"Optimistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remains in the symbol, the constant use of it must do something for the aesthetic education of those employing it. Public-houses are now almost the only shops that use the ancient signs, and the mysterious attraction which they exercise may be (by the optimistic) explained in this manner. There are taverns with names so dreamlike and exquisite that even Sir Wilfrid Lawson might waver on the threshold for a moment, suffering the poet to struggle with the moralist. So it was with the heraldic images. It is impossible to believe that the red lion ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... ideas to the complex concretes of political and social activity. How far we can succeed in furthering that aim I need not attempt to say. But I will conclude by reverting to some thoughts at which I hinted at starting. You may think that I have hardly spoken in a very sanguine or optimistic tone. I have certainly admitted the existence of enormous difficulties and the probabilities of very imperfect success. I cannot think that the promised land of which we are taking a Pisgah sight is so near or the view so satisfactory ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... he answered, "Anywhere; they will find me;" and the stone that marks his grave at Frankfort bears merely the inscription "Arthur Schopenhauer," without even the date of his birth or death. Schopenhauer, the pessimist, had a sufficiently optimistic conviction that his message to the world would ultimately be listened to—a conviction that never failed him during a lifetime of disappointments, of neglect in quarters where perhaps he would have most cherished appreciation; a conviction that only showed some ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the optimistic turn of my sagacity. She rested her eyes on my face as though in doubt whether I had enough femininity in my composition to ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... these embassies the syndicate held a meeting in Cornish's elegant offices on the ground-floor of the new "Hotel Elkins" building. We sent Giddings away to prepare an optimistic news-story for to-morrow's Herald, and an editorial leader based upon it, both of which had been formulated among us before going into executive session on the state of the nation. Hinckley, who had an admirable power of seeing ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... discontent that poisoned his own? A daughter perhaps—with the eyes of his mad sister Alice? Or a son—with the contradictions and weaknesses, without the gifts, of his father? Men have different ways of challenging the future. But that particular way called paternity had never in his most optimistic moments appealed to Manisty. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he did not receive an answer at once, although he realised what a blow it would be to her. He understood that, to begin with, it would destroy all her dreams, as it had already destroyed. But he relied on her optimistic nature, which he had never known surpassed, and on the depth of her purpose in all that she undertook. He knew that she drew strength and resolution from all that was ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... though it had been struck on a triangle. Then a silence of exactly nine seconds and repeat. As regularly as clock-work this performance goes on. Time him as often as you will, you can never convict him of a second's variation. And he is so optimistic and willing, and his notes are so golden with the ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the feverish energy of the previous night. More than ever the impossibility of finding the needle in this human bundle of hay oppressed me. No one is optimistic before breakfast, and I regarded the future with dull resignation, turning my thoughts from it after a while to the past. But the past meant Audrey, and to think of ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... most optimistic moments, Theodora had pictured Cicely as a dainty, clinging little maiden who would cajole and coddle Allyn out of his unfriendly moods. Cicely certainly did rouse Allyn from those moods; but it was by no process of feminine ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... the past the soul has risen, one need not be unduly optimistic to presume that, in spite of opposition, it will meet no enemies which it will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not be able to scale. Prophecy is the art of reading history forward. The spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can ever permanently ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... never recover," she wrote in one of her letters. "The Professor is always optimistic, but I can read that in his heart he has no hope. The next step will, I dread to ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... statistics show that "two thirds of the population possess less than one third of the income, and that 3.5 per cent of the upper incomes receive more than 66 per cent at the lower end." From a table prepared by Sir Robert Giffen, a notoriously optimistic statistician, always the exponent of an ultra-roseate view of social conditions, Professor Mayo-Smith concludes that in England, "about ten per cent of the people receive nearly one half of the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... to himself in reception of new manifestations of its eruptions; forever in his mind, like a live thing gnawing there. Other people seemed to suffer the war in spasms, isolated amidst the round of their customary routines, of dejection or of optimistic reassurance. The splendid sentiment of "Business as usual" was in many valiant mouths. The land, in so far as provisions and prices were concerned, continued to flow in milk and honey as the British Isles had always flowed in milk and honey. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... it was some time before affairs emerged from the chaotic state into which the war had plunged them. The average planter had little or no faith in free negro labor, yet all who were now able were willing to give it a trial. The more optimistic land-owners believed that the free negro could in time be made an efficient laborer, in which case they were willing to admit that the change might prove beneficial to both races. At first, however, no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable plans were ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... naturalization law and rigid election laws have made wholesale frauds impossible; and the genius of Tammany is now attempting to adjust itself to the new immigration, the new political spirit, and the new communal vigilance. Its power is believed by some optimistic observers to be waning. But the evidences are not wanting that its vitality and internal discipline are ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... day as they drove along they talked of the improvement on the farm and the profit they ought to be able to earn with the new equipment. Bob was the optimist and his uncle the pessimist in these discussions, but optimistic Bob was not without his pencil and memorandum book and usually had the better of the argument because of his uncle's disinclination to take the time to figure out the advantages and disadvantages of ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... waste, began to hurl his questions at them the moment he arrived on the threshold. He liked the pathetic, and was certainly a man with a naturally warm heart. On a closer acquaintance, he would have won much affection, for he was a clever man and a gay, optimistic figure. As the number of his scholars was so great, he produced more effect at ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... minute his happy, optimistic eyes chanced to meet mine. They seemed like good, deep water, and just for a second the thought crossed my mind that perhaps he knew more of the real troubles of life than his intellectual ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the very first cup of tea, and we went for our usual evening stroll through the paddocks, with all our old appreciation; and on our return found the men stretched out on the grass beyond the Quarters, optimistic and happy, sipping at further cups of tea. (Sam's kettle was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and unquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out he believed it was the finest city in the world. "Finest" was his word. He thought of it as his city as he thought of his family as his family; and just as profoundly ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... for the fact that it absolutely is so would vouch for itself, and the problem disappear in the vanishing of the question rather than in the coming of anything like a reply. But we are not magicians to make the optimistic temperament universal; and alongside of the deliverances of temperamental optimism concerning life, those of temperamental pessimism always exist, and oppose to them a standing refutation. In what is called 'circular insanity,' phases of melancholy succeed phases of mania, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., printed in Plantation and Frontier, II, 41. The writer must have been well advanced in years or else highly optimistic. Otherwise he could not have expected to earn his purchase ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... he found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was also erratic—though that was natural, since the stars were completely berserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate between bitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that something could be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went on working and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keep himself occupied that drove him, or perhaps it was the pleading he saw in the eyes ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... lived here long," he wrote his mother, "I think I should become as optimistic as the Secretary of Agriculture, even though the total produce of the original thirteen states should supply a still smaller fraction of the necessities of life required by their population. The Congressional Library ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... really optimistic, except on some political questions. In his Lives of the Novelists he shows that he thought manners and morals had improved in the previous hundred years; and none of his reviews exhibits the feeling so common among men of letters in ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... demonstrated, the writer believes, that from humble origin black men and women may confidently be counted upon, with proper encouragement, to win success. The chapters are autobiographical, significantly optimistic, with just pride in what has been done, and outlining, as did "Up from Slavery"—which was commended as a proper model—experiences from childhood, the school-life of the writer, and the results achieved in the direction of putting into practise ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... for three yards of butter—let her see you smiling, let her find you gay; be as bright and chipper as a new tin dipper, show you're optimistic, in the good old way! If you mope and mumble this good dame will tumble, and she'll tell her neighbors that your head is sore; no one likes a dealer who's a dismal squealer, so your friends will toddle ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... last one to make a permanent contribution to art, the impulse is to ask what it is doing now. That is easily answered, but there is no man so optimistic that he can ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... and he knew now what it was to wake up famous, but he could not taste it. Now that it had come it meant nothing, and that it was so complete a triumph only made it the harder. In his most optimistic dreams he had never imagined success so satisfying as the reality had proved to be; but in his dreams Helen had always held the chief part, and without her, success seemed only to ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... effectually dispelled the optimistic anticipations indulged in overnight. At daybreak a large body of Afghans, with many standards, were discerned on a hill about a mile northward of the Asmai ridge, from which and from the Kohistan road they were moving on to the crest of that ridge. They were joined ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... newspapers on President Wilson's note of June 9 was reported by THE TIMES staff correspondent in Berlin on June 12 as being "surprisingly restrained and optimistic." Captain L. Persius, the naval critic of the Berliner Tageblatt, which is close to Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, writing under the caption, "On the Way to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in, smiling gaily and benevolently, with his bright, optimistic face under his fair brown hair. He had large and good teeth. He was getting—not ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... tighten up and the circulation congest. They could not conceive themselves up and around, pursuing their normal life during such a time. However, as they have found by experience that this point of view is not an optimistic dream, they have broken up the confidence-game which their subconscious had been playing on them, and have gone on ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... They were cheery and optimistic over the completion of their new model aero-hydroplane. It had been tested and worked splendidly. The company stated that they would ship the machine to the meet at ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... perilously high. For months the solutions of the Adriatic, the Austrian, Turkish, and Thracian problems hung in poignant suspense, the public looking on with diminishing interest and waxing dissatisfaction. The usual optimistic assurances that all would soon run smoothly and swiftly fell upon deaf ears. Faith in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... know," said the optimistic Andy; "we always manage somehow, to come out of every affair right-side up, and they get the rough end of the deal, as they should because they won't leave us alone to manage our own business. I can see some warm times coming soon, when they get to ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... Officers' Mess did itself as well as any Mess in India—and only took a few hundred rupees of the Government Grant for the purpose) Colonel Dearman would look upon the wine when it was bubbly, see his Corps through its golden haze, and wax so optimistic, so enthusiastic, so rash, as roundly to state that if he had five hundred of the Gungapur Fusiliers, with magazines charged and bayonets fixed, behind a stout entrenchment or in a fortified building, he would stake his life on their facing any unarmed city mob you could bring ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... know the market facilities, the extent of capital and credit required for success on a particular piece of land and in a particular locality. As a matter of fact, dealers of the type under discussion do not warn the settlers. They give advice of an optimistic character and they apply to the settler the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest. A number of these land dealers said to ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... in Montreal, he had after an excellent education abandoned city life and gone west, where he had prospered by frugality and hard work. He was by no means rich, but he was content and inclined to be optimistic about ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... understand, is consecrated to the unrealities so precious to us. We come here and for a little while allow our dreams to peer timorously at life. In the streets west of here we are what we are—browbeaten, weary-eyed, terribly optimistic units of the boobilariat. Our secret characterizations we hide desperately from the frowns of windows and the squeal ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... sunny, vivacious, optimistic, sanguine, elated, jubilant, lightsome, airy, exhilarating, exhilarated, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... before he peeled them for supper His crippled leg was thrust out straight, his hat was perched precariously over one ear because of the slanting sun rays through the window, and a half-smoked cigarette waggled uncertainly in the corner of his mouth while he sang dolefully a most optimistic ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... all," that bearded veteran told his friends; and, indeed, he was as good as a reinforcement of a hundred men to them—so gay was he, so full of courage, so optimistic. "Poof! Who cares for noise? Not you, my comrades, who have stood days now when torrents of German shells were pouring on us, when our ears were deafened by the guns of either side. Then who cares for the scream and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... few years before he had had occasion to imagine himself treated more badly than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) felt for Captain Whalley's optimistic views the disdain of a man who had once been credulous himself. His disgust with the world (the woman for a time had filled it for him completely) had taken the form of activity in retirement, because, though capable of great depth of feeling, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... forces as are maintained by the governments of the Entente or enjoy their financial, military, technical or other support." There follows a statement that the extent of the concessions will depend on the military position. Chicherin proceeds to give a rather optimistic account of the external and internal situation. Finally he touches on the question of propaganda. "The Russian Soviet Government, while pointing out that it cannot limit the freedom of the revolutionary press, declares its readiness, in case of necessity to include ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... the sunshine—a slight-built man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache, and a faint bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a network of thin veins. His face had something of the youthful, optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type. He walked elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a pleasant taste in furniture and churches, and held the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... all matters, since it ignored Zoraida and made no place for Betty. The latter, however, he did not bar from his thoughts or even from his plannings: If she said the word and would take the chance with him, he'd find the way to get her safely out of this house of intrigue. He was constitutionally optimistic enough to decide that. Among the bushes out in the garden a rifle was hidden; slung under his left arm pit was a dependable friend; and in his heart he was ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... "You're very optimistic," said Triscoe, curtly. "As I read the signs, we are not far from universal war. In less than a year we shall make the break ourselves in a war with Spain." He looked very fierce as he prophesied, and he dotted March over with his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... preparation for rebellion against Sennacherib, in 715, shattered any optimistic hopes that Micah held for a continuation of improvement in the condition of the common people, in which he had been instrumental up to this time. The costs of war always fell heaviest on the poor, and the devastating results of war ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... optimistic view of the case," answered MacShaughnassy. "It seems to me that crime—at all events, interesting crime—is being slowly driven out of our existence. Pirates and highwaymen have been practically abolished. Dear old 'Smuggler Bill' has melted down his cutlass into ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... such settlement as this. Granted, and freely, that no millennium was to be expected, that a long and painful adjustment was necessary,—yet it was out of the question that any political theory or any optimistic hopes should induce acquiescence in the legal establishment of semi-slavery throughout the South. It was not Stevens's rancor, nor Sumner's unpracticability, but the serious conviction of the North, educated and tempered by long debate ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd Ibsen, married Bjoernson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Bjoernson lived among his people, Ibsen was reserved; Bjoernson played the role of an optimistic prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Bjoernson proved himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... dry-farming proposition. I've got a little money, and I intend to invest it in developing this homestead. By mixing brains with industry I hope by next fall to get an ample return upon my money and labour. I trust I am not too optimistic?" ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... that he launched, before the famous prediction of von der Goltz, this optimistic view well calculated to rekindle the zeal of generals who struggle under the weight of enormous tasks incident to ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... life was that of appreciating. She was the confidante, the counsellor, the optimistic teacher, and the appreciative audience for six children and a husband, besides a lot of neighbors who carried their troubles to her. She performed more mental work than it takes to manage a billion dollar trust. She kept six children, not only out ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... growing undertone of dissent in form and substance. Attempts are made to restore philosophical conceptions assailed by Locke and his followers; the rationalism, of the deistic or semi-deistic writers is declared to be superficial; their optimistic theories disregard the dark side of nature, and provide no sufficient utterance for the sadness caused by the contemplation of human suffering; and the polished monotony of Pope's verses begins to fall upon those who shall tread in his steps. Some daring sceptics are even inquiring whether ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Betty, cocking an optimistic eye up at the sky. "It's only one teeny little cloud anyway, and who cares for clouds when the boys are ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... an optimistic view of Juanita and that which must supervene when she had grown into ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the embrace of his friend. It was too horrible to be true. It must have been a trick just to scare the boys. The world was full of joshers—Jack knew half a dozen men capable of playing that trick, just to turn the joke. For a few minutes he was optimistic, almost making himself believe that the man had not been shot, after all. The fading effect of the wines he had drunk sent his mood swinging from the depths of panicky anguish over the horrible affair, to a senseless optimism that refused to see disaster when it ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... threat'ning storm which well may wreck the craft Unless the captain calls unto his aid Lieutenants by long school of action trained To guard from danger's shoals which are unknown Except to those who long the chart have scanned? My predecessor who first ruled these Isles Did loud proclaim in optimistic tones The Philippines for Filipinos are, And so high expectations did arouse Which Time with all its mellowing pow'r did Dissapoint; and so at last Approval's Smile slowly did wane, and bitterest frown, Conceived from discontent, usurped ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... international donors, who pledged increased assistance in 2001. Considerable potential exists for development of a tourist industry, and the government has taken steps to expand facilities in recent years. The government also has attempted to reduce price controls and subsidies. Sao Tome is optimistic that substantial petroleum discoveries are forthcoming in its territorial waters in the oil-rich waters of the Gulf of Guinea; production could begin as early ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... for time and having only the very briefest transaction to perform, it follows that I was kept waiting for my turn with "our Mr. Plausible," in whose optimistic hands my affairs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... least you won't have to study," said his optimistic sister, making an effort to comfort her ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of social brigands. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... appreciate the amazing optimistic confidence of this bankrupt argonaut? We could not sell that land for fifty cents an acre. To use the words of a former Minister of the Interior, "We could not bring settlers in by the scruff of the neck and dump them on the land." ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... she was, Vandervelde took his departure, promising to see her again. He had a further interview with the house-physician and the head nurse. Whatever could be done for her would be done, but they had handled too many Gracies to be optimistic about this particular one. They knew how quickly these ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... have said might give her the character of an ascetic, but nothing could be further from her. She was always optimistic as to earthly troubles, always cheerful and fond of mild festivities. At times no one was more merry than she, and I have seen her laughing at a good joke or story till the tears ran down her cheeks. Cheerfulness was to her a duty which was never violated except when she ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Always the child of impulse, and careless of appearance and opinion, she felt her thoughts, none too cheerful or optimistic that morning during her long walk down the avenue, drawn by the expression upon the legless man's face to a sudden focus of triumph and solution. She struck the palm of one small workman-like hand with the back of the other, and exclaimed: ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... I wish he had been less optimistic. When we came back and told him the whole story, and he sat with his mouth open and his hair, as he said, crackling at the roots, I reminded him with some bitterness that he had encouraged us. His only retort was to say that the excursion ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sich law," said Dick Jones, in his optimistic tone, "an' so we needn't worry 'bout it. But if you two gen'rals should happen along through the mountains uv western No'th Calliny after the war I'd like fur you to come to my cabin, an' see Mary an' the baby an' me. ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Perhaps the optimistic words of Phoebe rang in the ears of the big doctor as he bent over Mother Bab's sightless eyes and began the tedious operation. His hands moved skilfully, with infinite precision, cutting to the infinitesimal fraction of ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... truth broke into our republican temple. But in fact we have turned the freedom of democracy into a mere scepticism, destructive of everything, including democracy itself. It is none the less destructive because it is, so to speak, an optimistic scepticism—or, as I have said, a dreary hope. It was none the better because the destroyers were always talking about the new vistas and enlightenments which their new negations opened to us. The republican temple, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... for northern winter air, seeing that the thermometer registered only some five and twenty degrees of frost. And the sun shone brightly. There was no wind. It was an air rich in kindling, stimulating properties; an air that made life, movement, and activity desirable for all, and optimistic determination easy ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... it wasn't all right. Kitchener began to call for his army. Belgium was invaded. We began to hear about atrocities. There were rumours of defeat, which ceased to be rumours, and of grey hordes pressing towards Paris. It began to dawn on the most optimistic of us that the little British Army—the Old Contemptibles—hadn't gone to France on ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... they all swore by blazes that I could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk was respectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the British Constitution. They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and too reliable and benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at Scotland Yard. They said that if I had been a criminal, I might have made my fortune by looking so like an honest man; but as I had the misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even the remotest ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... growths were in the soil; but the spring came slowly, and after the storms of Revolution were spent, a chill was in the air. Measureless hopes, and what had come of them? infinite desire, and so poor an attainment! A disciple of Rousseau, who shared in his sentiment without his optimistic faith, and who, like Rousseau, felt the beauty of external nature without Rousseau's sense of its joy, Etienne Pivert de SENANCOURT published in 1799 his Reveries, a book of disillusion, melancholy ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the "mouth of the coulee." She was a widow woman with a large family of stalwart boys and laughing girls. She was the visible incarnation of hospitality and optimistic poverty. With Western open-heartedness she fed every mouth that asked food of her, and worked herself to death as cheerfully as her girls danced in the neighborhood ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... was the first gun of the campaign, and summoned to the field various contending forces, armed with ridicule, argument, or an optimistic diplomacy, urging an immediate surrender of the ground claimed. Bills favoring the enfranchisement of women were discussed both in the Territorial Council Chamber and in the lower House of the legislature. The subject was taken up by the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... received a cut that made him blind. For ten years Echochee fed and clothed him, hunting alligators and watching her chance of slipping the skins to a market. By extreme stinting she finally saved enough to 'buy him loose'—her optimistic way of saying 'pay a lawyer for his defense.' Think, after being outcasts all that time, of leading a blind husband through half a hundred miles of wilderness, with the savings of ten years to wager on a chance of having ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the broad level of the soil, must have brought them back to rough ease and comfort, and the freedom of the natural healthful atmosphere which makes itself apparent in transcripts of life so little likely to be forced or optimistic. In all times and circumstances there can be little doubt that the amount of simple enjoyment to be got out of life, especially by the young, who form at least the half of every community, far exceeds the elements of wellbeing which outsiders see in it. And the protection of the Church, the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... us, and from the engineer's point of view, Edison and the simplest laborer, Smith or Jones, are basically the same; their powers or capacities are exponential, and, though differing in degree, are the same in kind. This may seem optimistic but all engineers are optimists. They deal only with fact and truth. If they make mistakes, if their bridges break down, then, no matter how clever their sophistry, they are adjudged criminal. Like severity must be made the rule and practice toward all those who ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... up formal laws for the development of thought. According to the law of contradiction and reconciliation, a Schopenhauer must have followed directly after Leibnitz, to oppose his pessimistic ethelism to the optimistic intellectualism of the latter; when, in turn, a Schleiermacher, to give an harmonic resolution of the antithesis into a concrete doctrine of feeling, would have made a fine third. But it turned out otherwise, and we must ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... in himself and in his mission to render available the energies of nature for the uses of humanity and civilization. His character was framed about the central idea of fidelity to this mission. He was dogmatic and optimistic as regards his own work; he had a contemptuous indifference to the work of others, and a disregard of the help which he might derive from a closer study of such work. He trained himself, body, mind, and affections, solely with reference to his mission, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... with the young lies fulfilment. Such epochs are ever pressing with the question, how is the future to be shaped? Our answer depends on the theory of human disposition, and in these epochs the theory is always optimistic. Rousseau was saved, as so many thousands of men have been alike in conduct and speculation, by inconsistency, and not shrinking from two mutually contradictory trains of thought. Society is corrupt, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the head of the Austrians to say, isn't it? We always expected victory; but even the most optimistic of us were surprised at what ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with relief that the name of James Bansemer was not mentioned. The reports from the bedside of the robber's victim were most optimistic. She was delirious from the effects of the shock, but no serious results were expected. The great headlines on the first page of the paper he was reading set his mind temporarily at rest. There was no ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... hard cheese, Wullie, but ye maun send her a cheerier-like caird next time. I'll stand ye an optimistic specimen afore ye leave ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... marshalled the legal and political forces during the period of Conquest) was now chairman of the Board, and he and the President successfully readjusted the heterogeneous mass of bonds and stocks, notes and prior liens, taking advantage of a period of optimistic feeling in the market to float a tremendous general mortgage. When this "Readjustment" had been successfully put through, the burden was some forty or fifty millions larger than before,—where those millions went is one of the mysteries to reward that future Carlyle!—but ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... through the long hall, making my bows to right and left. Father Letheby was chatting gayly with some very grand people, and pointing out his little improvements here and there. He was in his best optimistic humor, and was quite at his ease in the groups that surrounded him. It is curious how we differ. I did not feel at all comfortable, for I'd rather be talking over the cross-door to any old woman about her chickens, or settling the price of a bonham, or lecturing about the measles ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... his friends had ever suspected. The stage had lost an artist of no mean ability when Ezra Melville had taken to the cattle business. Outwardly, to the last, little lines about his lips and eyes, he was his genial, optimistic, droll old self. His eye twinkled, his face beamed in the gray stubble, his voice was rollicking with the fun of life the same as ever. And like Pagliacci in his masque there was not the slightest exterior sign of the fear and ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... thought, a union with God. And is this the time to revive, or seek to revive, when science is for ever pressing upon us the conclusion that soul is a function of matter—is this the time to revive discredited optimistic idealisms of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... put it down as three, with one transport ramming and sinking one U-boat. Two honest lads of one of our own forward gun crews say that our ship bumped over another. They felt the bump. Perhaps they did, but bluejackets at twenty years of age are apt to be optimistic, as witness: ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... Stories? Numbers of women took to it; not a few succeeded. It was a pursuit that demanded no apprenticeship, that could be followed in the privacy of home, a pursuit wherein her education would be of service. With imagination already fired by the optimistic author, she began to walk about the room and devise romantic incidents. A love story, of course—and why not one very like her own? The characters were ready to her hands. She would ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... in Africa. And there was a real old English sincerity in the vulgar chorus that "Britons never shall be slaves." We had no equality and hardly any justice; but freedom we were really fond of. And I think just now it is worth while to draw attention to the old optimistic prophecy that "Britons never ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... General Council.—Originally Dr. Walther and Dr. Sihler were optimistic with respect to the movements which resulted in the organization of the new general body. Walther wrote: "Scarcely any event within the bounds of the Lutheran Church of North America has ever afforded us greater joy ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... upper hand in them; this is the richest group in attractive power. If hope is the stronger factor there is a fund of energy which, allied with the power of charm and persuasion, with trustfulness in good, and optimistic outlook on the world, wins its way and succeeds in its undertakings, making its appeal to the will rather than to the mind. On the softer side of this type are found the disappointing people who ought to do well, and always fail, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... perceived that the optimistic conception of the deity as benign, merciful, infinitely forgiving, was very far indeed from covering the facts. So he insisted on seeing in human destiny the ever-present hand of a stern and terrible ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... take his principles seriously enough to apply them, and personal as well as social reform is at an end. Perhaps it may be permissible to say that of all forms of Determinism the most irrational is that optimistic form which deprecates discontent with things as they are ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... time she was optimistic enough to take a villa at Beaujon on a fifteen years' lease, and had it refurnished in sumptuous fashion on credit. The first two instalments of the rent were met. When, however, the landlord called to collect the third ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... presiding genius of Stresa being San Carlo Borromeo, whose thirst for the blood of heretics gained for him the title of Saint. A great bronze statue at Arona now proclaims his zeal for the Church. Miss Cassandra, who has an optimistic faith in a spark of the divine in the most world-hardened saint or sinner, reminds me of Carlo Borromeo's heroic devotion to the sufferers from famine and the plague at Milan in 1570 and 1576. So, with ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... sadly satisfying than to live alone with regretful memories and to have the privilege of regarding the world as a vain show. Unfortunately, however, Paloma was too healthy and too practical to remain long occupied with such thoughts. She was disgustingly optimistic and merry; misanthropy was entirely lacking in her make-up; and none of her admirers seemed the least bit inclined to faithlessness. On the contrary, the men she knew were perfect nuisances in their earnestness of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the optimistic Rowley, "water's the main thing after all. If we happen to strike river gold, thar's the stream for washing it; if we happen to drop into quartz—and that thar rock looks mighty likely—thar ain't a more natural-born site for a mill than that right bank, with water enough ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Australia may prove true. In that case the poorest will be able to earn "three square meals a day," like the Australians themselves; and while English butchers suffer (for some one must suffer in all great revolutions), smiling Plenty will walk through our land studying a cookery-book. There are optimistic thinkers, who gravely argue that the serious desires of humanity are the pledges of their own future fulfilment. If that be correct, the Australian myth may be founded on fact. There is no desire more deep-rooted in our perishable nature than that which asks for ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and free will, and will be noticed presently. It is commonly regarded as the principal difficulty which Theists and Pantheists are condemned continually to encounter without ever being able to explain—the rock, so to say, upon which their optimistic systems strike, and are shattered to pieces—unless protected by the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... words in Scripture—which are not to be ruled out of it by any easy-going, optimistic, rose-water system of a mutilated Christianity—there are awful words in Scripture, concerning what you and I must come to if we live and die in our sins, and there would be no message of forgiveness worth the proclaiming to men, if it had nothing to say about the removal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... know, some optimistic persons who believe, or affect to believe, that Christianity is in due course destined to replace the ancient faiths in Japan. They point to what was effected by St. Francis Xavier in the sixteenth century, and they imagine ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Godmother was equally optimistic. From the sofa of the morning-room, where she sat knitting, she said: "Well, YOU'VE had a fine morning's gadding about I must say! How are you? And ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... myself, I was nine days younger than Stella, and so I was at this time very old—much older than it is ever permitted anyone to be afterward. I cherished the most optimistic ideas as to my impendent moustache, and was wont in privacy to encourage it with the manicure-scissors. I still entertained the belief that girls were upon the whole superfluous nuisances, but was beginning to perceive the expediency of concealing this opinion, even in ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... with a good-nature decidedly optimistic, as could be seen, when the fiacre finally drew up at the given address. It was that of a very modest restaurant decorated with this signboard: 'Trattoria al Marzocco.' And the 'Marzocco', the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... will react on the pupil by affecting the teacher's spirit and energy. Reference is made by Hall-Quest[20] to an experiment, whose author is not named, in which 829 pupils stated that their "most helpful teachers were pleasant, cheerful, optimistic, enthusiastic, and young." If such be true then the very large size of classes will tend ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... methodically arranging them in a method that refuses to be concealed, advances in a rectilineal order, step by step, and with a measured gait, to a solid truth which he did not wish to be either evasive or complex. Highly pessimistic and a little affecting to be so, just as Renan was optimistic and much affected being so, he believed in the evil origin of man and of the necessity for him to be drastically curbed if he is to remain inoffensive. He has written a history of the Revolution wherein he has refused admiration and respect for the crimes then committed, which is why posterity ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... He had become what the ineffective call a pessimist. He had learned the primer lesson of large success—that one must build upon the hard, pessimistic facts of human nature's instability and fate's fondness for mischief, not upon the optimistic clouds of belief that everybody is good and faithful and friendly disposed and everything will "come out all right somehow." The instant Madelene suggested Whitney as the cause, Arthur's judgment echoed ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... looked into the hungry distorted faces of five hundred men clamouring for a position as dishwasher in a cheap restaurant, he was ready to pronounce all claims to social advancement in America a figment in the brains of optimistic fools. A tall awkward man walking up State Street threw a stone through the window of a store. A policeman hustled him through the crowd. "You'll get a workhouse sentence for ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... is self-reliant, positive, optimistic, and undertakes his work with the assurance of success, magnetizes conditions. He draws to himself the literal fulfilment of the promise, "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and later of the British Empire, constitutes a tale so amazing that he who has the welfare of the nation as a whole at heart—that is to say, the true patriot—is justified in entertaining the most optimistic thoughts for the future. He should not be indifferent to the past: he should bear it in mind all the time. Patriotism may not often be otherwise than misguided if no study of history has been made. The patriot of one nation will wish ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... thought he groaned aloud. When he contemplated a lifetime at Flack's, a lifetime of bee-dodging and carpet-beating and water-lugging, and reflected that, but for a few innocent words—words spoken, mark you, in a pure spirit of kindliness and brotherly love with the object of putting a bit of optimistic pep into sister!—he might have been in a position to touch a millionaire brother-in-law for the needful whenever he felt disposed, the iron entered into Nutty's soul. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Paragot. At last he laid the book aside, and gathering together hat, gloves, and umbrella, the precious appanages of his new estate, he announced his intention of taking the air before dinner. I remained indoors to gossip with Blanquette during its preparation. I had considerable doubts as to her optimistic view of things, and these were confirmed as soon as the outer door closed behind my master, and the salon door opened to ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... an ill- conducted sick-room; and you will be so good as to nurse me on the hypothesis that I shall get well." He told her which of his fellow- physicians to send for, and gave her a multitude of minute directions; it was quite on the optimistic hypothesis that she nursed him. But he had never been wrong in his life, and he was not wrong now. He was touching his seventieth year, and though he had a very well-tempered constitution, his hold upon life had lost its firmness. He died after three weeks' illness, during which Mrs. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... Salisbury in Saturday's game with Bellville. It has leaked out that our rivals will come over strengthened by a 'ringer,' no less than Yale's star pitcher, Wayne. We saw him shut Princeton out in June, in the last game of the college year, and we are not optimistic in our predictions as to what Salisbury can do with him. This appears a rather unfair procedure for Bellville to resort to. Why couldn't they come over with their regular team? They have won a game, and so have we; both games were close ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... is very important to have brought out this optimistic view on the question of depredations on road-side fruit trees. I think it is only a question of time, as Mr. Olcott says, when the public will be educated to respect such products. If they have done it in other countries we can do it in this country. It is a question of the people ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the comfortable bed he had left at Mrs. Clunie's and on the advisability of turning back, or he might have been figuring how much they were going to make on the next year's fruit crop. As he did not turn back, his thoughts, despite his monosyllables, were evidently bravely optimistic. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... principal; and whatever measure of apparent prosperity they have had has been taken from their capital stock. The boastful statement sometimes made, that the American landowner has become a scientific farmer, is as erroneous as it is optimistic. Such statements are based upon a few selected examples or rare illustrations, and not upon any adequate knowledge of general farm practice. Even to this date almost every effort put forth by the mass of ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... midnight dreary, while I pondered, tired but cheery, Over many an optimistic record of War Office lore; Whilst I worked, assorting, mapping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone rudely rapping, rapping at my Office-door. "Some late messenger," I muttered, "tapping at my Office-door— Only this, but ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... maid, went to open the door. Genevieve adjusted the down-sweeping, golden-brown tress over her right eye, brushed an invisible speck from the piano, straightened a rose in a vase, and after these traditionally bridal preparations, waited with a bride's optimistic smile the advent of a caller. But it was Marie who appeared at the door, with a stricken ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... better, that we are easily fooled into supposing that some slight easement of external circumstance will at once release the progressive forces of mankind and save the race. When, for example, one compares the immense amount of optimistic expectancy about a warless world with the small amount of radical thinking as to what really is the matter with us, he may well be amazed at the unfounded regnancy of the idea of progress. We rejoice over some slight disarmament as though that were ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... been spent months before; indeed, it had been only through the courtesy of the storekeeper at Plainville, who was also postmaster, and who had stretched the law to the point of accepting hen eggs as legal tender in exchange for postage stamps, that Mary Harris had been able to keep up the brave, optimistic series of letters written "home." So Harris decided that he would at once market some of his wheat. Most of the oats would be needed for his horses and for seed, and what remained would command good prices from new settlers ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... to keep up the lightness, the geniality, the friendly badinage of successful and accepted things, the sunny disregard of the grim and unamiable aspects of existence, that were the essential merits of that Optimistic Period of our literature in which Mr. Brumley had begun his career. With every justification in the world Mr. Brumley had set out to be an optimist, even in the Granta his work had been distinguished by its gay yet steadfast ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... an optimistic creed based on an intuition of the essential kinship of all things, it is profitable to study the poetry of a Sufi mystic of the thirteenth century. How delicate the thought ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... paying the keenest attention to his daily duties. In his office he is immersed in affairs which require the exercise of vigilant common-sense, and knowledge of life and literature. At his home he is a serene and optimistic philosopher, contemplating the forces that make for our civilization, and musing over the deep problems of man's occupation of this earth. In 1893 appeared anonymously a volume entitled 'God in His World,' which attracted instantly wide attention in this country and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... calling again. He drops in with great frequency, hoping to catch me IN DELICTU. How I do not like that man! He is a pink, fat, puffy old thing, with a pink, fat, puffy soul. I was in a very cheery, optimistic frame of mind before his arrival, but now I shall do nothing but grumble for the ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... reasonable, they may be entirely falsified by the event. Moreover, business men may not calculate reasonably on the information which they have. But, unless we suppose their judgment to be subject to a prevailing bias in one direction, i.e. to be unduly optimistic as a general rule, we should expect, and in any case they must expect, profits above the ordinary in ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... His Optimistic Philosophy.—It has been seen that the Victorian age, as presented by Matthew Arnold, was a period of doubt and negation. Browning, however, was not overcome by this wave of doubt. Although he recognized fully the difficulties of religious faith in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... with her eyes fixed steadily on his own. As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell his message. But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer grounds for any optimistic foresights. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... did not fulfil the country practitioner's optimistic prophecy. The change in her condition, as day after day crept by, growing longer and colder, was almost imperceptible; but it was steadily for the worse. The mountain winter closed in with unusual rigors, and Smiles' cabin continued to be a hospital where she passed her hours ministering ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... so but I have given the thought exactly, a thought, as you see, full of affection and with a very faint perfume of poetry about it. You will not accuse me, therefore, of being too optimistic when I affirm that the Sakai, in spite of his semblance to a wild man of the bush, savage, suspicious and superstitious as he is, is susceptible of rapid intellectual progress whenever the right means are used in his ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... exclaimed joyfully and pressed him to be more explicit, his look changed to one of admonition, and he held a finger to his lips. "Not a word to a living soul, whoever it may be," he cautioned her, "and be careful not to show any hope you may be so optimistic as to feel," he added, smiling, "or you may ruin the whole thing. This is a very dark and dangerous affair, and the less it is spoken about, even between ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce |
