"Sociability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other. "That's a new way of receiving an invitation. Why, for pleasure—sociability, you ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... women. His wife could bear her solitary second floor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by various small reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations markedly professional—not letting them slide into sociability. She wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be kept in his place, she never thought me quite good ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... a social animal. The very follies for which he was doing penance had been bred of his excessive sociability. And here, in the fourth year of his exile, he found himself in company—which were to travesty the word—with a morose and speechless creature in whose sombre eyes smouldered a hatred as bitter as it was unwarranted. And Bonner, to whom speech and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... seafaring men as if it had been smoothed down with a steam roller and had a signpost set to mark it. Never think, child, of the ocean as a lonely, uncharted waste of water. It is a nice quiet place with as much sociability on it as a man wants. You don't, to be sure, rub elbows with your neighbors as you do ashore; but on the other hand you don't have to put up with their racket. Pleasant as it is to be on land the hum of it gets on my nerves in time, ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... was astonishing what friendly sociability and confidential intimacy were established by the sale of blue suspenders and pink soap. He left a line of smiling testimonials in ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... each day kissed each other affectionately; and in the present war there are hundreds of stories already in circulation of acts of grace and tenderness between enemies, as well as the quaintest quips and jokes and demonstrations of sociability between men in opposing trenches who "ought" to have been slaying each other. In the Russo-Japanese War during the winter, when military movement was not easy, and the enemy lines in some cases were very near each other, the men, Russians and Japanese, ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... a seed; its potentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man it requires society to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society that is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the Greeks, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... the man which would fully explain his motives. With this request Jackson unhesitatingly promised compliance, adding, good humouredly, that he was not sorry to pledge himself to any thing that would thaw his companion's tongue into sociability, and render himself, for the first time since their departure, a listener. Before entering the hut Gerald further observed in a whisper, that the better to escape recognition, he would, as much as possible, avoid joining ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... usual expression of good humour, and by almost an excess of attention, and an effort at more than ordinary liveliness, she strove to make amends for the slight ebullition of temper stirred up by the morning's incident; but her sociability seemed forced, and we felt that our own was ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... Boffin's Bower as a property; why quarrel when we HAVE come into Boffin's Bower as a property? So Mrs Boffin, she keeps up her part of the room, in her way; I keep up my part of the room in mine. In consequence of which we have at once, Sociability (I should go melancholy mad without Mrs Boffin), Fashion, and Comfort. If I get by degrees to be a higher-flyer at Fashion, then Mrs Boffin will by degrees come for'arder. If Mrs Boffin should ever be less of a dab at Fashion than she is at the present time, then Mrs Boffin's carpet ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... alcohol, tobacco is conveniently used to promote sociability among men, a fact which has much to do with its very general use. If it could be limited to social purposes, it would likely do little harm, but the habit, once started, is continued without reference to sociability—a matter ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... at liberty to mistrust whatever makes one isolated and superior; not of course that one's life need be spent in a sort of diffuse sociability; but one must practise an ease that is never embarrassed, a frankness that is never fastidious, a simplicity that is never abashed; and behind it all must spring the living waters, with the clearness of the sky and the cleanness of the hill about them, running still ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... There is too much sociability—I do not get along fast enough with work. Tomorrow I lunch with Mr. Toole and a Member of Parliament—Toole is the most able Comedian of the day. And then I am done for a while. On Tuesday I mean to hang a card to my keybox, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and had become a familiar figure to many fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a vis-a-vis when the men in the family dropped in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... unless the inevitable Andalusian—he who takes the place of the Gascon in France—is present with his babble and his laugh, his fine opinion of himself, and his faculty for making a sacrifice of his own dignity at that over-rated altar—the shrine of sociability. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... questions on subjects that, one would think, could not possibly have any interest for him. This would be gross impertinence, were it not that "The Crew" is perfectly unconscious of giving any offence. He only asks for information, like Rosa Dartle; and this questioning is his idea of polite sociability. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the master of his own time. If he wants sociability he can go and get it, up to such limits as he personally can attain for himself in his water-consuming capacity. A drinking man is not master of his time. He may think he is, but he is not. He is the creature of a ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... old and modern songs, the reading aloud by one member of the circle, the cracking of nuts and the popping of corn, the picnic supper on the lawn, the tennis court or croquet ground, the home parties, the guests ever-welcome at meals, these are but items in a possible scorecard of the sociability of the home. We are giving much thought to all sorts of group activities, but how much attention have we given to systematically encouraging the social unit which has the largest possibilities, the family? Last summer my friend, ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... ignore those distinctions. It is Indians themselves who regard us, much more than we regard ourselves, as a separate caste. Moreover, for the ordinary and somewhat desultory conversation which plays so large a part in Western sociability the Indian has very little understanding. He always imagines that conversation must have some definite purpose, and though he has far, more than most English men, the gift of ready and courteous speech, and often ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... say, "Music is a conglomeration of pleasing sounds, or a succession or combernation of simultaneous sounds modulated in accordance with harmony. Harmony is the sociability of two or more musical strains. Melody denotes the pleasing combustion of musical and measured sounds, as they succeed each other in transit. The elements of vocal music consist of seven original tones which constitute the diatonic scale, together ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... sociability in that. And you seem very lonesome here—stuck for two more hours at least. Come, Captain, fetch your bottle and we ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... table heaved and quivered with primeval mirth. Even Flossie Walker was moved to a faint smile. For Mr. Soper, though outwardly taciturn and morose, was possessed inwardly by a perfect fury of sociability, an immortal and insatiable craving to converse. It was an instinct which, if gratified, would have undermined the whole fabric of the Dinner, being essentially egoistic, destructive and malign. Mr. Soper resented the rapidity with which Rickman had been accepted by the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... conviviality possible to conceive; none of those dreadful and much-to- be-avoided exactions and remissions of "forfeits," that plunge everybody into embarrassing situations, and destroy, instead of creating, sociability; none of those stock—so-called—"drawing-room entertainments;" in fact, which always result in hopeless boredom. But, we had a little music and part-singing: a little lively, general chit- chat, in which all could join and each take a share: a few anecdotes well told—a complete success, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... unfounded distrust of him. If the rector, with no convincing reason to allege against it, and with no right to interfere but the right which Allan's courtesy gave him, declined to sanction the proposed visit, then farewell to all the old sociability and confidence between tutor and pupil on the contemplated tour. Environed by difficulties, which might have been possibly worsted by a less just and a less kind-hearted man, Mr. Brock said a cautious word or two at parting, and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... stormy and the roads bad, and we had given the days to rest and family sociability. But at last there came a mild, sunny morning, and we resolved to find a church-home. I had heard that Dr. Lyman, who preached in the nearest village had the faculty of keeping young people awake. Therefore we harnessed ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... the merry tumult, a young German captain, Sir Heimbert of Waldhausen, was reclining under a cork-tree, gazing earnestly up at the stars, apparently in a very different mood to the fresh, merry sociability which his comrades knew and loved in him. Presently the Spanish captain, Don Fadrique Mendez, approached him; he was a youth like the other, and was equally skilled in martial exercises, but he was generally as austere and thoughtful as Heimbert was cheerful and gentle. ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... way, she has sent me several messages inviting me to call, but I have not been in position to accept any of these invitations. It does not follow that, because I gave some of my time in the past to assisting her with her lessons, I can afford to give more of it now for purposes of—of mere sociability. I make the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... nymphs answer with glib readiness. This is the home of Jollity and Good-fellowship; this is the place from which Care is banished; this is the happy corner where the social glass is dispensed. Alas for the jollity and the sociability and all the rest of it! Force yourself to study the vile spectacle, and you will soon harbour a brood of aching reflections. The whole of that chattering, swilling mob are employing their muddled minds on ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... longer. It was a wild spot which had been selected. The towering walls of rock were rugged with ledges, spurs, and indentations, where sea-birds in myriads gave life to the scene, and awakened millions of echoes to their plaintive cries. There was a pleasant appearance of sociability about the birds which was powerfully attractive. Even Nehow, accustomed as he was to such scenes, appeared to be impressed. The middy and the botanist were excited. As for Sally, she was in ecstasies, and the baby seemed lost in the profoundest fit of wonder he had experienced since ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... assembled again for lunch, with books in hand, and at break-neck speed devoured the somewhat elaborate repast, each man rushing in, eating, and rushing out, with no attempt at sociability or heed ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... whereby the whole body is so far infected, that the contagion may prove fatal: of this nature are malignant and pestilential fevers, leprosies, the venereal disease, cancers; also diseases whereby the whole body is so far weighed down, as to admit of no sociability, and from which exhale dangerous effluvia and noxious vapors, whether from the surface of the body, or from its inward parts, in particular from the stomach and the lungs: from the surface of the body proceed malignant pocks, warts, pustules, scorbutic pthisis, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Marsh; "St. Benet's was made for sociability as well as study, and I have no patience with the students who don't try to combine the two. By the way," she added, turning round and speaking in a rather impertinent voice to Priscilla, "I sent you a message to say ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... sister, and parent with child, were very common. For husbands to interchange wives, and for wives to interchange husbands, was a common act of friendship, and persons who would not do this were not considered on good terms of sociability. For a man or woman to refuse a solicitation was considered an act of meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding their ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... to offend such a character, I gave my companions the wink and we followed him into the bar-room with the full determination of making a friend of him. After all had done the sociable act—of course gentlemen only drink for sociability sake—I took him to one side purposely to draw him into a little private chat, and it was not long before his self-conceit had the better of him. He ordered grub—as all meals were called in the West in ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... creates cohesion in French troops more quickly than could be secured in troops in other nations. Organization and discipline have the same purpose. With a proud people like the French, a rational organization aided by French sociability can often secure desired results without it being necessary to ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... this the counsel of the local historian helps you much, for he comes daily and sits by as you work, and daily tells you the story of the old place, usually beginning in the middle and working both ways; for the unbuilding of a building is a great promoter of sociability. Fellow townsmen whom you feel that you hardly know beyond a rather stiff bowing acquaintance hold up their horses and hail you jovially, even getting out to chat a while or lend a hand, each having opinions according to his lights. Strickland, whose prosperity lies in swine, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... John from any other person. The dog would never follow him, even from one room to another; nor would he come when called, unless tempted by the offer of food. Wolves and foxes have shown much more sociability than he did. He appeared to be in good spirits, but always kept aloof from the other dogs. He was what would be called tame for an animal in a menagerie; that is, he was not shy, but would allow strangers to handle him, and never attempted to bite. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... The friendliness and sociability of the beasts and birds of Kashmir has been a great joy to us. The thing can be overdone, though, and both the wasps and the rats of Harwan were inclined to overstep the bounds ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... cried Israel, "to serve an old topmate this way. Come, come, you are foolish. Give us a quid." And, once more, with the utmost sociability, he addressed the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... times the parties at Spencer-Wood was entirely removed by him; and in addition to large balls and dinner-parties, at the time I was at Quebec he gave evening parties to eighty or a hundred persons twice a-week, when the greatest sociability prevailed; and in addition to dancing, which was kept up on these occasions till two or three in the morning, games such as French blindman's-buff were introduced, to the great delight of both old and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... will be read by experts, the subjects of which will be given out as long in advance as possible, in order that all may be thoroughly prepared for a full and open discussion; and then, after these meetings, in order to promote sociability amongst the members, and to show how thoroughly practical we are, we propose to have something to eat. We also hope later to establish schools, not only for young men, but particularly for draughtsmen, where they can be taught, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Gradual Growth of Gayety. "Danceable Teas". Amateur Benefits. "Youth at the Helm". A Society Woman's View. Social Theories and Practice. Virginian Hospitality. Quieter Sociability. The Presidential Household. Mr. and Mrs. Davis. Formal Levees. Social ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... surprised. Doubtful thoughts flashed through her mind,—fear of gossip, reluctance to stand in the way of innocent pleasure, and wonder that the doctor should have shown a sudden inclination towards sociability. Seeing a critical expression lurking in Mrs. Ironsides' eye her dignity was ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... his friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known all over the world as 'Kenyon the Magnificent.'" There is something thoroughly worthy of Browning at his best in this feeling, not merely of the use of sociability, or of the charm of sociability, but of the magnificence, the heroic largeness of real sociability. Being himself a warm champion of the pleasures of society, he saw in Kenyon a kind of poetic genius for the thing, a mission ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... suitable for farm-work; a juvenile style of dress is not suitable for an old lady. In conduct much the same rules apply. The dignity and gravity of a patriarch would not be becoming to a child; at a funeral lively, cheery sociability would not be decorous, while noisy hilarity would not be decent; sumptuous display would not be suitable for a poor person. Fit is a compendious term for whatever fits the person, time, place, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... been on round-up," remarked Gowan, with an insistent sociability oddly at variance with his usual taciturn reserve. "According to Miss Chuckie, you're some rider, and according to Mr. Knowles, you can shoot. I wouldn't mind hearing from you direct ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... fish for dear—it would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations, and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Harrington's aunt and housekeeper, was deaf and crabbed, and very few visitors ever came to the house. This suited Harrington. He was a good citizen and did his duty by the community, but his bump of sociability was undeveloped. He was also a contented man, looking after his farm, improving his stock, and experimenting with new bulbs in undisturbed serenity. This, however, was all too good to last. A man is bound to have some troubles ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... one degree, above the brute sympathy of good eaters, is that gregarious propensity which is sometimes honoured with the name of sociability. The current sympathy, or appearance of sympathy, which is to be found amongst the idle and frivolous in fashionable life, is wholly unconnected with even the idea of esteem. It is therefore pernicious to all who partake of it; it excites to no great exertions; it rewards neither useful ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... got worse and worse. I remember only one day when as many as four of us were on speaking terms. Even this temporary sociability was only brought about in order that we might combine and fall upon Jimmy with the more crushing force. Jimmy had put us in an article, representing himself as a kind of superior person who was making a study of us. The thing ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... classes, it should be made the part of female education, to counterbalance, in the family, the effects of the ever increasing division of labor among the male portion, by the development of that which is universally human—art, sociability, house-keeping etc. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... roses by the W. C. T. U., of red and white carnations in a holder of blue satin by Heintzelman W. R. C., of red roses by the Woman's League, of pink roses by the Jewish women. There was music by an orchestra as an accompaniment to the sociability of the occasion, in which some 700 ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... acquaintances, for she admired the reserved way in which her pretty nineteen-year-old sister travelled, and tried to imitate her, but after one day of elegant composure she longed for a chance to drop into easy sociability with some of her neighbors. They no longer seemed like strangers after she had travelled in ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... thorough knowledge of the persons and things that he discusses. In his sledge-hammer blows against humbug and wickedness, intellectual affectation, and moral baseness, he is the Blacksmith all over. In his geniality, his sociability, his genuine love of fun, his frank readiness to amuse or be amused, the epithet "harmonious" is abundantly justified. He cultivates to some extent the airs and tone of the eighteenth century, in which his studies have chiefly lain. He says what ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... so far succeeded as to render the amount of information he obtained exceedingly minute. The dinner passed off heavily; Miss Saville was unusually silent, and all Freddy's sallies failed to draw her out. Mr. Coleman was very pompous, and so distressingly polite, that everything like sociability was out of the question. When the ladies left us, matters did not improve; Freddy, finding the atmosphere ungenial to jokes, devoted himself to cracking walnuts by original methods which invariably failed, and attempting ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... that little hamlet among the hills a sweet and wholesome and powerful influence. While her time was too valuable to be wasted in a general sociability, she yet found leisure for an extensive acquaintance, for a kindly interest in all her neighbors, and for Christian work of many kinds. Probably the weekly meeting for Bible-reading and prayer, which she conducted, was her closest link with the women of Dorset; but these meetings were ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... so utterly unable to echo the wish, that she said nothing. She did not know it, but Mr. Van Brunt had made, for him, most extraordinary efforts at sociability. Having quite exhausted himself, he now mounted into the cart and sat silent, only now and then uttering energetic "Gees!" and "Haws!" which greatly excited Ellen's wonderment. She discovered ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... had recalled to me the name of Phyllis. It dampened my sociability. I was not yet prepared to take him into my confidence. The ale, however, loosened our tongues, and though we did not talk about our present affairs we had a pleasant time recounting the days when we were young in the sense that we had no real trouble. Those were the times when we were earning ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... as it may, Ireland played Cleopatra to the Antony of the invaders. Some of them, indeed, the "garrison" pure and simple, had all their interests centred not only in resisting but in calumniating her. But the majority yielded gaily to her music, her poetry, her sociability, that magical quality of hers which the Germans call Gemuetlichkeit. In a few centuries a new and enduring phrase had designated them as more Irish than the Irish themselves. So far as any superiority of civilisation manifests itself in this first period it is altogether on the side ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... of the fish was below, being digested. Another day, towards twilight, I saw him resting on the lily pads, looking very full, with a suspicious-looking object curling out over his under lip. I wiggled my finger in the water, and he came from pure sociability, for he was beyond eating any more. The suspicious-looking object proved to be a bird's foot, and beside it was a pointed wing tip. That was too much for my curiosity. I opened his mouth and pulled out the ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... for Mrs. Plaskwith, poor woman! she positively detested the taciturn and moody boy, who never mingled in the jokes of the circle, nor played with the children, nor complimented her, nor added, in short, anything to the sociability of the house. Mr. Plimmins, who had at first sought to condescend, next sought to bully; but the gaunt frame and savage eye of Philip awed the smirk youth, in spite of himself; and he confessed to Mrs. Plaskwith that he should not like to meet "the gipsy," alone, on a dark ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sitting at home and keeping Christmas all alone. They didn't know themselves, there were so many of them! Hanne and her mother were invited too, but they had gone to bed early—they were not inclined for sociability. One after another they were pulled into the room, and they came with cheerful faces. Marie turned the lamp out and went in to light up the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he made no further effort toward sociability. Neither did he go away. To the dismayed eyes, watching through the cover of some long grass, he was clearly a person devoid of all fine feeling. Or perhaps he had never been taught not to stay ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... kinds each of chipmunks and ground-squirrels. All of the former have striped backs and do more or less climbing of trees. Of their friendliness, greediness, and even sociability—where nuts are in evidence or anticipated—I have written fully in the chapter on Tahoe Tavern. Of the three ground-squirrels the largest is the common ground-squirrel of the valleys of California. It is gray, somewhat spotted on the back, and has ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... of My Book of Indoor Games is to furnish amusement, entertainment and to be the means of sociability. So very often the question comes up—"What shall we do?" In many cases this book serves only as a reminder, the games and parlor tricks are well known but cannot be recalled at the critical moment. A combination, such as this, of the best of the ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... aren't! People who are doing things—real things—seldom are. But we aren't the society kind ourselves, you know—not the capital S kind. We like sociability, which is vastly different from liking Society. Oh, we have friends, to be sure, who dote on 'pink teas and purple pageants,' as Cyril calls them; and we even go ourselves sometimes. But if you had been here yesterday, Mr. Arkwright, you'd have met lots like yourself, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... that looking on exposed them to the contagion of sociability. They were such wholesome-looking people at the gathering, and their efforts to make the visitors who stood outside the door feel at home and comfortable were so genuine, that reserve dissolved ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... it glides through the light dance of life, innocent, and concerned only to follow the rhythm of sociability and friendship, and not to disturb the harmony of love. And during it all an eternal song, of which it catches now and then a few words which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... first-rate, what is good, what is bad, what is detestable, all pell-mell. He is disgusted at the amusements, which have the air of religious ceremonies; with the men, on whose countenances you never see confidence, friendship, gaiety, sociability, but on every face the inscription, 'What is there in common between me and you?'; disgusted with the great people, who are gloomy, cold, proud, haughty, and vain; and with the small people, who are ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... members, would necessitate for the women conditions in many ways favourable; conditions of union in which lay the beginnings of peace and order. What we have to fix in our thoughts is the significant fact of the sociability of the women's lives in contrast with the solitude of the jealous sire, watchfully resenting the intrusion of all other males. Such conditions cannot have failed to domesticate the women, and urged them forward to the work ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... his appearance, entered into a friendly altercation to determine with which of them O'Leary should, on the next day, share the splendid hospitality which reigned in the metropolis during the sessions of parliament. It was at length decided that the prize of his unrivalled wit and sociability should be determined by lot. O'Leary was an amused and silent spectator of the contest. The fortunate winner was congratulated on his success; and the rivals separated ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... in favour of the automobile is its sociability. Once one was content to potter about with a solitary companion in a buggy, with a comfortable old horse who knew his route well by reason of many journeys. To-day the automobile has driven thoughts ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... similar feeling. With the negroes the canteen question is of comparatively slight importance, not only because the men can be more easily amused within their barracks, but because their appetite for drink is by no means as strong as that of the white men. Their sociability is astonishing. They would rather sit up and tell stories and crack jokes than go to bed, no matter how hard ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... got out of the sugar-house, history does not relate; nor what they did. It was not a time for sociability, either personal or epistolary. At one offensive word your letter, and you, very likely, examined; and Ship Island for a hotel, with soldiers for hostesses! Madame Des Islets died very soon after the accident—of ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... acquaintances from whom I could learn anything, and nothing was too much for me. So I willingly agreed, and one evening late in November I was introduced to the society so extolled by Groenbeck, which called itself neither "literary" nor "scientific," had no other object than sociability, and met at Ehlers' College, in the rooms of a young ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... sociability did the staircase prove, that when Mrs. Van Reypen came down, in all the glory of her black velvet and old lace, she nearly tumbled over two chatting young people, who seemed to be ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... An atmosphere of great sociability pervaded the quaint room that the Spectacle Man called his study, when on Friday evening, two weeks after the candy pulling, his ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... cares very little about the peace which he has disturbed, or the repose which he has interrupted; though, even while he thus pushes himself into the way, he keeps an air of sulky retirement, of hedgehog independence, about his house, which takes away any idea of sociability or good-humor, which might otherwise have been suggested ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... deformed fellow, called by the other servants Gnome because of his stubborn silence, his want of sociability, his rough manner and voice, his caring for nothing but his service, which he performs with great method. Every morning at six he enters her majesty's apartment, makes the fire, throws back the curtain to admit the light, arranges the chairs, and then withdraws without the least noise. All ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... and very limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence. All these things I did not perceive till long afterwards; but I even then felt, though without stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode of existence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it is ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... circumstances happened to have thrown you together fairly frequently—and one of us has a beautiful house and the other an excellent cook—these people press upon my spirit like a strait-waistcoat. I gabble the conventional small-talk of polite sociability, and I thank God when they are gone! They are called "friends," but we have absolutely nothing in common—not even ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... In the old dreary books of my childhood, the elders were always hounding the young people into doing something useful—useful reading, useful sewing, and so forth. But I am inclined to believe that sociability and talk are more useful than reading, and that solitary musing and dreaming and looking about are useful too. All activity is useful, all interchange, all perception. What isn't useful is anything which hides ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a little sociability," remarked the Governor, "when we return from the West. We are motoring from Portland to Portland, with a few little side trips like this, and we ought to have some good yarns to tell when ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the acquirement and dissemination of absolute spiritual truth, as was not unnatural, I thoroughly investigated the 'Supernaturalism' of the day. I soon assented to the general proposition that sociability with the invisibles is practicable, if not profitable; but ever held at a cheap rate the philosophies and religions, harmonious and other, which the full-blooded ghost-mongers so zealously promulgated. I still maintain that great good will result from these ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ball, and call it hard; it is not the iron that is hard, but cohesive force that packs the particles of metal into intense sociability. Let the force abate, and the same metal becomes like mush; let it disappear, and the ball is a heap of powder which your breath scatters in the air. If the cohesive energy in Nature should get tired and unclench its grasp of matter, our ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... goin' over to Al's to-night and try to win my babe the first chicken for her farm. Whatta you bet? Us two ain't much on the sociability end, but we've played many a lucky card fifty-fifty. Saturday is our mascot night, too. Come, Babe; get ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... human life and human nature under very favourable circumstances. In the present instance, too, every one was anxious to please, for the host was entirely well-bred, never selfish in little things, and always contributed his quota to the general fund of polished sociability. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... February the 19th has been received with very sincere pleasure. It recalls to memory the sociability, the friendship, and the harmony of action which united personal happiness with public duties, during the portion of our lives in which we acted together. Indeed, the affectionate harmony of our cabinet is among the sweetest of my recollections. I have just received a letter of friendship ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... discussion of favorite stories any stiffness is sure to melt rapidly away. Jack, hearing mention of "The Talisman," joined in and the others drew up their chairs, so that when Miss Betty rustled back from an excursion to the dining room she found the ice broken and sociability prevailing. But she startled ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... of the hotel, an aging planter, who kept his public house as an adjunct of his farm, and more for sociability than gain. He was in a depressed and angry mood, for one of his eyes was closed, and the other battered about the rim and beginning ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the "brig," gangs of the men were sometimes overheard whispering about the terrible reception they would give him when he should be set at large. Nevertheless, when liberated, they seemed confounded by his erect and cordial assurance, his gentlemanly sociability and fearless companionableness. From being an implacable policeman, vigilant, cruel, and remorseless in his office, however polished in his phrases, he was now become a disinterested, sauntering man of leisure, winking at all improprieties, and ready to laugh and make merry with any one. Still, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... that the main function of food is to repair the tissues of the body. Other effects are present, such as pleasure and sociability, but its chief benefit is reparative, so we may well regard the subject from a strictly utilitarian standpoint and inquire how we may produce the highest efficiency from our eating. Some of the important questions about eating are, how ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... kind of reading and music seem to me far better occupations for home evenings than games. There is too much hard work in chess and whist and too little sociability to make them in any way desirable. Euchre and backgammon seem invented to pass away time, which is so precious to most of us that we should like to feel we had something at the end of an hour by which our lives were richer than at the beginning. ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute all the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him), we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one more story, we ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... disease gives no idea whatever of its serious nature. The technical term, Tsundayeligaktanh[)i], really refers to the enthusiastic outburst of sociability that ensues when two old friends meet. In this instance it might be rendered "an ordeal." The application of such a name to what is considered a serious illness is in accordance with the regular formulistic practice of making light of a dangerous malady in order to convey ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... perhaps, nor always correctly, but at all events in a way that he never reasoned before. The best way to convey to the reader the state of his mind will be to let him speak for himself. As he had a habit of thinking aloud— for sociability, as it were—in the dark cell to which he had been relegated, we have only to bend down ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... used to meet Byron, Scott, Moore, all those famous men of old, whose portraits still adorn the walls. Murray told me he well remembered Byron and his ways; could still in fancy see him and Scott, and also hear them, as they stamped heavily (lame as both were) down the somewhat narrow stairs. Sociability may well come to the relief of people who cannot amuse themselves at home, for the weather, mild, and too mild, is gray, sunless and spiritless, altogether. To-day it rains, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... to the poor. His sense of kinship with other men was, indeed, a serious conviction held on serious grounds. But it was also the expression of his natural good nature, and overflowed into {130} the obvious channels of kindly sociability which come to every man unsought, as well as into these deeper ones of sympathy which are only found by those who seek them. Those who know him only through Boswell are in danger of over-accentuating the ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's 'salon' was hospitably open whenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, and the conservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, preserved it from the heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreign sociability so often assumes. Very interesting, even important names lent their prestige to her circle; and those of Don Carlos and his family, of Prince and Princess Iturbide, of Prince and Princess Metternich, and of Princess Montenegro, were on the list of her ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... me, I doubt whether all my card playing with these doomed men, successful though it has been, has ever brought me as much as a half dollar. No, as I said, sociability is the object of these games and all I aim for is to put the doomed man at his ease ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... part, by the wives of miners and other artisans, as a means of adding to the family income. Beer is very cheap, costing only two sous a litre. Wine and spirits are more costly, though a great deal of gin is made, and inexpensively made, in the country. There is much sociability among the people, and great practical liberality as to the conduct of young girls, the ancient practice known as 'bundling' in New England being still in vogue among these worthy Flemings. M. Baudrillart, who evidently inclines to a favourable judgment ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Equity Requital of benefits Sociability A moderate degree of forgiveness The avoidance of pride ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... too widely spread among the lowest working classes in towns and in the country. The dance through thousands of years has been the bearer of harmless happiness: who would refuse a welcome to such a benefactor? And with the joyfulness comes the sociability. The dance brings people near together. It is unfair to claim that the dance is aristocratic, because it presupposes leisure and luxury. On the contrary, throughout the history of civilization the dance has been above all, democratic, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... time feelings of sociability and companionship begin to grow in such gatherings of men, then kingship has truck root; and the notions of goodness, justice, and their opposites begin to arise ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... say George was right in this. Sociability is, to a certain extent, a duty, and one that ought not without the soundest reason to be shirked. George may have carried his reserve rather too far, but at any rate you will allow he erred on the right side, if he erred at all, and carried his purpose ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... stopping point up to which tobacco hurts less perhaps than coffee or tea, candy or lobster, overeating or undersleeping. Therefore the physician, the bishop, the school superintendent, candidly run the necessary risk for the sake of nerve soothing and sociability. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... none more nearly approximates him to us than his courage. There are no animals, not even the great beasts of prey, who are so brave as Man and the Ape, and who are capable of so much presence of mind. It is perhaps this bravery which, joined to his sociability, has most contributed to assure the supremacy of the one. As to the other, the road has been barred to him by his better-endowed cousin; he is disappearing before Man, and not before nature or other animals. In thinly-inhabited ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... private ends from private audiences "sizes" up its audience as a preliminary. The capacity to understand others and to sway them, to impress them according to their make-up, is a trait of great importance for success or failure. It needs cultivation, but often it depends on a native sociability, a friendliness and genuine interest, on a "good nature" that is what it literally purports to be,—good nature. Though many of the persuasive kind are insincere and selfish, I believe that on the whole the taciturn and gruff are less ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... so necessary. But when the factory system was substituted for the handicraft system and workers with common interests were thrown together in the towns, they had every impulsion towards organization. They not only felt the need of sociability after long hours spent in spiritless toil but they were impelled by a new consciousness—the realization that an inevitable and profound change had come over their condition. They had ceased to be journeymen controlling in some measure their activities; they were now merely ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... this noble exercise was thus enjoyed by both of them to the fullest extent. There was an exhilaration in it which each felt equally. The excitement of the rapid gallop or the full run, the quiet sociability of the slow walk, the perfect freedom of movement in almost any direction, were all appreciated by one as much as by the other. Then, too, the country itself was of that character which was best adapted to give pleasure. There were broad public roads, hard, smooth, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... in New England, in Western New York, and all over the West, even to the far side of Arkansas, which impress the visitor at once as being homelike and full of sociability and kindliness; which delight him, and lead him almost to wish that his own lot had been cast within their shades. These are chiefly villages where the evidences of public and private care predominate, or are at least conspicuous. A critical examination would, in almost ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... point of asking some explanation; but the stern and almost threatening look of the Count deterred him. "Your instructions, sir," answered he, "are superfluous. To finish my own portrait, I am not very expansive, and I have but little sociability in my character. To speak frankly, solitude is my element; it is inexpressibly sweet to me. Do you wish to try me? If so, shut me up under lock and key in this room, and provided you have a little food passed through the door to me daily, you will find me a year hence seated at this ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... time, doing his best as a social being. Take the so-called sleepy market-town; it is bubbling with all manner of associated activities, and these of the quite voluntary kind, forms of zealously united effort such as are never dreamt of in the countries supposed to be eminently "social." Sociability does not consist in a readiness to talk at large with the first comer. It is not dependent upon natural grace and suavity; it is compatible, indeed, with thoroughly awkward and all but brutal manners. The English have never (at ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... for agreeable meetings, for pleasant acquaintances, perhaps for love-adventures. In this life of elbowings, not only those with whom we have come into daily contact, but strangers, assume an extreme importance. Curiosity is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is the order of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... and these were populated by pleasure-loving and sociable families of distinction. It was therefore a difficult matter for the well-born man or woman who took up a residence in the neighborhood to avoid the jovial sociability which reigned ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... at that moment, Dinah retailed their little plan for his benefit. Cedric was delighted, and voted Betty a brick. Any form of sociability was welcome to him—an impromptu garden-party in Malcolm's honour met with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the type for which Mr. Colt adequately catered— revel in professing their faith, and will parade for its holiest sacrament with an unabashed and hail-fellow sociability; and doubtless for these 'brass-band communicants' (as Brother Copas called them) a great deal may be said. But Brother Bonaday was one of those others who, walking among mysteries, must hush the voice ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but mostly of the trading class, and not very attractive, physically or mentally. There were two women in the number, the wife and daughter of a clothier resident in Iceland; but among the entire party we did not find any one likely to add to the sociability of the voyage, so, English-like, we kept to ourselves ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... sassy patch over her eye,"—Mr. Peaslee's meek voice here took on a trace of heat,—"that's been a-pesterin' the life out o' me goin' on a year. I guess ye know how 't is—one of them pesky, yowlin', chicken-stealin', rusty old nuisances that hain't any sociability to ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... motion, of walks of thirty miles a day which the lame lad yet found no fatigue to him; of mad enterprises, scrapes and drinking-bouts, in one of which Scott was half persuaded by his friends that he actually sang a song for the only time in his life. But even in these days of youthful sociability, with companions of his own age, Scott was always himself, and his imperious will often asserted itself. Writing of this time, some thirty-five years or so later, he said, "When I was a boy, and on foot expeditions, as we had ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... was not inclined to sociability—the stronger sort of man rarely is. On board the Croonah he was usually considered morose and self absorbed. He did his duty, and in this was second to no man on board; but he was content to get the passengers to their destination, looking upon the Croonah as a mere ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... some secret sadness. Whatever the hidden wound might be, none, not even his most intimate friends, knew what it was. He never made any complaint. Halevy's nature was rich, open and communicative. He was well organized, accessible to the sweets of sociability and family joys. In fine, he had, as one may say, too many strings to his bow to be very unhappy for any length of time. To define him practically, I would say he was a bee that had not lodged himself completely in his hive, but was seeking to make ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... description of these feasts, and also an account of the operation of the Reading Club. As far as I can judge, it is a great institution for the discussion of apples and chestnuts, but is quite innocent of the pleasures of literature. It, however, brings the young people together, and promotes sociability and conversation. Our feline companions are flourishing. Young Baxter is growing in gracefulness and favour, and gives cat-like evidences of future worth. He possesses the fashionable colour of 'moonlight on the water,' apparently a ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... repressive social restraints of the old social order are somewhat removed. A freedom is allowed to individuals of the Christian community, in social life, in conversation between men and women, in the holding of private opinions, which the non-Christian order of society did not permit. Sociability between the sexes was not allowed. The new freedom naturally results in greater vivacity and a far freer play of facial expression than the older order could produce. The vivacity and sociability of the geisha (dancing and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of the Declaration of Independence, the alliance with France, the peace with Great Britain, and the organization of the general government; whether the president should make and receive informal visits from friends and acquaintances, for purposes of sociability and civility, and, if so, in what way they should be made so as not to be construed into visits from the president of the United States; and finally, whether it might not be advantageous for the president to make a tour through the United States during the recess of Congress, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... or piazza were the entrances to the suites. There were seven doorways that entered seven houses, as distinct as any other seven houses, except in being connected by the corridors and being under one roof, each house containing two suites. Thus could privacy be maintained and sociability increased. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... is the most obvious and natural pet for a gentleman; but still, a dog, with all his familiarity, is a selfish sort of companion, for he generally bestows his whole sociability either upon his master, or his master's servant who feeds him, or upon his master's friend who accompanies him to the fields. To all others he is not only cold, but often surly and impertinent. This, indeed, would ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. "A general jealousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... one streak of color which was not "right." It was a masterpiece of correct furnishing, but it gave one a curious sense of limitation. One could not escape the scheme. The inelasticity of it hampered sociability—and there grew on one, too, a sense of unfitness. His clothes were an anachronism! They were the only thing which did ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... contested it. Prayers were shouted rapidly by the congregation, and elaborately sung by the Chazan. The minister was Vox et praeterea nihil. He was the only musical instrument permitted, and on him devolved the whole onus of making the service attractive. He succeeded. He was helped by the sociability of the gathering—for the Synagogue was virtually a Jewish Club, the focus ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and pleasantest form of fishing known to the New Englander, for its season is in summer only; the most frequented banks are out of the foggy latitude, and the habit of the fish of going about in monster schools keeps the fishing fleet together, conducing thus to safety and sociability both. In one respect, too, it is the most picturesque form of fishing. The mackerel is not unlike his enemy, man, in his curiosity concerning the significance of a bright light in the dark. Shrewd shopkeepers, who are after ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... were the prominent persons connected with the society. March 1st was the day for celebrating the yearly singing tryout. The Welsh miners and their families came yearly from Mt. Diablo mines for a holiday of sociability and song. The day was called St. David's Day. My first engagement with this society occurred on the 2d day of March, 1874, the first having come on Sunday. We were obliged to sing the Welsh airs. This was a new departure for me, but, nothing daunted, I began the study of the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... and Baiae, the sensuousness of the Latinised Frenchman makes Paris; the sensuousness of the Celt proper has made Ireland. Even in his ideal heroic times, his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry him, in the appliances of his favourite life of sociability and pleasure, beyond the gross and creeping Saxon whom he despises; the regent Breas, we are told in the Battle of Moytura of the Fomorians, became unpopular because 'the knives of his people were not greased at his table, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... him with her head on his arm, and they rode home in absolute silence, each feeling too much for speech. After they reached home, however, Cecil showed her all over the place, and she barked out her ideas in glad sociability. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... Adelsberg, is it you?" he exclaimed, halting in his walk as Egon entered the room. "I can't promise you a pleasant evening, for we have had intelligence which destroys all sociability for us to-night." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... a death's-head at a feast or merrymaking where drinking is going on. Your social intercourse with these people is predicated on taking an occasional drink, in going to places where drinks are served, both public and at homes. The kind of drinking you do makes greatly for sociability, and you are a sociable person and like to be round with congenial people. You will miss a lot of fun, a lot of good, clever companionship, for you are too old to form a new line of friends. Your whole game is organized along these ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... intimately interested, and that you expected no mail made little difference. If you were a man of thirty or older, you went to the depot or the "club," just as your wife or sisters went to the sewing circle, for sociability and mild excitement. If you were a single young man you went to the post office for the same reason that you attended prayer meeting. If you were a single young lady you went to the post office and prayer meeting to furnish a ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mischievous pranks. He also declared that he was no longer minded to tolerate the tyranny of the school, and that he had not the slightest desire to enter the university. He was a wilful, obstinate boy with a marked tendency to sociability. He paid a great deal of attention to his clothes, and was proud of his ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... then a shell would come crashing through some of the houses at the right, where our pickets were concealed; but at length, by mutual consent, the pickets of each army watched the movements of their opponents without molesting them. During this quasi-truce, a spirit of sociability manifested itself, and our boys soon struck up an acquaintance with their dangerous neighbors. At length an exchange of papers was proposed, and upon mutual agreement of temporary amity, a Yankee and a Johnnie would step into the open space between the two lines, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... from the cold bath into which he had been thrown like a Spartan babe by his first contact with church sociability. His, as a new creature, was a vigorous constitution, and was destined to out-live many a shock incident to the earthly career of a heaven-born man. Both he and Winifred returned to their joy and calm, and were looking forward ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... The Boston Events' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in rows on either ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... and was painfully ill at ease in presence of his grand and lofty courtesy—she who had been used to the offhand manners which prevail wherever there is equality of the sexes and the custom of frank sociability. And when he asked her to dance she would have refused had she been able to speak at all. But he bore her off and soon made her forget herself in the happiness of being drifted in his strong arm upon the rhythmic billows of the waltz. At the end he led her to a seat and fell to complimenting ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... obtained for money, treated his new master with an oppressive air of respect. "Cobbler" Horn would have preferred a more familiar bearing on the part of his gorgeously-attired servant; but Bounder was obdurate, for he knew his place. His only recognition of the somewhat unusual sociability of his master, was to touch his hat with a more impressive action, and to impart a still deeper note of respect to the tones of his voice. His bearing implied a solemn rebuke. It was as though he said, "If you, sir, don't know your place, I ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... witnesses will get around the truth, and the result is demoralization. Take wine and malt liquors out of the world and we shall lose a vast deal of good fellowship; the world would lose more than it would gain. There is a certain sociability about wine that I should hate to have taken from the earth. Strong liquors the folks had better let alone. If prohibition succeeds, and wines and malt liquors go, the next thing will be to take tobacco away, and the next thing all other pleasures, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... End, but is never chosen except as an End: not chosen both for itself and with a view to something ulterior. It must thus be—(1) An end-in-itself pursued for its own sake; (2) it must farther be self-sufficing leaving no outstanding wants—man's sociability being taken into account and gratified. Happiness is such an end; but we must state more ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... think she herself has any definite reason for the aversion; but for one thing, she cannot comprehend why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie, and Hausse. M. Heger is wonderously influenced by Madame, and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal bienveillance, and, perceiving that I don't improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone—left to the error of her ways; ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to the extent of riding up to London on the same boat-train, merely using different compartments of different carriages. The English aristocrat is a tolerably social animal when traveling; but, at the same time, he does not carry his sociability to an ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the rest of the world found so beautiful was one long torment to Anstice. Restless, undecided, unhappy, he went about his work with set lips and a haggard face, and those of his patients who had lately found him improved to a new and attractive sociability revised their later impressions of him in favour of their ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... activities and amusements in the rural districts, and the consequent desire to migrate to localities where a denser population brought wide opportunities for social diversions. Curiously enough, the dance as a means of promoting sociability among the farm population was not discussed, possibly because of an old-fashioned prejudice against dancing that still prevails in many rural regions. Why certain good people should object to the dance, innocent, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... only after we have well established the facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of sociable feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper—the latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the animal world, perhaps even at the "colony-stages." I consequently directed my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual Aid factor of evolution, leaving ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... long life been a collector of pictures, bronzes, books, manuscripts, and curious relics. His house in the Place Saint-Georges was a museum of these treasures, but a museum so arranged that it contributed to sociability and the enjoyment of his visitors. He had acquired this taste for collecting in his early days at Aix. During the Commune his house was razed to the ground, not one stone ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... for which I soon had abundant opportunity. When the train moved on, he came and took his seat on the flap seat (or strapontin) just opposite my compartment. I could not tell why, until presently he made overtures of sociability and began a desultory talk across the corridor. My cabin or compartment, it will be remembered, was the last but one; the newcomer had been given the one behind mine, and here from his seat he commanded the whole length of the carriage ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... had seen people before—on the occasion of a rise of the Arno, at Pisa—appear to consider the prospect of an inundation. "Il monte; il monte toujours"—there was not much said but that. It was a general holiday, and there was an air of wishing to profit, for sociability's sake, by any interruption of the commonplace (the popular mind likes "a change," and the element of change mitigates the sense of disaster); but the affair was not otherwise a holiday. Suspense and anxiety were in the air, and it never is pleasant to be reminded of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... sometimes entertained, that it is necessary to drink in order to impress your sociability upon companions who also drink, is utterly erroneous. One day a dinner was given by one of the great lawyers of this country in honor of another lawyer of distinction, and among those present was a young man of promise who at that time ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... large parties in the house; and the unostentatious hospitality which exists in this and some other of the old families, is a pleasing remnant of Spanish manners and habits, now falling into disuse, and succeeded by more pretension to refinement, and less of either real wealth or sociability. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... after our first year of mourning had expired. She insisted on taking me with her in turn to Washington, Boston, and Saratoga Springs, then at their acme of fashion. Mr. Bainrothe, who had by this time glided back into his old grooves of apparent sociability in our household, accompanied us, and did all in his power, it seemed, to promote ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... member of the "Junior League," a secret club or society organized and sustained by the junior class. Its object was twofold. First: improvement, to keep themselves informed of and in touch with current events and literature; and, second: sociability. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... more we kept on in our serpentine course, for the river meandered as whimsically as if it still had a choice of its own in the matter. Then gradually the land about began to make overtures toward sociability. The trees on the banks disappeared, the banks themselves decreased in height; then the river took to a more genial flow, and presently we were ware of the whole countryside to the right coming down in one long sweep to the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... head of the stairs. "I've been wishing so hard for company that I believe my wishing must have drawn you. Now that daughter is married and gone, I get so lonesome, with Mr. Bisbee in town all day, that I often find myself talking to myself just for the sake of sociability. Not a soul has been in for the last two days, and usually I have callers from morning till night. This is such a good dropping-in place, you know. So central that I ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture I never could squeeze myself into it—the last I always hated—there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that made me fly solitude; add to these incentives to social life, my reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... said, taking a conciliatory tone, "our walk in life has changed, and we must adapt ourselves to our surroundings. You know you always said that we ought to do our share toward promoting sociability." ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... habits conformed to his position and resources. His mansion was one of the most showy and luxurious in the city. He kept his carriages and horses, his cellar of costly wines, and entertained on a scale of great extravagance and sumptuousness. He was, in fact, the centre of fashion, frivolity, sociability, and even of the fashionable dissipations of the day. His person, which even in extreme old age was remarkable for dignity, erectness, and courtliness, at the period we write of, was conspicuous for all the graces of manhood. Indeed, he was styled the handsomest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is in earth so it may be in heaven. God send us all safe there together! For my part, I think that within these few weeks I am a different kind of a creature. But what can a poor carpenter do? He must not speak to gentlefolk, unless in the way of his work: so he can have no sociability, but with his poor neighbours. And though some of them to be sure be as good-meaning people as any on earth, they are no better learned than himself: so they can teach him nothing. But I have happened on good luck, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... feast. But the guests do not share in this as an act of religious worship. They are generally sitting round, talking, and laughing, and eating. While these incantations are sung, topics of common interest are discussed, and plans formed, and in all Dyak feasts, sociability and the partaking of food and drink seem to take a more prominent ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have broken out. "They're here, they're here, you little wretches," I would have cried, "and you can't deny it now!" The little wretches denied it with all the added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just the crystal depths of which—like the flash of a fish in a stream—the mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper than I knew on the night when, looking out to ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... our author believes that the state has a right to insist. There is a purely civil profession of faith, whose articles the sovereign may fix, not exactly as dogmas of religion, but as principles of sociability. These must be few, simple and clear, and announced without explanation or commentary. The existence of a deity, powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foreseeing, and providing; the life to come, with the happiness of the good and the punishment of the wicked; the sacredness ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell |
