"Bright side" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)—my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... on laughing. "Well, don't let that hold you back. I dare say I could, rise to being cruel as well. Let's look on the bright side of things. Tell me, darling, when will ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... by the wars of the great Louis deepened the dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to strain our civilization to a degree that not many have even now conceived, came slowly into ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the bright side of the picture. In activity and exertion Lord George Murray has not been surpassed even by the more fortunate, although, perhaps, not greater commanders of modern times. He was indefatigable in business, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... is in the efficacy of Jesus' atoning blood. I know whom I have trusted, and "am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." I have no melancholy feelings or fears. The joy of the Lord is my strength. I feel that I am now on the bright side of seventy-five. As the evening twilight of my earthly life advances, my spiritual sun shines with increased splendour. This has been my experience for the last year. With an increased sense of my own sinfulness, unworthiness, and helplessness, I have an increased ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... won't be,' replied his father. 'It is well to look on the bright side, and hope for the best, for it keeps the courage up. It is also well to look out for disappointment. I know a gentleman who thought he would raise some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of the little shell box, told her that. There were tears in Hilary's gray eyes, as she stood slipping the gold beads slowly through her fingers. How good everyone was to her; for the first time some understanding of the bright side even of sickness—and she had not been really sick, only run-down—and, yes, she had been cross and horrid, lots of ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... taking the worst view of your case that it can possibly bear. It seems to me that you never look at the bright side with any hope or confidence. It is not the philosophy to make ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... look on the bright side of the misfortune, but she could not help thinking of all the dangers the grey kitten was likely to meet. There were so many dogs in Upwell, dogs like Snip and Snap who delighted in chasing cats. ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... up. Let's look on the bright side rather than the dark side, and above all 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 ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to Souwanas, Minnehaha, who always looked on the bright side of things, and who had a quick intuition quite beyond her ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... come near Ellinor to trouble her life. To her, her dear father was the first of human beings; so sweet, so good, so kind, so charming in conversation, so full of accomplishment and information! To her healthy, happy mind every one turned their bright side. She loved Miss Monro—all the servants—especially Dixon, the coachman. He had been her father's playfellow as a boy, and, with all his respect and admiration for his master, the freedom of intercourse that had been established ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Everything, however, has its bright side. Mademoiselle Ermance's tap and my own start of surprise, had jerked the ink-bottle from my grasp; my yellow jacket was literally flooded! I was rid of it ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of the weather, within certain limitations, though discouraging to the physical philosopher, has yet its bright side for the student of final causes. The uses of the weather and its adaptation to organic life are subjects of untiring interest. The progression of the seasons, varied by differences of latitude, is also diversified and adapted to a fuller development ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... more deeply stigmatized, when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon worth: since we shall be in danger of beholding it without abhorrence, unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the deception of surrounding splendour[3]." "If nothing but the bright side of characters should be shown," he once remarked to Malone, "we should sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them in any thing[4]." It was this conscientious freedom, we believe, that has, more ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... wilt remember one warm morn when winter Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs, So dark in the bare wood, when glistening In the sunshine were white with coming buds, Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks Had violets ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... retorted Fred, "never allow your imagination to soar higher than your reason; curb down the irritable nerves of your temper; turn the dark side of life's picture towards the past, and keep always the bright side uppermost." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... with means there is the chance for travel, a splendid opportunity to cultivate many virtues of which the young traveller seldom thinks: patience, adaptability, seeing the bright side of things. Travelling may be made a very important part of education. It is too bad that some people of limited horizon take it simply as a chance to aggrandize themselves, something to boast about and with which to bore their friends by repeated accounts of what they ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... the habit of talking to Jerrold in a gloomy, depressing manner, presenting to him only the sad side of life. "Hang it," said Jerrold, one day, after a long and sombre interview, "she would not allow that there was a bright side ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... time since I had heard that he was about to go into vaudeville I felt a faint hope creeping over me. I was sorry for the wretched chap, of course, but there was no denying that the thing had its bright side. No management on earth would go on paying thirty-five dollars a week for this sort of performance. This was going to be Gussie's first and only. He would have to leave the profession. The old boy would say, 'Unhand my daughter'. And, with decent luck, I saw myself leading Gussie on to the next ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... about your grey goose quill. Surely composition must be pleasant to you. No one who writes so fast and so well can find it actually irksome. I am aware that people sometimes think they find it so. But we may deceive ourselves on the dark as well as on the bright side of our road, and more easily, because it is the dark. That is to say, we may not only cheat ourselves with false hopes of good, but with false notions of evil, which proves, if it proves anything just now, that you are considerably ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... on the bright side of things, the result of a life which, had pessimism been allowed to rule it, might have ended prematurely with what the papers are fond of calling a "rash act," led her to consider first those points in the situation ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... you will. You'll be helping me with the spring cleaning," said Huldah, trying to keep cheerful,—one of the hardest of her daily tasks, for Aunt Emma's melancholy seldom left her. She never saw the bright side of anything, poor soul, nor the best, nor did she try to; and the depressingness of it told on the child's spirits more than ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in their subtle criticism, have said that Don Juan was but the bright side of Childe Harold, and that all its most brilliant imagery was similar to that of which the dark and the shadows were delineated in his other works. It may be so. And, without question, a great similarity runs through everything that has come ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture, as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... bright; and her fork was certainly made for anything else in the world but comfort and convenience, being of only two prongs, and those so far apart that Ellen had no small difficulty to carry the potato safely from her plate to her mouth. It mattered nothing; she was now looking on the bright side of things, and all this only made ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, found him composing (or more probably correcting the proofs of) 'The Enquiry'. 'At least spare invective 'till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be publish'd,'—he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths—'and then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions shall not appear the dictates of necessity but of choice.' 'The Enquiry' came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author's name, but it was an open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it remains to the critic ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... brave child! and look on the bright side. After all, I may come back a brigadier-general, and make you one of my staff-officers! You shall be my adjutant, and light up my office with your golden head. Take care of yourself till Eric comes, and write to me often. Good-bye, my dear, my ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... more, but felt that innocent buoyancy a mystery to his lower-pitched spirit. Never very gay or merry, Phoebe had a fund of happiness and a power of finding and turning outwards the bright side, which made ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of essays entitled Across the Plains, and in The Amateur Emigrant, he describes what must have been a very trying time to a man of his refined upbringing and frail constitution. But he looks, here as elsewhere, at the bright side of people and things; and even for the Chinaman, from whom the other emigrants hold themselves aloof, he has a good word to say. He keenly observed everything from his fellow-passengers, the character of the newsboys ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... shoot," laughed Betty, coming over and perching on the railing beside Mollie. "I admit we should probably have more fun at the lodge than we could anywhere else. I was only trying to look on the bright side of things in case our plans ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... and good-natured lot were these Swedes. How helpful, sympathetic, and jolly withal. It was easy for them to see the clear, bright side of everything, and to turn an innocent joke on themselves occasionally; for one told on another is never so effective and enjoyable as a joke on oneself; but there were often those with tears in their eyes, and a homesick feeling at ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... the community knew him; and to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him coming down the lane, shouted, 'Here comes grandfather!' No gall, no acerbity, no hypercriticism. If there was a bright side to anything, he always saw it, and his name, in all the places where he dwelt, will long be a ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... return. To beat up such neighbors as they desired, he and Squire gave glowing accounts of the new country; the rich lands, the forests, the streams, the flowers, and the game, were all talked of. They saw only, and consequently spoke only, of the bright side of the picture. But there were numbers of people to talk of difficulties; these spoke of the folly of the Boones, in thinking of making such a country their home, and the madness of any man who should ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and spars, so that all over it resembles the "bright side" or polished streak, usually banding round an ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... matter what your mood, say to yourself: "I will get all the comfort and pleasure possible out of this day, and I will do something to add to the measure of the world's happiness or well-being. I will control myself when tempted to be irritable or unhappy, I will look for the bright side ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... pedestrian; every loitering person is a tramp, who is a burglar in disguise; every stranger is an enemy, or at least must be regarded with suspicion. Such worriers always seem to prefer to look on the dark side of the unknown rather than on the bright side. "Think no evil!" is good philosophy to apply to everything, as well as genuine religion—when put into practice. The world is in the control of the Powers of Good, and these seek our good, not our disaster. Have faith in the goodness of the powers that ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... thus far spoken of shyness as a defect. But there is another way of looking at it; for even shyness has its bright side, and contains an element of good. Shy men and shy races are ungraceful and undemonstrative, because, as regards society at large, they are comparatively unsociable. They do not possess those elegancies of manner acquired by free intercourse, which ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... who have to suffer vicariously for the rest. He is such an one. But that sort of feeling of soreness which comes from the sense of martyrdom is not quite the same as a raw wound on one's own personal score. I do hope I am clear. I try to look on the bright side, but there are days when the unseen world and its glorious realities become dubious. These are trials of faith, I know. If one could be wise, one would keep silent at such times. Now, dearest ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... bright side, and so much the better for you. It is really very unfortunate that you are not the Egeria of M. Fouquet; you might now show him the source whence he could obtain the millions which the king asked ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... answered the other, frankly. "The first time one finds one's self provided for so extra careful as this," with a glance at the iron bars across the low-arched windows, "the prospect always does seem dark. But one learns to look upon the bright side at last. Is the figure very heavy that you're in for? Excuse my country manners: I don't mean to be rude, nor do I ask the question from mere curiosity; but you don't look like one to have come here for ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... was an outgo from first to last. It was a business in prospective. It took two persons from other and more productive labor, and quantities of fuel were consumed through the long winter days and nights with a very meagre return. It had its bright side—it was attractive—and if persevered in would have paid in the end. The garden was still more of an outgo than the greenhouse. The soil was very poor, and the manure for high culture was not forthcoming, for it was all needed on ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... look on the bright side?" asked Miss Shay, who was to come into the drama later. "Why, it's so warm I should think you'd like to get ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... a dark side to it, but I praise God there is a bright side. It is like a dam. When the dam begins to go, it will go all at once. Youth is on our side. In thirty years we shall not have the same problem we have now—no, not in twenty years. Wealth is coming ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... surrounding darkness, kindled by the friction of mind with mind in the crowded haunts of men; and it is natural that at these beacons of intellectual light all should partake in some measure of the general illumination. No doubt the mental ferment and unrest of great cities have their dark as well as their bright side; but among the evils to be apprehended from them the chances of a pagan ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... such exhibitions is, that it displays only the bright side of militarism. If in place of the Russian battleships they should display the starving masses of dejected and despised beings who pay for those battleships; if in place of the gay German uniforms they should exhibit the rags ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... front piazza which faced the sea, and where, the previous evening, he had stood so lonely and homesick. Everything looked much cheerier to him now, and he ran down the sand, in front of the house, to the water's edge, resolved to see the bright side of everything which pertained to gray, barren Culm. There were stranded shells and bright-hued weeds on the wet, glittering sand, which made Noll's eyes ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life, and sure of his yearly allowance of money and daily pitcher of wine from the royal bounty. Yet, with all his mirth, there is a vein of playful satire in his description of men and things. His pictures of jolly monks and easy-going ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... nobody in Tilling believed her left Miss Mapp more than calm, on the bright side of calm, that is to say. She had a few indulgent phrases that tripped readily off her tongue for the dear things who hated to be deprived of their gossip, but Susan certainly did not receive the impression that this playful magnanimity was attained with an ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them—who have the organ of hope preposterously developed—who are endowed with an uncongealable, sanguine temperament—who never feel concerned about the price of corn—and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side of a picture—are very apt to go to extremes and exaggerate with ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... has nearly got the "go-by" and we have outlived its pains and perils, its varied scenes of good or evil, and its pleasures too, for there is a bright side to human reverse and suffering, and we are ready at our posts to enact and stand another campaign in this "strange eventful history." We often find that the public discover virtues and good qualities in a man after his death, which they had previously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... Wealth Waits in California; The Bright Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California: Southland's Arms Outstretched in Cordial Invitation to the East; Flower Stands Make Gay City Streets; Southland Climate Big Manufacturing Factor; Joy of Life Demonstrated in Los Angeles' ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... her children with her: she never left them to others when she could help it, and later on I shall tell you what a devoted and tender mother she was; but the strain of those four long years no one will ever know. I want you to see the dark as well as the bright side of her wonderful life; and here is part of a letter to her mother, ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... never been of a sanguine temperament; he had become still less so as he advanced in life. Ronald, on the contrary, was accustomed to look on the bright side of objects. He believed that he had obtained a clue which would lead to the discovery of a matter now he felt of so much importance to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... a solution of fine hard soap of a moderate heat, drawing them through the hand; rinse in lukewarm water, dry, and finish by pinning out. Brush the flossy or bright side with a clean clothes-brush, the way of the nap. Finish them by dipping a sponge into a size, made by boiling isinglass in water, and rub the wrong side. Rinse out a second time, and brush, and dry near a fire ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... illustrate the hemisphere of Saturn where it is midsummer. It will also be seen that the side of the ring towards this half of the ball is now in the light, so that a small insect on this half of the ball would see the bright side of the ring. A Saturnian correspondingly placed would get reflected sunlight from the ring system both by day and by night. Moving the ball and ring so that the shadow returns to its first position, an entire Saturnian year will have ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... happier than I have been for months. The fact is, this infernal place has hipped us both confoundedly. I didn't like to grumble, but I've felt the monotony more than a bit. And so have you. It's made you brood over things. Now, for my part, I like to look at the bright side. Here we are comfortably cut off from the past. That's all done with. Nothing in the world can revive the memory of disagreeable things if we are only true to ourselves and agree to forget them. What ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... He was an impulsive man, and to some extent excitable; yet withal a man of excellent judgment and honest as God makes men. No lazy bones occupied a place in Buck's body. He was scrupulously neat and cleanly in all his ways; courteous to every one; always in good humor and always looking upon the bright side of things. A better trail mate could not have ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... perhaps, too sombre. Intense she certainly was, but it did not oppress one in ordinary intercourse; and she was not at all sombre. After she recovered fully from her youthful grief, her elasticity of temperament returned, and her love of fun. She looked on the bright side of all things, and was full of encouragement and hope for her friends. To me, besides being, during the last five years particularly, a valuable friend and adviser—no one but myself can know how valuable—she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not very perceptible to other people. 'But it should not be given with quite so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected by other parishes. And, Nathaniel Chapman, there's a jauntiness in your manner of singing which is ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Lucien, on the other hand, with a boldness little to be expected from his feminine, almost effeminate, figure, graceful though it was, Lucien possessed the Gascon temperament to the highest degree—rash, brave, and adventurous, prone to make the most of the bright side, and as little as possible of the dark; his was the nature that sticks at no crime if there is anything to be gained by it, and laughs at the vice which serves as a stepping-stone. Just now these tendencies of ambition were held in check, partly by the fair illusions of youth, partly by ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... crabbed expression of those grave individuals who never laugh on principle, and cover their emptiness with a mask of seriousness. He looked far from that. His careless, good-humored air, and easy, unceremonious manners, showed plainly that he knew how to take men and things on their bright side. But though he had not yet opened his mouth, he gave one the impression of being a great talker, and moreover, one of those absent folks who neither see though they are looking, nor hear though they are listening. He wore ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a trail, so never fear," she replied. "But don't borrow trouble. You're always afraid for me. Look at the bright side. Dad seems to have forgotten you. Maybe it all isn't so bad as we thought. Oh, I hope so! ... How is my horse, Wildfire? I want to ride him again. I can hardly ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Arnold, who is to come from Polesdean to give Laura away, her uncle being far too delicate to trust himself outside the door in such inclement weather as we now have. If I were not determined, from this day forth, to see nothing but the bright side of our prospects, the melancholy absence of any male relative of Laura's, at the most important moment of her life, would make me very gloomy and very distrustful of the future. But I have done with gloom and distrust—that is to say, I have done ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the image one would adore. That's why I winced just now. Collectively, we Americans have never lowered the Stars and Stripes, but individually we do it pretty often." Then he threw up his head and smiled. "After all, there's a bright side even to blatant patriotism. A nation can put up with every form of devotion so long as it gets it ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... are!" said Sahwah, coming to herself with a start. "Worrying about something that's miles off! Cheer up. We may all get drowned and never have to go home at all. You always want to look on the bright side of things!" And then the pendulum swung the other way, and the two leaned against each other and laughed until their sides ached at ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... correctness of Bohun's suggestions and the disinterestedness of his counsels, I had taken a step which could not, for a time at least, be retraced. I therefore determined to go forward and make the best of it; look on the bright side of my situation, if it had any bright side, faithfully perform the duties of my office, and trust to my constitution and regular habits, in spite of the counsels of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... rises early and retires early, eats moderately of simple food, never uses a drop of stimulant, and does not even smoke a cigar. In temperament he is among the happiest of human beings, always looks at the bright side of circumstances—loves to hear of the prosperity of his neighbors, and hopes for favorable turns of character, even in the most depraved. The exaltation of his intellectual pursuits, and his sincere piety, have enabled him to rise above all the petty disquietudes ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... but even if I can't get that job, I can get some other that will bring us in money," said David, who was determined to look on the bright side of things. "I'll earn another ten-dollar bill before the one I get from Don Gordon is gone, you may depend ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... hatred of the established order of things. Yet these old-fashioned evils were scarcely noticed in the general magnificent prosperity of the country. The short-sighted statesmen of the time delighted to look only on the bright side of things, and to them the very exuberance of the prosperity seemed to condone, if not to justify, the nefarious practices which obtained in high places. No wonder that among our Canadians, hardly 5,000,000 all told, there were some who were weak enough to be dazzled at the wealth ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... itself forward into notice. He could not but reflect sometimes, and then even his sunny brow was clouded, that he wanted a something which the children at the rectory possessed; that he wanted a great reality, without which he could not be fully happy. He saw also the bright side of total abstinence when he spent a day with the rector's family. At home there was always abundance of beer and wine upon the table, and he drank it, like others; and not only drank it, but thirsted for it, and felt ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... fellows, public opinion's the dockerment; with the bright side of public opinion! Public opinion whispers about Clotilda: it says she looks so much like that niece of Marston's, that you couldn't tell them apart. And they are like two pins, gentlemen; but then one's property and t'other's anything but property. One will bring ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... from worry, fretting, overanxious solicitude, burdensome care. It is free from malice, ill will, retaliation. It is free from bad temper, sees the bright side of things, and wears its clouds inside out. The sanctified life is a life of faith, and it is a life of obedience. To trust has to it become a habit, to obey a second nature. The victorious life looks not behind, but ahead; it ignores past failures ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... But the bright side of the story of the Irish in Australia and New Zealand unfolds in the subsequent years. The men who had been sent forth from Erin with the brand of the convict upon them became the founders of a new commonwealth. To them were joined the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... to the perverse belief that, as everything is for the best, whatever we do in this world must be for good. To this class of sentimentalists the most serious evil is truth-seeing and truth-speaking. It is an excellent plan to look upon the bright side of things, but one should not do this to the extent of blinding oneself to facts. Doctor Johnson once said to Boswell, "Beware, my friend, of mixing up virtue and vice;" but there is something worse than that, and it is, to stigmatize a writer as ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... I have neither the time nor the inclination to write to you on this sad subject in any detail. In a fortnight more, at the longest, we shall, I hope, send you a copy of the letter, complete from the first line to the last. Meanwhile, it is my duty to tell you that there is one bright side to this otherwise deplorable and shocking document. Legally speaking, as well as morally speaking, it absolutely vindicates your husband's innocence. And it may be lawfully used for this purpose—if he can reconcile it to his conscience, and to the ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... bright side that is turned to my father and uncles, to captivate them: but I am afraid that my brother's and sister's design is to ruin me with them at any rate. Were it otherwise, would they not on my return from you have rather ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Asplin quickly. "I can! I'm thankful for it. Many a time in these last few weeks, Peggy, I've thanked my old father for the gift of his irrepressible Irish spirit, and I've thanked God too, dear, that, old and weary as I am, I can still look on the bright side, and keep a cheery heart. It's a great blessing, Peg, a wonderful blessing, for it helps not only ourselves, but those around us, over many a dismal road. You have the gift, so see that you cultivate it, child, and never let yourself imagine that you are pleasing ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... away to him cheerful while they was hashing; and when they'd finished off he told him he hoped what he'd see of the bright side of Palomitas—before his train started—would make him forget the cruelly sorrowful shadows of that melancholy afternoon. He was a daisy at word-slinging, Charley was—better'n most auctioneers. Then they come along together back to the bar-room—where the cloth was off the table, and the ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... costumer, And fair-robed wearer! study her And imitate the conjurer So prettily economizing, Without demur, regret, or pout, Who always puts the bright side out And never frets at all about ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... [Arabic:] beginneth in contemplation, passeth to meditation; hence proceeds desire; then the spark bursts forth into a flame, the head swims, the body wastes, and the soul turns giddy. If we look on the bright side of love, we must acknowledge that it has at least one advantage; it annihilates pride and immoderate self-love; 364 true love, whose aim is the happiness and equality of the beloved object, being incompatible with ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... him from us so very much, you see, Phineas," she said, evidently trying to view the bright side—"and she has no relatives living—not one. For income—Guy will have the entire profit of the Norton Bury mills; and they might begin, as we did, in the old Norton ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that it was impossible to proceed on account of our weakness. No chance must we miss. Turned in again. Wind sprang up again with heavy drift 8.30. In spite of everything my tent-mates are very cheerful and look on the bright side of everything. After a talk we decided to wait and turned in. It is really wonderful what dreams we have, especially of food. Trusting in Providence ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... This was the bright side of the picture. Those who stood nearest to Agassiz, however, felt that the strain not only of work, but of the anxiety and responsibility attendant upon a new and important undertaking, was perilous for him. There were moments when this became apparent, and he himself ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... made the difference in these two men? Their thoughts have made the difference. The grouch has, for years, entertained grouchy thoughts. The sunshiny man has cultivated the habit of seeing the bright side of things. That's all there is ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... of cheerfulness, of looking on the bright side of things, which, Sydney Smith says, "is worth a thousand pounds a year." This again has saved him enormous waste of energy, as he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any debate or business in Parliament. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... realize that such things could be, now that he was a guest in a Southern home and saw the bright side of their life. Never had he seen anything brighter than the smiles of those negro musicians as they proudly touched their instruments: the violin, the banjo, the flute, the triangle and castanets, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... a bright side to the matter—and on that I will speak now, in order that this sermon may end, as such gospel sermons surely should end, not with threats and fear, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... bright side!" exclaimed Helen. "Why be a fire-eater if you can't look on the bright ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... early and middle life from chest and nerve troubles, and her son may have inherited from her some of his constitutional weakness. Capable, cultivated, companionable, affectionate, she was a determined looker at the bright side of things, and hence better skilled, perhaps, to shut her eyes to troubles or differences among those she loved than understandingly to compose or heal them. Conventionally minded one might have thought her, but for the surprising readiness with which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the new country with the families of the Boones, to give the settlements security and strength to resist the attacks of the Indians. This was not an easy task. It may be readily imagined that the Boones saw only the bright side of the contemplated expedition. They painted the fertility and amenity of the flowering wilderness in the most glowing colors. They described the cane-brakes, the clover and grass, the transparent limestone springs and brooks, the open forests, the sugar maple orchards, the buffaloes, deer, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... passion can exist, and, consequently, our social joys will never be mingled with the gall of bitterness. Putting aside, for a moment, all the shortcomings and imperfections that mar our social joys in this world, let us look at their bright side only, and see what it is that makes our social intercourse with others a pleasure. This will be as a mirror wherein we shall behold some faint reflections of social joys as they exist in heaven. What ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... equal to one-fifth of the total cost of all the roads constructed. To still more encourage promoters of railroad enterprises, general incorporation laws were passed which permitted companies to be formed and roads to be built practically without State supervision. In their admiration for the bright side of the picture, the people entirely overlooked ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... had a last glimpse of his late editor, a sad smile on his face, telling the policeman what was apparently a humorous story. Complete good will seemed to exist between them. John consoled himself as he went away with the reflection that Smith's was a temperament that would probably find a bright side even to a thirty-days' visit to ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... let us look at the bright side of the Christian's life, for it has a bright side, and that is the side next to heaven, on which the light of heaven forever falls. I am not unmindful of the fact that, figuratively speaking, one side is turned to earth, and the earth in many respects ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and I fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things." ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Sanguine Scot had found the bright side of the situation, and reminded us that we were in the Land of Plenty of Time. "There's time enough for everything in the Never-Never," he said. "She'll have many a pleasant ride along the Reach choosing trees for timber. Catching ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... who was determined to look on the bright side, "after a year, papa and I will have a house of our own, and then you can come and make us a long, long visit. And we can write letters, Clara, and you must tell me all about the girls, and about school and ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... spot I could find, I was not less miserable than I have been many a June morning since, though the best of life's hard lessons have been learned in the meantime. It seemed to me that all my hopes, and wishes, and endeavors would always be vain and fruitless; I could not see a bright side anywhere I looked. I was always doing and saying the wrong things; I was in everybody's way: no one wanted me, no one cared for me—why was I ever born? I had no companions. My stepmother looked down upon the dangerous habit of allowing children to cultivate juvenile ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... modern passion for money might there not be something deeper than mere greed; perhaps the regenerating power of the spirit pressing man upward? Certainly he could only see the bright side of it to-night and the wonder grew on him that he had lived for twenty-five years in a fog of sentiment and ignored deliberately the biggest fact of the century, while the simpler mind of the poor white ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... to his 'workshop,' and there he finds ample employment. He was, indeed, too much in sympathy with Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's doctrine that 'life would be tolerable but for its amusements' not to find a bright side to this mode of existence. A life of labour without relaxation was not far from his ideal. 'The immense amount of labour done here,' he says, 'strikes me more than anything else. The people work like ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Phoebe, amending her text, "is always on the bright side, and the good side. You told me just now, I had a happy disposition. How can I ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil. this is the great unworldliness. Love "thinketh no evil," imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live in! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... its initial economic reforms during the Communist era. The private sector now accounts for about 55% of GDP. Nonetheless, the transformation is proving difficult, and many citizens say life was better under the old system. On the bright side, the four-year decline in output finally ended in 1994, as real GDP increased an estimated 3%. This growth helped reduce unemployment to just over 10% by yearend, down from a peak of 13%. However, no progress was made against inflation, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... safety ensured, and, so far as can be judged of, no apparent obstacle in the way of the Mission in that quarter. Had this great peril not occurred—and it was to human eyes and in human language the mere "chance" of a minute—I might have dwelt with too much satisfaction on the bright side of the picture. As it is, it is a lesson to me "to think soberly." I can hardly trust myself to write yet with my usual freedom of the scenery, natives, &c. One great thought is before me—"Is it all real that we touched on that reef in the sight of hundreds of natives?" It was not a sense ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge |
