"Gaiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gaiety seemed momentarily dashed. "Very true," he said, "I had not thought of that. But then," he added more brightly, "who can tell if it will actually fall to my lot to tell her. Things happen so strangely. It may turn out that that ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... regularly, but he did not evince that gaiety and good-humour which render men's company agreeable in clubs. On arriving, he would order the boy to "tell him when that scoundrel Eglantine came;" and, hanging up his hat on a peg, would scowl round the room, and tuck up his sleeves very high, and stretch, and shake his fingers and wrists, as ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some brief space of time. A servant was arranging plates in front of them, their glasses were refilled, the music of a waltz stole in through the open door. Around them many other people were sitting. An atmosphere of gaiety began gradually to develop. Maraton watched his companion closely. Her eyes were full of trouble, her sensitive mouth quivering a little. There was a straight line across her forehead. Her fair hair was arranged in great coils, without a single ornament. She wore no ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... drunken women laughed, and rose petals fell on Lazarus' blue hands. But then the Epicurean looked into Lazarus' eyes, and his gaiety ended forever. Drunkard remained he for the rest of his life; never did he drink, yet forever was he drunk. But instead of the gay reverie which wine brings with it, frightful dreams began to haunt him, the sole food of his stricken spirit. Day and night he lived ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Dom Chavis forgathered with M. Cazotte, a litterateur of the category "light," an ingenieux ecrivain, distinguished for "gaiety, delicacy, wit and Attic elegance," and favorably known for (inter alia) his poem "Olivier," his "Diable Amoureux," "The Lord Impromptu," and a travesty of The Nights called "The Thousand and One Fopperies." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... nothing, but her cheeks burned with two red spots. She chatted eagerly, too eagerly, trying to throw into the expedition the air of a holiday excursion. Bob responded to her rather feverish gaiety, but Ware looked at her with an eye in which comprehension was slowly dawning. He had nothing to add to the rapid-fire conversation. Finally Amy inquired with mock ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... were a great many people abroad in that cool hour. Seeing so many people made me notice their looks the more; and I must say, my taste, cultivated in the sombre greyness, or rather brownness, of the nineteenth century, was rather apt to condemn the gaiety and brightness of the raiment; and I even ventured to say as much to Clara. She seemed rather surprised, and even slightly indignant, and said: "Well, well, what's the matter? They are not about any dirty work; they are only amusing themselves in the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... photographs. Of some of these the plaster between the carved beams had been shot away, the roofs blown off, and the tiny hewn rafters were bared to the sky. The place was empty in the gathering gloom of the twilight. The gaiety and warmth of the hut erected in the Public Gardens which houses the British Officers' ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... neighbour was now perfectly happy. He had got a lodger at last, of just his own way of thinking—a serious, well-disposed man, who abhorred gaiety, and loved retirement. He took down the bill with a light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet Sundays, on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... classes. The blacks are glad of a little handful of maize, and live in the greatest discomfort. They have not a strip to cover them; but you do not see them grunting and groaning all day long, as you see scores and scores in England, with their wretched dinner-parties, and attempts at gaiety, where all is hollow ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... that the mind keeps beneath the windows of others is queer enough. Now distracted by brown panelling; now by a fern in a pot; here improvising a few phrases to dance with the barrel-organ; again snatching a detached gaiety from a drunken man; then altogether absorbed by words the poor shout across the street at each other (so outright, so lusty)—yet all the while having for centre, for magnet, a young ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... see, in letting off your witticism at a Scotchman, you would have to explain that it was a joke. You might also hint that it was "hard lines" for the Railway Companies concerned; but this will provoke gloom rather than gaiety amongst those who have invested in Caledonians and North British. If you talk about the riots in connection with the movement, you might say that the pugnacious rioters remind you of safety matches, "for they not only strike, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers) came to her maturity depressed, and, as it were, defaced; no blood of life in her, no grasp or gaiety; pious, anxious, tender, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vigorous, industrious and hardy, both in constitution and habits. The girls were turned of twelve. It is not with Mathilde that our story is connected, but with the two lads and Catharine. With the gaiety and naivete of the Frenchwoman, Catharine possessed, when occasion called it into action, a thoughtful and well-regulated mind, abilities which would well have repaid the care of mental cultivation; but of book-learning she knew nothing beyond a little ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... are troops of Alpines manoeuvring ... a company from Noirmont.... Listen ... listen.... What gaiety!... What swagger!... I tell you, close to the frontier like this, it takes ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... with his audience he might have infinitely more esteemed his own original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical declamation. He might have thought, that with inferior literature he displayed superior genius, and with less profundity more gaiety. He might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his pleasing compositions were preferable to that art, that habitual pomp, and that ostentatious eloquence, which prevail in the operose labours of Johnson. No one might ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... looking at him sadly as if trying to read his innermost thoughts. They seemed to have realised for the first time that his gaiety was forced. His spirits this afternoon were unusually high; and it made the reality stand out in greater contrast. Pinac felt that he might resent any reference to his financial condition, so he ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Greek. There is more truth in this; indeed, there is real truth in it. Few of the old Christian cathedrals would have passed the Censor of Plays. We talk of the inimitable grandeur of the old cathedrals; but indeed it is rather their gaiety that we do not dare to imitate. We should be rather surprised if a chorister suddenly began singing "Bill Bailey" in church. Yet that would be only doing in music what the mediaevals did in sculpture. They put into a Miserere seat the very scenes ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... of them.—Let me know when I may expect you, that I may tell you when I go and when return. I have not yet been to Lanes. Davies has been here, and has invited me to Cambridge for a week in October, so that, peradventure, we may encounter glass to glass. His gaiety (death cannot mar it) has done me service; but, after all, ours was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... made, in the fulness of time, advances towards a complete reconciliation; and when their apparent sincerity had prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, in this palace, certain families, whole families, whom he sought to exterminate. The utmost gaiety animated the repast; but the measures of the legate were well taken. When the dessert was on the board, a Swiss presented himself, with the announcement that a strange ambassador solicited an extraordinary audience. The legate, excusing himself, for the moment, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... would rather lie in the dust of her lord's chariot than be the ecstasy of lesser man. Beth Truba's face was upturned to the light—to the last pallor of day. She was like a wraith singing and communing with the tuneful tragedies of women world-wide. But there was gaiety in her heart.... Then the knocker, the scurrying of dreams away, and the voice of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his gaiety, I too began laughing at the thought that in a minute I should be drenched to the skin and might be ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Margaret, with more gaiety of tone than was usual with her, "are you admiring your ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... regretted her easy abandonment of him; Claud never talked when he was eating—the business was too serious, and Manton was there. But while her husband smoked over his coffee, serene and charming, she sat alone with him, revelling in his wit and gaiety, telling herself that he was indeed the splendid fellow she ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... carried off with acclamations, and where 'the Doctor'—a medical gentleman of two, who took his degree on the night when he was found at an apothecary's door—did the honours of the establishment with great urbanity and gaiety. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Staffordshire seemed the wrong place for such a man. Both he and his money would have been far safer in Change Alley. If her explanation was acute and probable, her manner of making it had convinced me that my explanation of her gaiety was wrong. Of him she certainly had not been thinking. Then there was only one thing left to account for it. What makes a maid as merry as a grig? Didn't our Kate sing all morning when Jack was coming ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... they are here displayed, as being employed to ends so unhuman, that in the effect, they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other—more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... gathering of the soul together within itself) of the rue Boissy d'Anglais is the very happiest delusion wherewith Judith has hitherto deluded herself. I am glad, exceedingly glad. Her temperament—I have got reconciled to her affliction—craves the gaiety ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... tell a story," she said, with a gaiety thrown out for rousing him, "a very fine story;—every one must listen." He looked over at her and smiled at that, listening ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Smollett proceeded along the coast to Lerici. There, being tired of the sea, the party disembarked, and proceeded by chaise from Sarzano to Cercio in Modenese territory, and so into Tuscany, then under the suzerainty of Austria. His description of Pisa is of an almost sunny gaiety and good humour. Italy, through this portal, was capable of casting a spell even upon a traveller so case-hardened as Smollett. The very churches at Pisa are "tolerably ornamented." The Campo Santo and Tower ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... him the glory of September in Vienna, a city second only to Paris in fashion and gaiety; Vienna, with its inimitable bands, its incomparable gardens, its military maneuvers, its salons, its charming women; and all for a fool's errand. His Excellency was to blame. He had casually dropped the remark that the duchy's minister, Baron von Rumpf, had been ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... she wished to prevent the sight of them from reviving the remembrance of what she had done. She then plunged into the river, and after having washed her whole body, returned to the tents with the same gaiety and cheerfulness as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... accompanied him and his friend Mr. Thomas Thomson from Edinburgh to Queensferry in attendance upon Lord Kinedder's funeral. Yet that was one of the noisiest days of the royal festival, and he had to plunge into some scene of high gaiety the moment after we returned. As we halted in Castle Street, Mr. Crabbe's mild, thoughtful face appeared at the window, and Scott said, on leaving me, 'Now for what our old friend there puts down as the crowning curse of his ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... already pointed out his affinity to Blake, but with Burns also he may be said to have a spiritual kinship, and in the songs of the Northumbrian miner we meet with something of the Ayrshire peasant's wild gaiety and mad humour. He gives himself up freely to his impressions, and there is a fine, careless rapture in his laughter. The whole book deserves to be read, and much of it deserves to be loved. Mr. Skipsey can find music for every mood, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... complicated matters by premature anger. Luckily for all things, his faith in Brace's good sense was strong enough to deter him from so rash and headlong a course; therefore, at home and abroad, he assumed a gaiety he did not feel. So here in the episcopalian palace of Beorminster were three people, each one masking his real feelings in intercourse with the others. The bishop, his son and his scheming chaplain were actors in a comedy of life which—in the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the acquaintance of many lords and ladies for whom he cared but little except when they chose to talk of their girlish ruler. The atmosphere of the castle was laden with a depression that could not be overcome by an assimilated gaiety. There was the presence of a shadow that grew darker and nearer as the days went by, and there were anxious hearts under the brave, proud spirits of those who held the destiny of Graustark ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... plain proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a thing laughter is: not to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes, and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions. Laughter is easily restrained, by a very little reflection; but as it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety, people do not enough attend to its absurdity. I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; but I am sure that, since I have had the full use of my reason, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave, with a boyish exuberance of gaiety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed, when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... for ever command your esteem and friendship; but in marriage it is equally necessary to keep love alive: her beauty, her gaiety, her delicacy, will do much; but it is also necessary, my dearest Temple, that you keep a guard on your heart, accustomed to liberty, to give way to ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... the eventful year of 1914, perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, for the truth may never be known, the review had a different aspect. There was no gaiety. The number of ships assembled this time was greater than ever before—216 actual fighting ships passed slowly before the royal yacht—there were no flags, no bunting, no holiday crowds, no smart dress for officers and men. Instead, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... friendship, goodness, virtue, gratitude. It is a long odds that the men who do not believe in these virtues have none themselves; for we speak from our hearts, and we tell of others that which we think of ourselves. The French, a mournful, sad, and unhappy nation—even at the bottom of all their external gaiety—have a sad word, a participle, desillusionne, disillusioned; and by it they mean one who has worn out all his youthful ideas, who has been behind the scenes, and has seen the bare walls of the theater, without the light and paint, and has watched the ugly actors ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... both day and evening, was fully occupied. The Masons' was a large household, and there seemed to be always company. It was almost like living in a hotel, only above and over all the freedom and gaiety of the life there, was the impression that it was a real home, and that the Mason family lived a very intimate existence, ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... face had something of the Dutch burgomaster in the placidity of its complexion and its flesh tones, and of the Breton peasant in the straight black hair and the vivacity of the brown eyes, which preserved, nevertheless, a priestly decorum. His gaiety, that of a man whose conscience was calm and pure, admitted a joke. His manner had nothing uneasy or dogged about it, like that of many poor rectors whose existence or whose power is contested by their parishioners, and who instead of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... are imaged here. For I have only the medium of words to work in, only words, words that are flung about in the street and often in the mud, only words with which to mould all my images of the Beauty and Gaiety ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... so he lingers, and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed, ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise; dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety, hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed, the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates. Have you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that is left of his departed distinction—the "privilege of the floor"; and works it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... old social elegance of Williamsburg, Annapolis, and Richmond. Not to be seen in the dress that Mrs. Falconer, dreaming of her own past, had deftly made—not to have her beauty reign absolute in that scene of lights and dance and music—it was the long, slow crucifixion of all the impulses of her gaiety ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... territory, and delivered him into the hands of a band of soldiers prepared for his capture. The poet was conducted to the Isle of Ste. Marguerite, and confined in a dungeon. The governor of the castle was enchanted by his talents and gaiety, and gave him great liberty. But Le Grange's pen was still restless. He must needs make a bitter epigram upon his kind benefactor, which so aroused the governor's ire that the poet was sent back to his dungeon cell. A piteous ode addressed to ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... with fighting boys from the Salient, who had come in for a couple of hours to eat, drink, play the piano and sing, forgetting their misery and (p. 032) discomfort for the moment. It was enormously interesting to watch and study what happened in that room. One saw gaiety, misery, fear, thoughtfulness and unthoughtfulness all mixed up like a kaleidoscope. It was a well-run, romantic little hotel, built round a small courtyard, which was always noisy with the tramp of cavalry horses and ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... I confess my chief endeavours are to delight the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for low comedy, small accidents, and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy: I want that gaiety of humour which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved: In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees. So that those, who decry ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... himself, the deep resigned sigh of a general comprehension. He knew what he was "in" for, he heard her go on—she said it again and again, seemed constantly to be saying it while she smiled at him with her peculiar fine charm, her positive gaiety of sensibility, scarce dimmed: "I'm just selfishly glad, just selfishly glad!" Well, she was going to have reason to be; she was going to put the whole case to him, all her troubles and plans, and each act of the tragi-comedy of her recent existence, as ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Isabella by her side, wearing, by the queen's desire, for Richard's special gratification, the same dress in which she had made her first appearance at court. Isabella's parents were filled with admiration and astonishment at such a display of grandeur and gaiety combined. They looked at Isabella, but did not recognise her, though their hearts, prophetic of the happiness so near at hand, began to throb, not anxiously, but with an emotion of joy for which they ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a reprimand To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs On the breast of my coat; and one by one I let them float up the ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... house; and, of course, he was expected to assist. It would have suited his mood better if he could have been in his own room, or out in the streets, but absence would have been inconsistent with his disguise, and might have led to betrayal. Consequently he was present, and the gaiety of the company and the excitement of his favourite exercise, brought about for a time forgetfulness of his trouble. Amongst the performers was a distant cousin, Cecilia Morland, a young woman rather tall and fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... He felt instinctively that Valentine did not wish to be obliged to answer it. Oddly enough, during the short silence which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had certainly never felt with Valentine before. His gaiety seemed dropping from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor. The rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing half furtively at ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... night of miracle and wonder. Withdrawn far aloft into fairy altitudes, the stars danced with a gaiety which was more tremendous and solemn than any repose. The night was wrought out of a profusion of delicate fires. The grass, trees, and fields glowed with the dusky colours of rich pottery. Everywhere silence; everywhere the exultant breathing ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Spain. But in Castile I saw the heart and citadel of my native country. My father was Andaluz; my mother Castiliana, and she used to say that in my nature were united the qualities of the two provinces—Castilian pride and stubbornness; the gaiety and recklessness of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them 'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart, than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything but sport and revelry, there is nothing ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... servant, an excellent pagazi, with an irreproachable temper. He it was who at all times, on the march, started the wildly exuberant song of the Wanyamwezi porters, which, no matter how hot the sun, or how long the march, was sure to produce gaiety and animation among the people. At such times all hands sang, sang with voices that could be heard miles away, which made the great forests ring with the sounds, which startled every animal big or little, for miles around. On approaching a village the temper of whose people might be ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... November, a cab stopped at Number Nineteen. It was a railway cab, less worn and ghastly than those vehicles in general, but not bringing much evidence of gaiety or wealth for all that. Its inmates were a widow and a boy of about fifteen; and all the possessions they had with them were contained in one trunk of very moderate dimensions, a cage with a canary bird twittering inside, some pots of flowers, and a little white ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... he was full of life, and even of gaiety. He went one of these afternoons, at his own suggestion, to a cinema show with one of the priests, but though he enjoyed it, and even laughed heartily, he said later that it ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and irresponsible mood seized upon Clematis; he laid his nose upon the ground, deliberating a bit of gaiety, and then, with a little rush, set a large, rude paw upon the sensitive face of Flopit and capsized him. Flopit uttered a bitter complaint ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... the royal Palace of Holyrood a great masked ball was being held, for the King, James VI., and his young wife, Anne of Denmark, had been keeping Christmas there, and the old walls rang with gaiety such as had not been since the ill-fated days of ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... member of society, and tho a thorn in the side of princes and rulers, the coureur de bois had his uses, at least from an artistic point of view; and his strange figure, sometimes brutally savage, but oftener marked with the lines of a daredevil courage, and a reckless, thoughtless gaiety, will always be joined to the memories of that grand world of woods which the nineteenth century is fast civilizing out of existence. At least, he is picturesque, and with his redskin companion serves to animate forest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... derivation of this word is obscure, but in the sense of mirth it may be derived from uaim-mir, i. e. loud mirth, gaiety. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... clambered on, finding room as best they could among the cans, from which dripped bloody bandages, ashes, and bits of decaying food, and the truck rumbled off towards the incinerator, through the streets of Paris that sparkled with the gaiety of early morning. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... him at Oxford wrote of him as follows: "His perfect self-possession, the sallies of his ready wit, the humorous turn which he could give to any subject that he handled, his gaiety, audacity, and unfailing command of words, made him one of the most popular and successful undergraduates that Oxford ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet, Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever- lastingness of, O it is an all youth! Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace, Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace— Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath, And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... confidence, of absolute security, against violations and sacrilege. Now two other sisters, who are very old, set a small table, put two covers, bring to Arrochkoa and to his friend a little supper, a loaf of bread, cheese, cake, grapes from the arbor. In arranging these things they have a youthful gaiety, a babble almost childish—and all this is strangely opposed to the ardent violence which is here, hushed, thrown back into the depth of minds, as under the blows of some mace covered ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... since. They formed the basis of population of Louisiana a few years since, but are relatively diminishing before the emigration from other states of the Union. Their descendants show many of the peculiar and distinctive traits of that people in all countries. They possess mild vivacity, and gaiety, and are distinguished for their quiet, inoffensive, domestic, frugal, and unenterprising spirit and manners. The poorer class of French are rather peculiar and unique. Their ancestors were isolated from the rest of the world, had no object of excitement ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... were joined by Ella Stanfield; and a great constraint fell upon all three. Ella was a comparative stranger; a nice-looking child, thoughtful and old beyond her years. She looked like gravity; Nora liked gaiety; while Daisy was most like the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... which underlies all things is not sufficient. It has occurred to me, brother, that wisdom may not be the end of everything. Goodness and kindliness are, perhaps, beyond wisdom. Is it not possible that the ultimate end is gaiety and music and a dance of joy? Wisdom is the oldest of all things. Wisdom is all head and no heart. Behold, brother, you are being crushed under the weight of your head. You are dying of old age while you ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... often, when I am walking on the Boulevards, it occurs to me, that they alone understand the full import of the term leisure; and they trifle their time away with such an air of contentment, I know not how to wish them wiser at the expence of their gaiety. They play before me like motes in a sunbeam, enjoying the passing ray; whilst an English head, searching for more solid happiness, loses, in the analysis of pleasure, the volatile sweets of the moment. Their ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... distressed—each fond retainer then Softened his voice to whispers—each pale face Did but reflect the sadness fixed in his: Save where the two—two fair and lovely ones, Too young for guilt or sorrow, or to know Such words as wordlings know them—save where they, Pranking in childhood's headlong gaiety, Sent the loud shout—like laughter through the tomb— And mocked his anguish, with their joyousness. Oh, that in sleep, some cry of joy or pain From forth those lips had bursten piercingly, When that sad Man his daring hand had lain, Maddened with hours of musing, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... began the practice of law in Washington, hoping thus to support himself and them. He had succeeded after a fashion, and for the first time the future seemed not absolutely dark. Mrs. Lee's house was an oasis to him, and he found himself, to his surprise, almost gay in her company. The gaiety was of a very quiet kind, and Sybil, while friendly with him, averred that he was certainly dull; but this dulness had a fascination for Madeleine, who, having tasted many more kinds of the wine of life than Sybil, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... catered for; whatever accidental benefit be derivable from homophones, we shall always command it fully and in excess; look again at the portentous list of them! And since the essential jocularity of a pun (at least when it makes me laugh) lies in a humorous incongruity, its farcical gaiety may be heightened by a queer pronunciation. I cannot pretend to judge a sophisticated taste; but, to give an example, if, as I should urge, the o of the word petrol should be preserved, as it is ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... may have been the sign of nobility of character. They possessed all the eminent little marks of a careful education, to which they added a wonderful dexterity in bodily exercises. Their only dissimilarity was in the region of ideas. The youngest charmed others by his gaiety, the eldest by his melancholy; but the contrast, which was purely spiritual, was not at ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... them look forward with pleasant anticipation to the comforts which awaited them at their hospitable entertainer's. It was the sort of afternoon that might induce a couple of elderly gentlemen, in a lonely field, to take off their greatcoats and play at leap-frog in pure lightness of heart and gaiety; and we firmly believe that had Mr. Tupman at that moment proffered 'a back,' Mr. Pickwick would have accepted his offer with the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... actions is answerable to God alone. The famous saying, "I am the State," [6] though not uttered by Louis, accurately expressed his conviction that in him was embodied the power and greatness of France. Few monarchs have tried harder to justify their despotic rule. He was fond of gaiety and sport, but he never permitted himself to be turned away from the punctual discharge of his royal duties. Until the close of his reign—the longest in the annals of Europe—Louis devoted from five to nine hours a day to what he called the "trade ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... early period—before commerce and the missionaries had come among them—as given in the pages of Captain Cook, of Herman Melville, or even as adumbrated in their past life in the writings of R.L. Stevenson—what a picture of health and gaiety and beauty! Surely never was there a more charming and happy folk—even if long-pig did occasionally in ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... face with the greenish shades of Correggio's nudes. Staves of sunlight slanted down through the still pool, lighting it up with wonderful distinctness. Hundreds of thousands of minute living creatures sported and tumbled in its depth with every contortion that gaiety could suggest; perfectly happy, though consisting only of a head, or a tail, or at most a head and a tail, and all doomed to ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... middle height, of faultless symmetry of form; he was of almost unequalled agility and swiftness. His face was then round and full, and of a ruddy complexion, with bright blue eyes that beamed with gaiety, glee, and good-humour, the effect of the most exuberant animal spirits. His head was covered with a singular profusion of light-brown hair, which he was obliged to wear coiled up under his hat. On entering church on a Sunday (where he was all his life a regular attender) ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for a moment, lay a hint of future sadness, in which, in some strange way, he himself was to bear part. He stared after her figure until it disappeared; and long after the dainty presence of the young bride—trimly booted, tight-waisted, and neatly-gloved—had faded, with all its sunshine of gaiety and health, from out of his mental vision, he still saw those blue eyes and that cloud ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... walls. They were not altogether ordinary pots and pans. Uncle Ivory, as East Cyrus called him, was a collector in a modest way, and his bits of copper, brass and pewter were dear to his heart. Lonzo, the village "natural," found the gaiety of his life in polishing them, and receiving pay in sugar-plums. He was at work now in a dim corner, chuckling to himself as he scoured a ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... little given to gaiety and laughter, but sang the "Shuma Maritza" on the march. This is the song of big men in boots—big white men with set faces—making the thunder of a torrent as they charge. "Roaring Maritza" is the nearest that you can come to putting it into English. The Maritza is the national river, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of populous vivacity when it is traversed at random and without object, becomes inexpressibly wearisome when it is the thoroughfare of daily duty. My daily duty took me through a long stretch of Oxford Street, which is a street not altogether destitute of some real claim to gaiety and dignity. At first I was ready to concede this claim, and even to endorse it with enthusiasm; but from the day when I realised that Oxford Street conducted me, by a force of inevitable gravitation, to a desk in an office, I began to loathe it. ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... of the ruck of vehicles and came rolling on to the sward. The gentleman ensconced upon its back seat was for the saddle, and plainly glad of it. His careless, handsome face was radiant, his manner full of an easy, inoffensive confidence, his gaiety—to judge from his companions' laughter—infectious. His turn-out was simple, but faultless. Despite the fact that he was sitting between Lady Touchstone and Valerie, Anthony liked the look ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... continued, with forced gaiety a moment later, "I do not know your business, monsieur, but ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... that all Things be neat, and in Order at Home, that there be nothing discomposing, to make him go out of Doors; behave yourself easy and free to him, always remembring that Respect which is due from a Wife to a Husband. Let all Melancholy and ill-tim'd Gaiety be banished out of Doors; be not morose nor frolicksome. Let your Table be handsomely provided. You know your Husband's Palate, dress that which he likes best. Behave yourself courteously and affably to those of his Acquaintance he respects. Invite them frequently to Dinner; let all Things ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... mistake into a spare room that was occupied by a cavalry officer, a cousin of her mother's. Too tired to go a step farther, she fell asleep on a sofa in the darkened room. A little later she woke, and heard the sounds of music and dancing downstairs, but felt no inclination to join in the gaiety. Presently she dropped off again, and when she roused for the second time she was aware of whispers near her couch. In the first moment of awakening she felt ashamed of being caught there by some of the guests. She held her breath and lay very still. Then she recognized her ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... he was anything but a Bohemian. His inborn gaiety and high spirits, his humour and love of adventure, found from the first a balance in his love of science; and the rough experience of his early days intensified by contrast the spiritual serenity of united love. Lack of order, whether in mind or in ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... attending by the conditions prevailing without. The boxes were full, the floor was packed, the corridors were thronged with eager shining revellers, dancing and strolling and chattering to beat the band, which was flooding every corner of the enormous building with an air of gaiety so infectious that even the staid Jonah began to grumble that the dance would be over before the girls ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... was this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering in every heather-scented breeze—laughing at her from every little wave on Isla Water?—counselling her to this new and delicate audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very soul fluttering with a delicious laughter—an odd, perverse, illogical laughter, alternately tremulous ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Guildhall; again were they toasted and addressed; again were they handed in and led out, flirted with Cabinet ministers, and danced with ambassadors; and at two o'clock in the morning drove home from the scene of gaiety to the old residence in Budge Row. "Never in the world did pickled herrings or turpentine smell so powerfully as on that night when we re-entered the house.... The passage looked so narrow; the drawing-room ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... maintained a cheerful air, and the knowledge that he had been so instrumental in saving the party lightened his heart of a load, and disposed him even to gaiety, was not without some lingering remains of uneasiness. He remembered the boats of the Dane, and, as he thought it more than probable Captain Truck had fallen into the hands of the barbarians, he feared that the latter might yet find the means to lay hands ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... his host's gaiety, Arthur Lovell was ill at ease. Do what he would, he could not shake off the memory of the meeting between the father and daughter. Henry Dunbar's deadly pallor—that wild, scared look in his eyes, as they slowly reopened ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was en fete to-day. Natives were riding about in pairs, in the cleanest of bright cotton dresses and the freshest of leis and garlands. Our own men from the yacht contributed not a little to the gaiety of the scene. They were all on shore, and the greater part of them were galloping about on horseback, tumbling off, scrambling on again, laughing, flirting, joking, and enjoying themselves generally after a fashion ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... was, I fell under the spell, of your elegance, your cleanness, your well-designed streets, your nonchalant gaiety. I drank coffee at Tortoni's. I visited the studio of Meissonier. I stood in the crowd that collected round Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair," which was in the Salon that year. I grew dead sick of the endless galleries of the Louvre. I went to the Madeleine ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Mrs. Gibson; and, addressing the squire, she added, 'The visiting here is not all one could wish for so young a girl—no young people, no dances, nothing of gaiety; but it is wrong in you, Molly, to speak against such kind friends of your father's as I understand these Cockerells are. Don't give so bad an impression of yourself to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... support them." It was owing to his strong regard for his wife and uncle that he studiously disguised from them his own conviction as to the certainty of his end, and he prayed me to do the same. When they were near him he assumed an appearance of gaiety, and flattered them with hopes. I then went to call them. They came, wearing as composed an air as possible; and when we four were together, he addressed us, with an untroubled countenance, as follows: "Uncle and wife, rest assured ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... made upon the bartender, and the company indulged anew. Searle, although a little pale and nervous, was all life and gaiety. His coming was a fresh brand on the convivial flame, and the party, too much exhilarated to be content with pushing one vice to excess, sallied forth in search of whatever other the great city might afford. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... influenced by the probability or the improbability of your reading it. After all, one does read a certain proportion of what one buys. And further, instinct counts. The man who spends half a crown on Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets" instead of going into the Gaiety pit to see "The Spring Chicken," will probably be the sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets" years before he bestirs himself ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... fact," he said, "my face feels long enough to fit in a churn. Only I was under the impression that I'd put on a mask of gaiety that was absolutely impenetrable.... Well, what's happened in the ancestral ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... blithe as ever, on his travels. "London very naice," he says, as you buy that infernal Pestarena; "Porebier, very naise; 'Ampton Court, very naise; I know dem, hein? But, is no sunshine, no air, no gaiety." And ADOLF cannot exist without sunshine, air, and gaiety. Also he prefers being his own master, which, as Head-Waiter, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... exasperating effrontery—in a way that is great fun to the reader, but exquisite torture to the victim." At the same time, his wit was always governed by commonsense (its most prevailing distinction); and, though almost unique among humorists for his personal gaiety, "his best work was done in promoting practical ends, and his wit in its airiest gambols never escaped his control." There was, in fact, considerable independence—and even courage—in his seriously inspired attacks on various abuses, and on every ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and quickly, too, as if we had had the plague. I looked in vain for Hamilton. He was a friend in need. We were taken into the steward's office and the door was shut and locked. The band in the ball-room went galloping through a two-step, and the gaiety was in full swing again. The thief had been rounded up! How the deuce was it going ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... acquired in a boarding school. The Rev. Arthur Hill was also there, a little gentleman, whose side-whiskers and modest deportment betokened both refinement and sensibility. He was very cordial to the two ladies from the North, and strove to demonstrate the liberality of his cloth by a certain gaiety of manner that was by no means displeasing. He seemed to consider himself one of the links of sociability, as well as master of ceremonies; and he had a way of speaking for others that suggested considerable social tact and versatility. Thus, when there was a lull ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... of attire were merely a part of the rather attractive vanity of a clever youth, whose exuberance of spirits was, in spite of much bad health, at that time so great that he was often merry with a gaiety that was as child-like as it was amusing. In later life he gradually modified his ideas as to dress, and in the Vailima Letters he writes of himself in Samoa as going to Apia to social amusements in most ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... deserve that character more than any which was ever written: it is pleasantry throughout, pleasantry of the best sort, unforced, graceful, and engaging. Some French critic has justly observed, that, if any book were to be selected as affording the truest specimen of perfect French gaiety, the Memoirs of Grammont would be selected in preference to all others. This has a Frenchman said of the work of a foreigner: but that foreigner possessed much genius, had lived from his youth, not only in the best society of France, but with the most singular and agreeable ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a moment on the broad open flood-plain of the river, the winter fields and meadows stretching away in gentle slopes on either side. There are but few trees, but they have had room for full development and are noble specimens. All is gaiety. A blue-jay screams from a broad-topped white ash which is so full of winged seeds that it looks like a mass of foliage. The sable-robed king of the winter woods, the American crow, in the full vigor of his three-score years, maybe, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... and hearts not the less happy for the little anxious palpitations that arise now and then, and curiosity, and hope, and all the amiable feelings of youth and nature; and if among it a little elderly gaiety mingles, and excites a smile, I, for my part, rather reverence the youth of heart which lives through the cares and vexations of this life, and can mingle in, without disturbing, the hilarity ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham |
