"Sociable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came, his stern, dictatorial manner, together with the persistent coldness which resisted all attempts to be friendly and sociable, hurt and offended me; but he was so different when among the sick, so gentle, so benignant beside the bedsides of suffering men, that I soon learned to know and appreciate the royal heart which at other times he managed to conceal under a rough and ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... of all scoundrels]. I shall fine him L10,000, which is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserveth; I will not set him at liberty, no more than a plagued man or a mad dog, who though he cannot bite, yet will he foam; he is so far from being a sociable soul that he is not a rational soul; he is fit to live in dens with such beasts of prey as wolves and tygers like himself; therefore I do condemn him to perpetual Imprisonment, as those monsters that are no longer fit to live among men nor to see light." ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... hand to paper without having some information or theory to deliver, which he fancied was not generally known, and that this was worth looking after through all the encumbering rubbish. For the same reason, besides being naturally sociable, he liked to draw others into conversation, and to start subjects for discussion, from which, when fairly under way, he would withdraw himself into silence and allow the company to do the talking, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... things." She shrugged her massive shoulders in high bad humor. Arthmann gloomily reflected that Dennett's phrases at the Sammett Garden were being echoed. Mrs. Fridolin continually urged her driver to keep his carriage abreast of the other. It made the party more sociable, she declared, although to the sculptor it seemed as if she wished to watch Margaret closely. She had never seemed so ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no matter if it were in the full of the moon and they in the middle of a game of cards or yarning sociable on an upturned boat. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... lest my condition should be noticed—for so it was during these past six months which I spent in the country. Ordered by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as much as possible, he almost fell in with my present frame of mind, although many a time I was carried away by my sociable inclinations. But how humiliating was it, when some one standing close to me heard a distant flute, and I heard nothing, or a shepherd singing, and again I heard nothing. Such incidents almost drove me to despair; at times I was on the point ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... may seem, Hearne was off again in less than a fortnight on his third quest of the Coppermine. The time that he had spent in Matonabbee's company had given him a great opinion of the character of the chief; 'the most sociable, kind, and sensible Indian I have ever met'—so Hearne described him. The chief himself had offered to lead Hearne to the great river of the north. Governor Norton willingly furnished ammunition, supplies, and a few trading goods. The expedition ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... she was of me, to be sure! Being sociable myself, and loving to have my friends about me, we often used to assemble a company of as hearty fellows as you would wish to sit down with, and keep the nights up royally. "Never mind, my boys," I used to say. "Send the bottle round: mammy ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sometimes thought for himself, aspirations after excellence much higher than those of many others,—all these traits came out in his familiar talks, in which he rather unbent than exerted himself; at the same time he was as gentle and attentive a listener as a man could wish, a truly sociable being, with whom you could talk all day, and then all night, and never ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... it 's deuced perfect, it 's deuced simple; I do believe in him!" he said. "But I 'm glad I 'm not a genius. It makes," he added with a laugh, as he looked for Roderick to wave him good-by, and saw his back still turned, "it makes a more sociable studio." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... reason of her husband's wealth. It is Father's constant ambition and determination to spend as much of his time as possible amongst his old "roughneck" working-man pals, instead of in attending his wife's receptions and other society functions. A sociable companion of his own class is what he constantly seeks. In this picture there are, as is usual in the Sunday supplements, twelve scenes. The action of the picture may be roughly synopsized ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... he distinguished himself on military service; he has many sociable qualities, and he is well connected. It is ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... a sociable centre for the whole idle place. Any one who chose came into it in a friendly way, and lounged about, gossiping, and inspecting the works in progress. Women brought their babies, and sat about on the stones suckling them and talking to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... These were all great men; but they were greater still, who invented food, and raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization amongst us, and armed us against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments. For we have provided great entertainments for the ears, by inventing and modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learnt to survey the stars, not only those that are fixed, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... trust herself to speak she did not. Mr. Carlyle scanned her face attentively, as she sat, her spectacles bent downward. She did not appear inclined to be sociable, and he turned to the baby, who ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on rather a small allowance of that element. He was stout, thick-set, and perhaps fifty or sixty years old—a man whose hair was cut exceedingly close, who wore a large bushy beard, and whose eye had a sociable twinkle in it which was prepossessing. He was dressed, whenever I saw him, in a greenish-brown frock-coat made of some material which was not cloth, wore a waistcoat and trousers of light colour, and had a frill to his shirt—an ornament, by the way, which ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... a sort of sociable sorrowfulness, slowly sliding along the rail, "Pray, now, my young friend, what volume have you there? Give me leave," gently drawing it from him. "Tacitus!" Then opening it at random, read: "In general a black and shameful period lies before me." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... with an eye of humorous intelligence. "I guess Frank don't want to keep the young ladies waitin' a great while. There's a church sociable over 't the Huddle," he explained ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as well as small tea tables, to seat two, three or four, while there is always one oblong table at which a sociable crowd of young people may gather ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... Mirvan had borne so large a share in the disagreeable altercation, Lord Orville forbore to make any comments upon it; so that the subject was immediately dropt, and the conversation became calmly sociable, and politely cheerful, and, to every body but me, must have been highly agreeable:-but, as to myself, I was so eagerly desirous of making some apology to Lord Orville, for the impertinence of which he must have thought me guilty at the ridotto, and yet so ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Happiness back into them beautiful hants. And then agin, we'd float by an island where there would be lots of white tents, with wimmen and children and men and boys standin' out wavin' their handkerchiefs and shoutin' to us, good natered and sociable. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Sociable has been tried by many, and is practically a failure in so far as traveling quickly and easily is concerned. The Tandem, though it presents so objectionable an appearance, seems likely to become a favorite, for it surpasses any single tricycle, and rivals the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... in Heyst's character to turn morose; but his mental state was not compatible with a sociable mood. He spent his evenings sitting apart on the veranda of Schomberg's hotel. The lamentations of string instruments issued from the building in the hotel compound, the approaches to which were decorated with Japanese paper lanterns strung ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Melcombe accepted the invitation, and he was very sociable and pleasant; but she thought the governess (a very grand lady indeed) took upon herself more than beseemed her, and smiled at her very scornfully when she ventured to say sweet things to John Mortimer on her own great love for children, and ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over MY life, MY past, and MY friends alone that we could take anything like our ease—a state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited—with no visible connection—to repeat afresh Goody Gosling's celebrated mot or to confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... feelings were sufficiently disconsolate. But accustomed from his infancy to conceal his internal thoughts, he appeared in the course of a week the gayest and best bred passenger who ever dared the long and weary space betwixt Old England and her Indian possessions. At Madras, where the sociable feelings of the resident inhabitants give ready way to enthusiasm in behalf of any stranger of agreeable qualities, he experienced that warm hospitality which distinguishes the British character in ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... ends of the earth—off lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in 1754, describes the negroes as sociable, obliging, humane, and hospitable. "Their amiable simplicity," says he, "in this enchanting country, recalled to me the idea of the primitive race of man; I thought I saw the world in its infancy. They are distinguished by tenderness ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... finished there were rows of hooks to spare. Tiers of shelves yawned for hat-boxes which I possessed not. Bluebeard's wives could have held a family reunion in that closet and invited all of Solomon's spouses. Finally, in desperation, I gathered all my poor garments together and hung them in a sociable bunch on the hooks nearest the door. How I should have loved to have shown that closet to a select circle of New York ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... end of my scarf and hurry in. May a kind thought prompt us how to elude the wary Fairlie. Take care you don't seem sociable when she taps. It would be fatal if she should enter for a 'cozy little chat.' She has done it, ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... overlooked the main prison buildings, contained foreign glass windows draped with white curtains, was scrupulously clean for China, and had magnificent hanging scrolls on the whitewashed walls. Tea was soon brewed, and the governor, wishing to be polite and sociable, told me that he had been in Yuen-nan-fu for a few months only, and that he considered himself an extremely fortunate fellow to be in charge of such an excellent prison—one of the finest in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... palace of the Countess Da Forli. She was a widow with no children, except Claudia, the young daughter who had accompanied her to the fete the evening before. Caretto, and four or five relations of the family, were the only guests beside himself. It was a quiet and sociable meal, and served with less ceremony than usual, as the countess wished to place Gervaise as much as possible at his ease. During the meal but little was said about the affair with the pirates, Caretto telling them some of his ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... Ours is Jim Steedman's old regiment—you've all heard of old Chickamauga Jim, who slashed his division of 7,000 fresh men into the Rebel flank on the second day at Chickamauga, in a way that made Longstreet wish he'd staid on the Rappahannock, and never tried to get up any little sociable with the Westerners. If I do say it myself, I believe we've got as good a crowd of square, stand-up, trust 'em-every-minute-in-your-life boys, as ever thawed hard-tack and sowbelly. We got all the grunters and weak sisters fanned out the first ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... want anything to do me good," Merefleet returned. He had become almost genial under these unusual circumstances. It was certainly no easy matter to keep this exceedingly sociable young lady at ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... have sociables? Indians like to visit, and they do enjoy a good supper. With these two qualifications, what else is necessary for a sociable? Some women to do the work. The women of the Women's Native Missionary Society, of Yankton Agency, are not lazy, nor are they slow in devising ways and means of making money; therefore, on the evening of Feb. 22, ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... few spots in the world, perhaps, that unite so many inducements to the formation of those sociable little reunions which come under the denomination of pic-nics, as the small islands adorning most of the American rivers. Owing to the difficulty of procuring summer carriages, and in some decree to the rudeness of the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... very heartily partaken of, Mr Towlinson's suggestion is, in effect, that Cook is going, and that if we are not true to ourselves, nobody will be true to us. That they have lived in that house a long time, and exerted themselves very much to be sociable together. (At this, Cook says, with emotion, 'Hear, hear!' and Mrs Perch, who is there again, and full to the throat, sheds tears.) And that he thinks, at the present time, the feeling ought to be 'Go one, go all!' The housemaid is ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... grapes?" Hansie asked, handing the basket to one of them, who helped himself gratefully and then passed it on to his comrade. The latter, evidently not of a very sociable disposition, took a bunch and walked off in pursuit ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have called his own society was more of a stimulus than that of most other people. And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on the contrary, a very sociable animal. It must be admitted at the outset that he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict itself, as will probably be perceived in the course ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... young man, not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd, humorous gray eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as he looks round through his spectacles at the people about him. It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man who studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... doctor in divinity; she was plain, old, and cross; and of his father, a shoemaker by trade, working all day long and never addressing a word to anyone, not even during the meals. He only became a sociable being on holidays, on which occasions he would spend his time with his friends in some tavern, coming home at midnight as drunk as a lord and singing verses from Tasso. When in this blissful state the good man could not make up his mind to go to bed, and became violent if anyone ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... himself even, to go in search of a pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sources of this amiable cynicism. He must have a vague conviction that he can only lose by almost any change. Fortune has been kind to him: he lives in a temperate, reasonable, sociable climate, on the banks of a river which, it is true, sometimes floods the country around it, but of which the ravages appear to be so easily repaired that its aggressions may perhaps be regarded (in a region where so many good things are certain) merely as an occasion ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... and has disappeared behind the ground-glass door when I discovers this slick-haired young gent sittin' at a desk over by the window,—a buddin' law clerk, most likely. And by way of bein' sociable I remarks casual that I hear how McGraw is puttin' Tesreau on the mound again to-day against ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... worked hard all the week, and we tried to crowd as much fun into a half-holiday as possible. Well, one Saturday afternoon Mr. Billy-Goat and Mr. Dog were walking arm in arm along the road, talking and laughing in a sociable way, when all of a sudden a big rain came up. Mr. Billy-Goat said he was mighty sorry he left his parasol at home, because the rain was apt to make his horns rust. Mr. Dog shook himself and said he didn't mind water, because when he got ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... watch just how they managed. I note that this fellow has a couple of old tomato cans he's picked up on some dump, and they're set over the fire to warm up some coffee, or something he's evidently gotten at a back door. Perhaps he'll be sociable, and invite us to join him in his afternoon meal. I guess they eat at any old time, just as the notion seizes ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... a sociable family. For example, the old gentleman's widowed daughter, red-cheeked Madame Langai, did not exchange a single word with her father for weeks at a time. At first he had expected her to remain in the same room with him till ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... your high principles, you will agree with me, that unless that custom, called "politeness," is not pushed so far as irony or treason, it is a sociable virtue to follow, and of all the relations among men, the true meaning of gallantry has more need of being concealed than that of any other social affair. How many occasions do you not find where a lover gains more by dissimulating the excess of his ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... doing the honours at my end, while the surgeon of the vessel was seated at the other. I was glad to notice that Flannigan was placed almost opposite to me. As long as I had him before my eyes I knew that, for the time at least, we were safe. He was sitting with what was meant to be a sociable smile on his grim face. It did not escape me that he drank largely of wine—so largely that even before the dessert appeared his voice had become decidedly husky. His friend Muller was seated a few places lower down. He ate little, and appeared ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for it, proves to me, that if I have a dislike for society, it is more their fault than mine. It is a pity the Savoyards are not rich: though, perhaps, it would be a still greater pity if they were so, for altogether they are the best, the most sociable people that I know, and if there is a little city in the world where the pleasures of life are experienced in an agreeable and friendly commerce, it is at Chambery. The gentry of the province who assemble there have only sufficient wealth to live and not enough ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... road. At the other side of this road were three large detached deep-bodied villas with peaky eaves and small wooden balconies, each standing in its own little square of grass and of flowers. All three were equally new, but numbers one and two were curtained and sedate, with a human, sociable look to them; while number three, with yawning door and unkempt garden, had apparently only just received its furniture and made itself ready for its occupants. A four-wheeler had driven up to the gate, and it was at this that the old ladies, peeping out bird-like from behind their curtains, ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the beauty of the spot to the more sociable but draughty ranches in the valley of Bear Forks River; so they settled in the crater, and named the farm Rainbow Cliffs, but the original nick-name clung, and gradually the owners, from habit, also came to call their place ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... necessity for mimicry and romance remained; and she satisfied it by writing stories—marvellous ones—which she read to Boots. Otherwise she was the same active, sociable, wholesome, intelligent child, charmingly casual and inconsistent; and the list of her youthful admirers at dancing-school and parties required the alphabetical classification of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... sociable. If you're suggesting that I'm going to poison you, you're also suggesting that you know something which I don't want you to tell. Or that you have discovered one of those terrible secrets that the newspapers are all writing about. Now be a sensible ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... that he was extremely sociable in his tastes. He was fond of being among men. Wherever men were gathered, there Lincoln went, and wherever Lincoln was, men gathered about him. In the intervals of work, at nooning or in the evening, he was always the center of an interested group, and his unparalleled flow of humor, wit, and ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... character, with his discharge-sheet, back to Polpier, where his old friends and neighbours—who had known him as a brisk upstanding lad, sociable enough, though maybe a trifle shy— edged away from the taciturn man who returned to them. Nor did it help his popularity that he attended neither Church nor Chapel: for Polpier is a deeply religious ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... his mother told him that she thought he was making a mistake in keeping his canaries so much to themselves. They had become so timid, that when she went into the room they were uneasy till she left it. She told him that petted birds or animals are sociable and like company, unless they are kept by themselves, when they become shy. She advised him to let the other boys go into the room, and occasionally to bring some of his pretty singers downstairs, where all the family could enjoy seeing and hearing them, and where ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... and gently trotting down the heath, with Robert running at his side. He liked his attendant so well, that he soon got into conversation with him, asked his name, and told him his own. Robert was a little startled, when he found that his sociable new customer was a real young ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... sociable, tho' they frequently visit each other, which is with much Ceremony amongst the better Sort; for he who makes the Visit, sends before him a Servant to give Notice, that he intends to do himself the Honour to kiss the Spur of the Master of the House. ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... as they are called "new chums," may be hired by the squatter's agents in town and sent up to the station, whence they are frequently removed to these outposts; but when such is the case, they are generally of a more sociable disposition, and take an early opportunity of being removed to the comfort and social intercourse of the head station. Though in this removal they entail more constant and arduous occupation, they willingly embrace the labour, and leave the indolence of their vacated posts, to ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... early in the morning, or in the grey twilight after his dinner-hour. He was a proud man, and he was not a sociable man. When the county gentry came to welcome him to England, he received them, and thanked them for their courtesy. But there was something in his manner that repelled rather than invited friendship. He gave one great dinner-party soon after his ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... by Poppar at home; it's more sociable than right across the room. Poppar and I are just the greatest chums, and I hate it when he's away. There was a real nice woman wanted to come and keep house, and take me around—Mrs Van Dusen, widow of Henry P Van Dusen, who made a boom in cheese. Maybe you've heard of ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... But she was that sociable disposition, that she could not half enjoy anything unless she could get some one to sympathise with her. She did so long to tell her news. Late as was the hour when the party broke up, she wanted to tell Isabel; but Isabel ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... to Antonina, in Brazil, for a cargo of mate, a sort of tea, which, prepared as a drink, is wholesome and refreshing. It is partaken of by the natives in a highly sociable manner, through a tube which is thrust into the steaming beverage in a silver urn or a calabash, whichever may happen to be at hand when "drouthy neebors neebors meet"; then all sip and sip in bliss from the same tube, which is passed from mouth to mouth. No matter how many mouths ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... Branwell was away and doing well as station-master at Luddendenfoot, "set off to seek his fortune in the wild, wandering, adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railway." Ellen came to stay at Haworth in the summer; it was quite sociable and lively now in the grey house on the moors; for, compelled by failing health, Mr. Bronte had engaged the help of a curate, and the Haworth curate brought his clerical friends about the house, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... greatly in their character. Some are composed of sociable, kind-hearted fellows, while others may contain a large percentage of professional "bad men" and rowdies. Each company will have its own traditions and a reputation which is guarded jealously. There was the "fighting ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the question, ain't it? Hum... hum... let's see. Sorry I can't take you back to the Centre myself. Any other night I'd be glad to, but there's a beans and brown-bread supper and sociable up to the meetin' house this evenin' and I promised the old woman—Mrs. Pulcifer, I mean—that I'd be on hand. I'm a little late as 'tis. Hum... let's see... Why, I tell you. See that store over on the corner there? That's Erastus Beebe's store and Ras ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he, irritated; "well, people must all have their share of sadness here; I am not more exempt than another: but kiss me, dearest, and go now; I will, if possible, be more sociable when you return." ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... very sociable man; and, when on a sketching tour, liked to have a young artist or two with him. Jack Nisbett played the violin, and Sam the 'cello, etc. Jack was fond of telling that Sam used to let them all choose the best views, and then he would take what was left; and Jack, with mild astonishment, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... this here as sociable a neighborhood as I ever struck. It pleases me well. Folks are ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... In the wall opposite is an open door, through which one catches a glimpse of the bedroom beyond, decked out in all its pink-and-white glory. There is a very sociable little clock, a table strewn with wools and colored ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out in the Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine minutes I know his income, religion, size of collar, and his wife's temper, and how much he pays for clothes, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... Sensitive, sociable, a good talker, high-spirited and somewhat irascible, a man who admitted no one to his friendship whom he could not thoroughly respect, the friend of the poor, prescribing gratuitously to all who were needy, pre-eminent for sympathy, which for a time made him hate his profession ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... "Pray, Mr Cringle, be sociable, man," said the Captain; "what the deuce do you see, that you stare over my shoulder in that way? Were a woman now, I should tremble to look behind me, while you were glaring aft in that wild, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... cheery speech. Mary, he tells us; was always neatly dressed, but with nothing prim or sectarian in her style. 'Her expression was frank and free, yet very modest, and she was blessed with an affectionate, sociable spirit.' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the omnipresent bush-magpie. Here he may warble all the day long on the liquid, mellifluous notes of his Doric flute, fit pipe indeed for academic groves . . . sweetest and brightest, most cheery and sociable of all ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... 34) called 'uncomeatable' a low corrupt word: rather, as you well say, 'a permissible colloquialism.' Yes; like old Johnson's own 'Clubable' by which he designated some Good sociable Fellow. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... yet learned to be sociable in that way. A friend is more company for me than a score of acquaintances. Dear me! I'm afraid New ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "for the Cafe Delphine, and my throat thirsts for sociable alcohol. If you can cease the prostitution of your art to a salacious public for an hour or two, I shall be very glad of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... left hardly a single story or recorded incident of any kind; and that though three generations of undergraduates passed through Oxford in his time, no one of them seems in later years to have had anything to say of not the least famous and one of the most sociable of Englishmen. At that time, it is true, and for long afterwards, the men of New College kept more to themselves than the men of any other college in Oxford; but still it is odd. Another little mystery is, Why did Sydney take orders? Although there is not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... from his plate and put them on his own. Also, in order to put matters on a more equal footing, he drank three cups of coffee in rapid succession, leaving the skipper to his own reflections and an empty coffee-pot. In this sociable fashion they got through most of the day, the skipper refraining from speech until late in the afternoon, when, both being at work in the hold, the mate let a heavy case fall on ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... resided in London, they lived in the usual fashionable style, and seldom saw each other; nor were they much more sociable when they wooed rural felicity for more than half the year, in a delightful country, where Nature, with lavish hand, had scattered beauties around; for the master, with brute, unconscious gaze, passed them by unobserved, and sought amusement in country sports. He hunted in the morning, and after ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... more sociable than a fishing-fleet. The boats overtake each other, like horses in a race. They gallop in rivalry. But for the most part they keep together, and move like a travelling town over the sea. As likely as not they will have to come back out of the storm into the shelter ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... steerage passenger like young Chuzzlewit. There was every reason why they should throng the portals of the author of Pickwick and Oliver Twist. And no doubt they did. If I may be permitted the aleatory image, you bet they did. Similar troops of sociable human beings have visited much more insignificant English travellers in America, with some of whom I am myself acquainted. I myself have the luck to be a little more stodgy and less sensitive than many of my countrymen; and certainly less sensitive than Dickens. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... movements are also interesting. By day they associate with other birds, mainly with rooks. Gilbert White thought they did this because the rooks had extra nerves in their beaks, and were able to act as guides to the smaller birds searching for invisible food. Probably it is only due to the sociable instinct. Towards night they nearly always repair in innumerable flocks to some favourite roosting-place, either a reed-bed or a wood of evergreens, where they assemble in thousands. One of these communal sleeping-places ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... time slip by; there are a many things I turn my hand to. I digs my taters up, and gardens a bit first thing in the morning, and I cleans up in my churchyard, and then I cooks a bit o' dinner, and has a bit o' gossip with my neighbours. I'm a sociable sort o' chap, though I'm so lonesome. And I has a bit o' reading on occasions. Are you a-thinkin' any more o' that 'ere tex' that we was ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... Rosiclear, We are thy Mirmidons, thy Guard, thy Rorers, And when thy noble body is in durance, Thus do we clap our musty Murrions on, And trace the streets in terrour: Is it peace Thou Mars of men? Is the King sociable, And bids thee live? Art thou above thy foemen, And free as Phoebus? Speak, if not, this stand Of Royal blood shall be abroach, atilt, and run Even ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... reached Yonkers. And there, and from there up to Fishkill, they passed from one country-house to another, bright particular stars at this dinner and at that supper, staying a day here and a night there, and having just the sort of sociable, public, restless, rattling good time that neither ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... perhaps be traced in part to these early habits. Though probably unacquainted with Burton, he held that "there is in melancholy sentiments something extremely attractive and even invigorating to the imagination." Attempts were frequently made by his friends to teach him more sociable habits. Thus, at Leipsic, "Dr. Carus's family are anxious to introduce me to innumerable families—'it would be good for my prospects,' they think, and so do I, and yet I don't get there, and in fact seldom go out at all. Indeed, I am often very leathery, dry, disagreeable, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... not be by mere chance that they are all pretty, she has, after the fashion of old maids, various animals to keep her company—a parrot, a little dog whose coat is of the whitest, and two or three cats, so tame and sociable that they jump up on one in the ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... liberal, affectionate to their parents, and with a liking for all social gatherings, skilled in completing verses begun by others and in various other sports, free from all disease, possessed of a perfect body, strong, and not addicted to drinking, powerful in sexual enjoyment, sociable, showing love towards women and attracting their hearts to himself, but not entirely devoted to them, possessed of independent means of livelihood, free from envy, and last ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... of Hamlet: 'What a piece of work is man!' sounds from Mendozo's [57] lips thus:—'In body how delicate; in soule how wittie; in discourse how pregnant; in life how warie; in favours how juditious; in day how sociable; in night how!—O ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... they are more sociable than their owner. And now, master, might I ask for the loan of one of your dogs? It might be ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the feathered tribe, the "laughing jackass;" more scientifically denominated the "giant kingfisher." When I saw the bird, I was very sorry that it had been killed; for, notwithstanding its discordant voice, it is a remarkably sociable and useful creature, as we afterwards discovered. It destroys snakes, which it catches by the tail, and then crushes their head with its powerful beak; it also renders an essential service to the settlers who want to get up early, by shouting out its ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... jolly, sociable set though, and gave our party a hut to themselves, after supplying them with a bountiful supper of "mealies," bull beef, and a kind of bread made from ground maize and the grated buds ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... courtship, and masculine blustering was going on, and there was little police duty for Bobby. After a time he sat up on the table-tomb, pensively. With Mr. Brown confined, to the lodge, and Mistress Jeanie in close attendance upon him there, the kirkyard was a lonely place for a sociable little dog; and a soft, spring day given over to brooding beside a beloved grave, was quite too heart-breaking a thing to contemplate. Just for cheerful occupation Bobby had another tussle with the collar. He pulled it so far under his thatch that no one could have guessed ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... they would so spin it out, that the telling would occupy almost as many hours as you were days on the voyage. Nothing like condensing the agony and expanding the joy in a yarn, it makes the listeners in a better mode, and more sociable with each other." ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... treacherous friend. Indeed, on his return to the deck, a few minutes afterwards, I had olfactory demonstration that he and the brandy bottle had been in close communion! Captain Thompson had hardly spoken to me since we left the wharf in New York. He had now got his "talking tacks" on board, and was sociable enough. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Repentigny sat by Cecile, talking in a very sociable manner, which was also commented on. His conversation seemed to be very attractive to the young lady, who was visibly delighted with the attentions of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is. And he liked my supper, and said so. Ate some of everything and praised it, and was just as—as common and everyday and sociable, not ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... offered for her guidance through life with unquestioning confidence; at least she had never been heard to object to any time-honoured axiom. And she did, in fact, accept them all, but only provisionally. She wanted to know. Silent, sociable, sober, and sincere, she had walked over the course of her early education and gone on far beyond it with such ease that those in authority over her never suspected the extent to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... easiest undress. The style, although really carefully studied and superintended, has an air of light facility, hardly interposing between the author and his reader; the book is of all books the most sociable, a living companion rather than a book, playful and humorous, amiable and well bred, learned without ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Being of sociable disposition he joined a little herd of deer which was the pride and joy of our woods, and one afternoon I came upon this motley company down by a little lick we had arranged on the brink of a tiny river ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... other men, while he appeared to have positively a kindly feeling towards Potto Jumbo, and to be especially patronising to Macco. Indeed, after this everything went on smoothly and pleasantly among the men, while perhaps the dangers they had gone through made the passengers even more sociable and ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... And by and by the sun went westering down the hill, and he shook himself out of his dreams, and pocketed his book and turned homeward. His day, he thought, had not amounted to much after all, and he would spend the evening in sober study, and not dream any more until bedtime. But he would be sociable this evening and eat his supper—now he thought about it, it would be dinner and supper combined—in the company of his colleagues at their favourite haunt. And he would go to-morrow, he would certainly go to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford |
