing of the Foote blood by mingling with it a plebeian, boarding-house ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Writers so different as Defoe, Cooper, Poe, and Sir Thomas Browne, are seen with varying degrees of emphasis in his literary temperament. He was whimsical as an imaginative child; and everyone has noticed that he never grew old. His buoyant optimism was based on a chronic experience of physical pain, for pessimists like Schopenhauer are usually men in comfortable circumstances, and of excellent bodily health. His courage and cheerfulness under depressing circumstances are so splendid to contemplate that some critics believe ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoor being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to him—there begins a ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, but besides Tennyson and Browning, the only poet of high rank is Matthew Arnold, whose slender volumes voice the doubts and difficulties of the age as Browning's poems voice its optimism. In the fourteen years between Men and Women and The Ring and the Book poets of a new kind appear; William Morris's Defense of Guinevere, The Life and Death of Jason and The Earthly Paradise, and Swinburne's early poems are alien to the work of Browning in form, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... comprehensive maxim, which sounds as if it came straight from Shakespeare's lips. This battle-cry of invincible optimism is uttered in the play by Shakespeare's favourite hero, Henry V. It is hard to quarrel with the inference that these words convey the ultimate verdict of the dramatist on ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... which Dickens wrote. It was a world of smug little tradesmen of shallow and half-educated minds, with paltry ambitions, utter ignorance of history and philosophy, shrinking instinctively from all strenuous thought and resenting every attack upon the placid optimism in which it delighted to wrap itself. It had no perception of the doubts and difficulties which beset loftier minds, or any consciousness of the great drama of history in which our generation is only playing its ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... room, and good ventilation are of high importance. The lack of these, so commonly faced by the lonely student or the young man making a start in a strange city, may be to some extent counteracted by the cultivation of optimism and the mental discipline which makes it possible to detach one's self ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... Marston had been for some hours as near Paradise as we poor mortals can hope to be. Her elastic-sided cloth boots rested on the fender, and her skirt, carefully turned up, revealed a grey stuff petticoat with a hint of white flannel beneath. The pink shawl was top, which meant optimism. With Mrs. Marston, optimism was the direct result of warmth. Her spectacles had crept up and round her head, and had a rakishly benign appearance. On her comfortable lap lay the missionary Word and a large roll of brown knitting which was intended to imitate fur. Edward ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... them the plain truth" cries conscience. What is the plain truth? Where is it? Is it in Dawnay's draft, or is it in my message, or does it lie stillborn in some cable unwritten? God knows—I don't! But one thing at least is true:—to steer a course between an optimism that deprives us of support and a pessimism that may wreck the whole enterprise, there indeed is a Scylla and Charybdis problem, a two-horned dilemma, or whatever words may best convey the notion ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... fancies of Calvin are as Pelagian optimism compared to the horrible nightmares which original sin evokes in the brain of the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... that fact shows in his stories. He liked enthusiastically to write of men doing men's work and doing it man fashion with full-blooded optimism. ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... Carl had no conception of world-wide class-consciousness; he had no pride in being a proletarian. Though from Bone's musings and Frazer's lectures he had drawn a vague optimism about a world-syndicate of nations, he took it for granted that he was going to be rich as soon ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... no need to discuss here the system of optimism which Lord Bolingbroke held in common with Lord Shaftesbury and Pope; for that system is consistent both with a belief and with a disbelief of Christianity, and we are at present concerned with Lord Bolingbroke's views only in ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of things when he was a few years older. But Morgan refused. He held to his ambition with frenzied persistence, and he had felt the bitterness of dependence. He determined, therefore, to try his wings at once, remembering that money was attached to success, and, in the optimism of enthusiasm, forming impossible hopes ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... On n'est pas plus galant! But I really feel it my duty to warn you against that amiable optimism. If you were so kind as to be uneasy on my account, I shall be still more so on yours. Your position, my dear boy, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... the ruinous legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska's serfdom was near at hand. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. Panic hardens into pessimism; or else, what is often equally depressing, optimism. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... at me for what you consider my optimism, my incredulity with regard to the evils of this present life, and seem to think I am making out a case of no little absurdity in ascribing so much of what we suffer to ourselves. But I do not think my view of the matter is altogether visionary. Even from disease and death, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... had come back. Mrs. Maldon was awake, but had apparently no proper recollection of the events of the night, which even to Rachel had begun to seem unreal, like a waning hallucination. The doctor gave orders, with optimism, and left, sufficiently reassured to allow himself to yawn. At a quarter past eight Louis had departed to his own affairs, on Rachel's direct suggestion. And when Mrs. Tams had been informed of the case so full of disturbing enigmas, while Rachel and she drank tea together in the kitchen, the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... peace of mind. For the time being her world was filled and bounded by her husband's personality. The renewal of his tenderness and his trust in her eclipsed all the minor troubles of life: and with the unthinking optimism of her type she decided that these would all come right somehow, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... cried Stoddard, almost startled. "Why, Johnnie—I never expected to hear that sort of thing from you. I thought your optimism was as deep as a well, and ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... strife his policy continued to create. Nothing now remained but to close this, the last parliament of Upper Canada under the old regime, and the governor, who never suffered from lack of self-appreciative optimism, wrote home in triumph: "Never was such unanimity. When the speaker read my speech in the Commons, after the prorogation, they gave me three cheers, in which even the ultras joined."[22] It was perhaps the last remnant of this pardonable exultation which swept him over the 360 miles between ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... almost stupidly. He had liked Hannaford, and had often invited him to play chess in the evenings, hoping with unconquerable optimism to "wean him from the Casino." The quiet man, with his black patches, his calm manner and slow smile as unreadable as the eyes of the Sphinx, had seemed to George Winter a curiously tragic yet mysteriously attractive figure. "Hannaford dead!" he ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ancient. if the place is less bravely peninsular than Florence and Rome, at least it is more in the scenic tradition than New York Paris; and while I paced the great arcades and looked at the fourth-rate shop windows I didn't scruple to cultivate a shameless optimism. Relatively speaking, Turin touches a chord; but there is after all no reason in a large collection of shabbily-stuccoed houses, disposed in a rigidly rectangular manner, for passing a day of deep, still gaiety. The only reason, I am afraid, is the old superstition ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... ground with a mighty ring of resolution, and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From this moment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from my mind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel all by a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticism dishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of any sense of humour that may have developed within me during the baneful experiences of the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Ruszky in the north and of Ivanov in the south in setting a term to the terrifying sweep of the German advance produced a temporary optimism in Russia comparable with that which followed the victory on the Marne; and in neither case did the Allies realize the extent of the advantage gained by the Germans or foresee the years that would pass before the loss could be recovered. The Grand Duke Nicholas was relieved ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... or moose; the grouse had seemingly buried in the drifts. The only creatures that had not hidden away from the winter cold were the wolves and the coyotes, furtive people that could not be coaxed into the range of Virginia's pistol. For all her outward optimism her heart grew ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... of the coming cock-fight with characteristic optimism—not shared by Harkness, and but partially approved by O'Neil. Details were solemnly discussed, questions of proper heeling, of silver and steel gaffs, of comb and wattle cutting, of the texture of feather and hackle, and of the "walks" at Flatbush and Horrock's method ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... over. In repose, with three flies circling above her fine gray hair, she might have served a sculptor for a study of the stoic spirit. Then, going to the bag, her compressed lips twitching, her gray eyes piercing into its clasp with a kind of distrustful optimism, she lifted the pincers ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Rod's optimism was vindicated for that day, at least. Until noon the canoe sped swiftly down the chasm without mishap. The stream, to which each mile added its contribution of flood water from the mountain tops, increased constantly in width and depth, but only now and then was there ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... this forlorn tribe is too inconsiderable to render their history important, even though their manners and characters were more calculated than they are represented to be, to excite interest or call forth sympathy on the part of the reader. The enthusiastic eulogist of Optimism will readily reconcile their condition to the principles which claim his admiration, by the obvious discovery, that their natures are in alliance with their circumstances, and by the easy belief, that hitherto no hope or idea of greater comfort had enhanced the magnitude of their present ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... existed more than two hundred years ago; yet one cannot but feel that this observer would have been fully equal to drawing our microcosm as well as his own. Earle's is a penetrating observation which is always fresh—so fresh that no archaism of phrase in him, and no cheery optimism in ourselves, can disguise the fact that it is our weaknesses he is probing, our motives he ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... comic song, of which "Pretty Polly Perkins" may be considered the best example; the Irish song; and the Motto song, inculcating a sweet reasonableness and content amid life's many trials and tribulations. Although, no doubt, such optimism was somewhat facile, it cannot be denied that a little dose of silver-lining advice, artfully concealed in the jam of a good tune and a humorous twist of words, does no harm and may have a beneficial effect. The chorus of "A Motto for ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... return, errs, in fact, through supplying no adequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to improve ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... it said, with an optimism that now has its humorous side, I viewed myself prospectively as a ready and fertile writer, producing a steady flow of books of very various sorts. Hence it occurred to me that a pseudonym might have a permament serviceability. So far from these anticipations proving justified, I am now ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... friendly realtor as in any wise distressed or grieved by the problems of the home. There is something Olympian about them, happy creatures! They deal only in severely "restricted" tracts. They have a stalwart and serene optimism. Odd as it seems, one of these friends told us that some people are so malign as to waste the time of real estate men by going out to look at houses in the country without the slightest intention ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... a sin against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next door to where was a funeral. I do not wonder at settled sorrow falling upon men of vivid imagination, keen moral sense, and ordinary sensitiveness, when they brood long on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial optimism which goes on with its little prophecies about human progress, and its rose-coloured pictures of human life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever in men's writhing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end. Ah! brethren, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... especially influenced by fear and depression. Blushing, pallor, cold hands and feet, are circulatory disturbances based largely on emotions. Better than a hot-water bottle or electric pads are courage and optimism. A patient of mine laughingly tells of an incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... for a well-trained mind to completely rout the worst case of the "blues" in a few minutes; but the trouble with most of us is that instead of flinging open the mental blinds and letting in the sun of cheerfulness, hope, and optimism, we keep them closed and try to eject ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... machine optimism. Under this socialism the number and efficiency of machines would increase more rapidly than they have under capitalism and feudalism, because its aim will be the production of commodities for use within the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... overestimation &c. v.; exaggeration &c. 549; vanity &c. 880; optimism, pessimism, pessimist. much cry and little wool, much ado about nothing,; storm in a teacup, tempest in a teacup; fine talking. V. overestimate, overrate, overvalue, overprize, overweigh, overreckon[obs3], overstrain, overpraise; eulogize; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... frank and open manner, and his mind cleared of all unworthy suspicion. It was more than likely that his benefactor had taken this delicate way of making a free, permanent gift for that temporary service. Yet he smiled faintly at the return of that youthful optimism which had ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... pleasure-loving, Oriental temperament, which tended to pour itself forth in dreams instead of action; vivid emotional sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best, tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short of his possibilities, though he was the greatest ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... movement of the age. Mark Twain abandoned all hope of a future life; found more of sorrow than of joy in life's balances; and even, in his latter years, lost faith in humanity itself. But amid the wreck of faiths and creeds, he achieved the strange paradox of American optimism: he never lost faith in democracy, and fought valiantly to the end in behalf of equality and the welfare of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... come. The twelve men have been multiplied now to a million and a half, scattered in forty lands. Girded with new strength and with the dauntless optimism of youth, the movement has risen up to minister not only to the millions of British and American soldiers and munition workers, but also to the men in the camps, hospitals, or prisons in most of the nations now at war. The thirteen shillings have been multiplied until now ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... said Morey softly. "But the eternal optimism of man keeps us saying: 'It can't happen here.' And besides—" He put a hand on the wall of the ship, "—we don't ever have to worry about anything like that now. Not with ships like this to take us to a ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Forks I often wondered as to the secret of its enterprise. I was not long in discovering, however, that it was found in the spirit of this Commercial Club; a spirit, it is, of hope, of civic pride, of optimism, yet a spirit of almost divine discontent. You have all the time been proud of your city, but yet not satisfied with it; not satisfied, because you saw visions of a finer city into which yours might grow. Your city was not up-to-date—to help make ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... prospector or a Leichardt's Land mining expert. McKeith read all the details carefully, turning the page over and back again in order to read it once more. There was no doubt—making due allowance for Moongarr Bill's exaggerative optimism—that the find was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... early in the war gave a false optimism not only to Germans, but also to visitors. If you have the curiosity to look back at newspapers of that time you will find that the great plenty of pork was dilated upon by ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of a mingling of optimism, cynicism, and hurry is one which is often made upon those who are suddenly plunged into American society. In any company of Americans who are discussing public affairs the stranger is struck by what seems the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... taking over the end of the lease and all the fixtures and some of the furniture from Jimmy. Jimmy hadn't a child, and he had sworn that he never would have one; he was so afraid (and this fear was the only thing that disturbed his optimism), so horribly afraid that Viola might die. But he had outgrown the house in Edwardes Square. It was the year of ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... was becoming a private conviction that when Prouty acquired anything beyond a blacksmith shop and a general merchandise store it got more than it needed. Conceived and born in windy optimism, it had no stamina. The least observant could see that, like a fiddler crab's, the progress of the town was backward. But these truths were admitted only in moments of drunken candor or deepest depression, for to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... V.V. was undoubtedly a queer one. Chuck full of hazy optimism, he was of late. Hazy optimism: O'Neill repeated the phrase, liking it. Still it was possible he might manage to work on the girl's feelings—O'Neill was sure it was the girl—whatever that was worth. He was a kind of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... characteristic of the American people is their superb practical optimism; that marvellous hopefulness which keeps the individual efficiently at work. This hopefulness of the American is, however, as short-sighted as it is intense. As a rule, it does not look ahead beyond the next decade or score ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... he may be said to have had one, was his optimism. Because he had been born with genius and was otherwise fortunate he thought every one else might succeed as easily as he had. In this way he often did people great injustice. If they were unfortunate he concluded that it must ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... pattern of the universe "for ever." This pattern, taken up by others, reinforced by dazzling inventions, imposed an optimistic turn upon the theory of evolution. That theory, of course, is, as Professor Bury says, neutral between pessimism and optimism. But it promised continual change, and the changes visible in the world marked such extraordinary conquests of nature, that the popular mind made a blend of the two. Evolution first in Darwin himself, and then more elaborately ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... beautiful old chairs covered with Aubusson tapestry, and other chairs and sofas covered with rose colored brocade. This drawing-room is seemingly a huge place, this effect being given by the careful placing of mirrors and lights, and the skilful arrangement of the furniture. I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the hearth and flowers wherever they "belong," mirrors and ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... uncle had been too apt to talk of things as they ought to be, and not as they actually were. With all Jane's quiet good sense, there were points on which she could be enthusiastic, and on this evening the successful cousin was struck by the warm expressions of an optimism in which he could not share, uttered by one who had good ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... manifestation of the Divine Will. If God Himself is the Life that stirs within all life, the Reality underlying all phenomena—if we live and move and have our being in Him, and His Spirit dwelleth within us—the direct outcome of such a belief should be a sacred optimism, an assurance that the cosmos "means intensely, and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... they failed, ride to success where they perished. It was the urge of Life healthy and strong, unaware of frailty and decay, drunken with sublime complacence, ego-mad, enchanted by its own mighty optimism. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... his plans his words were tinged with optimism and he allowed no hint of possible disaster to creep into his speech. But the girl was conscious of that hovering uncertainty, the feeling that the months of peace were but to lure her into a false sense of security and that Slade would pounce ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... Once or twice he grazed a quarrel with Merrill. Honey Smith developed an abnormality equal to Ralph Addington's, but in the opposite direction. His spirits never flagged; he brimmed with joy-in-life, vitality, and optimism. It was as if he had some secret ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore |
