"Optimism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the glorious Summer Night, which came near the middle of the book. There is a cheering doctrine of mystical optimism which will have it that a sufficiently intense devotion to any ideal never fails of at least one moment of consummate realisation and enjoyment. Such a moment was granted to Matthew Arnold when he wrote A Summer Night. Whether that rather ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... My optimism is truly not the hiding myself from inevitable grief, for with towering waves the sea of sorrow has pounded against my beacon towers. The fires were not extinguished and beamed ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution." In the face of such a world, even when partially made intelligible in ideal art, dare we assert that fatalistic optimism which would have it that the universe is in God's eyes a perfect world? I can find no warrant for it in ideal art, though thence the ineradicable effort arises in us to win to that world in the conviction that it is not indifferent ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... work for many years, and his experience cannot fail to be of interest to the present generation.... Economics in the hands of this master was no dismal science, because of his broad sympathies, his healthy conservative optimism, his belief in the efficacy of effort; and, in a more superficial sense, because of his saving sense of humor and his happy way of putting things, ... he was the fortunate possessor of a very pleasing literary style, ... clear and interesting to the general reader, ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... the face of a continually thwarting fate that would have caused many a man, stronger physically than he, to become discouraged, despairing. Ill health, poverty and lack of appreciation of his life work had not the power to destroy his optimism. He bravely waged an unequal combat with the three, when many a man would have fallen on his own sword to end the bitter struggle with either one of them. From out the gloom he ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... remedies and ameliorations and the discovery of happier tendencies, let him redress the balance of his thought by recalling two contrasts—England and Russia, of which the one may encourage his optimism too much, but the other should remind him that catastrophes can still happen, and that modern society is not immune from the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... innate optimism, nevertheless, there are things which do not change as logically as do ornaments. Men and women, for instance. And although the town wears its mask of deplorable sanity and though Sunnyside Avenue seems suavely reminiscent of Von Bissing's troops goose-stepping ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... spoke of the coming cock-fight with characteristic optimism—not shared by Harkness, and but partially approved by O'Neil. Details were solemnly discussed, questions of proper heeling, of silver and steel gaffs, of comb and wattle cutting, of the texture of feather and hackle, and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... not so paradoxical an arrangement as it seems, and a very ambitious plan for a country colony which was finally carried out at Ruskin, Tennessee. In spite of failures, cooperative schemes went on, some of the same men appearing in one after another with irrepressible optimism. I remember during a cooperative congress, which met at Hull-House in the World's Fair summer that Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, who collected records of cooperative experiments with the enthusiasm with which other men collect coins or pictures, put before the congress some of the remarkable ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... daily conditions towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr. James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with a very close and interested attention every indication of change in those cosmic surroundings upon which our ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was beginning to get tolerably well acquainted with myself. The reader may perhaps think—if he cares enough to think—that I did not enjoy life; but I did in my evanescent, changeful way. I was always wavering between optimism and pessimism. Some days one of these qualities would predominate and some days the other would be in evidence. I never knew one day what the next would bring forth. I came to understand myself so well that I never started ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... her courage and optimism at luncheon, for it was a gloomy meal. Only her father and mother were present. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... not for a moment be imagined that the Connemara filly was to become a member of this household. Even Fanny Fitz, with all her optimism, knew better than to expect that William O'Loughlin, who divided his attentions between the ancient cob and the garden, and ruled the elder Misses Fitzroy with a rod of iron, would undertake the education of anything more skittish than early potatoes. It was to the stable, or rather ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... less troubled. But his nature refused to admit the end which Keeko saw ahead. His was a splendid optimism that refused defeat. He had the tryst he had established in his mind. And far back behind his ingenuous eyes the purpose lurked that should necessity arise he would cut every tie that bound his life, no matter at what cost, and pursue to its logical end the wonderful dream that had been ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... seemed to me capable of worshipping in equal fervour with Roman Catholics or with Unitarians—in a cathedral or in a hovel; and this religious spirit of hers shone out in her life and in her countenance. Very pleasant was her optimism; she looked about her in this world without distrust, and beyond her into the next ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... is generally found in alliance with some vague modern "religion" whose chief object is to strip the world of the dignity of its real tragedy and endow it with the indignity of some pretended assurance. This is the role of that superficial optimism so inherently repugnant to the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the north and of Ivanov in the south in setting a term to the terrifying sweep of the German advance produced a temporary optimism in Russia comparable with that which followed the victory on the Marne; and in neither case did the Allies realize the extent of the advantage gained by the Germans or foresee the years that would pass before the loss could be ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... man, who was compelled to sit almost still in a nipping wind, was soon wet through; but this in some curious way further tended to restore his accustomed optimism and good-humor. He had partly recovered both when, as the sloop drove through the whiter turmoil whipped up by a vicious squall, there ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... the promise of the future would be less bright than it is. During my early connection with Grand Forks I often wondered as to the secret of its enterprise. I was not long in discovering, however, that it was found in the spirit of this Commercial Club; a spirit, it is, of hope, of civic pride, of optimism, yet a spirit of almost divine discontent. You have all the time been proud of your city, but yet not satisfied with it; not satisfied, because you saw visions of a finer city into which yours might grow. Your ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... much more than himself, so much more than what seems to be itself in the common light of day. America does not know what she is doing, neither do I know, nor any man. But the impulse that drives her, so mean and poor to the critic's eye, has perhaps more significance in the eye of God; and the optimism of this continent, so seeming-frivolous, is justified, may be, by reason lying beyond ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... gold glowing through them now and again, we were on the top of one of those long, consecutive, and genteel rows of houses which are still to be found lifting their heads above poorer districts, the remains of some rage of optimism in earlier speculative builders. Probably enough, they were entirely untenanted, or tenanted only by such small clans of the poor as gather also in the old emptied palaces of Italy. Indeed, some little ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... place more and more to a Christian conquest that is orderly and inclusive of the whole sweep of human life. The church is but dimly conscious, as yet, that through the aid of science she has attained this magnificent optimism; much less does she realize its full implication for social service and the saving of the individual, both ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... a dismal outlook; but Buller, after a few days' review of the situation, was able to report that in his opinion the opposition would probably collapse when Kimberley and Ladysmith were relieved. His optimism at Capetown was destined soon to be superseded by pessimism on the Tugela. He compared himself to a man who, having a busy day before him, has overslept himself. The original plan of campaign, a march on Pretoria through the Free State, had necessarily to be postponed; and the important ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... at me for what you consider my optimism, my incredulity with regard to the evils of this present life, and seem to think I am making out a case of no little absurdity in ascribing so much of what we suffer to ourselves. But I do not think my view of the matter is altogether ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... face with the unconquered forces of nature, nothing remained but the real strength or weakness of the individual himself. In some there were developed unguessed powers of endurance that bore the hard days without flinching; cheerful optimism that laughed at the appalling immensity of the task; strength of spirit that made a jest of galling discomforts; courage that smiled in the face of dangers. These were the strength of the party. Some there were who grew sullen, quarrelsome, and vicious ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... of "The House of a Thousand Candles" has here given us a bouyant romance brimming with lively humor and optimism; with mystery that breeds adventure and ends in love and happiness. A ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... doors, or of Bill Harmon's bull terrier, who set an entire community quarreling among themselves. His racy accounts of Mrs. Popham's pessimism, which had grown prodigiously from living in the house with his optimism; his anecdotes of Lallie Joy Popham, who was given to moods, having inherited portions of her father's incurable hopefulness, and fragments of her mother's ineradicable gloom,—these were ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... are most characteristic of extravagant Mysticism in the West—its strong belief in Divine immanence, not only in the Church, but in the individual; its uncompromising rationalism, contempt for ecclesiastical forms, and tendency to evolutionary optimism. Among the doctrines attributed to Amalric and his followers are a pantheistic identification of man with God, and a negation of matter; they were said to teach that unconsecrated bread was the body of Christ, and that God spoke through Ovid (a curious choice!), as well as through ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the girl's father resumed with his tranquil optimism: "Oh! I am not anxious. Things will go on all right, you'll see. For my own part, I am delighted. I had asked the Virgin to grant me her protection in my affairs—you know, my great invention of navigable balloons. Well, suppose I told you that she has already ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... which is known on these coasts as the water-smoke the sky shone a cloudless blue. The air was light and thin. It is the lightest and thinnest air in England. Dormer Colville hummed a song under his breath as he walked on the top of the dyke. He was a light-hearted man, full of hope and optimism. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... what it might lead to, for no one could have foreseen that the first part, "Geduld en moed," would fall into disuse and be forgotten, because these good qualities do not come easily to men, and the second, "Alles sal reg kom," would be made an excuse for a sort of lazy optimism, by which anything could be justified which comes easiest to ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... these documents was remarkable for its optimism, the second might justly be described as a {25} masterpiece of faith pure and undefiled by any contact with sordid facts. Its theme is the magnitude of the compensations which Greece might expect in return for her entry into the War: "I have a feeling," says the author, "that the concessions ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... political corruption. "The women in our association," she said, "are trained to political action; we have had long experience in self-control; defeat has taught us its lessons of poise; devotion to a great principle has given us a faith almost religious in its optimism." The men were taking no concerted action to protect the republic against this menace, she thought, and the task seemed to be left to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... hours as near Paradise as we poor mortals can hope to be. Her elastic-sided cloth boots rested on the fender, and her skirt, carefully turned up, revealed a grey stuff petticoat with a hint of white flannel beneath. The pink shawl was top, which meant optimism. With Mrs. Marston, optimism was the direct result of warmth. Her spectacles had crept up and round her head, and had a rakishly benign appearance. On her comfortable lap lay the missionary Word and a large roll of brown knitting which was intended to imitate ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... kissed Suzette. In her affectionate optimism it seemed to her for the moment that all the trouble was over now. She had never realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair; it was like a misunderstanding that could be explained away, if the different people would ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... became a printer's apprentice at twelve, but as he received no salary, the need of a purse could not have been urgent. He must have carried it pretty steadily, however, from its appearance—as a kind of symbol of hope, maybe—a token of that Sellers-optimism which dominated his early life, and was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his plans his words were tinged with optimism and he allowed no hint of possible disaster to creep into his speech. But the girl was conscious of that hovering uncertainty, the feeling that the months of peace were but to lure her into a false sense of security and that Slade would pounce on the Three ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... jealous gods! oh, and ironical gods also! They grant the Dream, and chuckle while they grant it, I think, because they know that later they will be bringing their playthings face to face—each married, fat, inclined to optimism, very careful of decorum, and perfectly indifferent to each other. And then they get their fore-planned mirth, these Overlords of Life and Death. 'We gave you,' they chuckle, 'the loveliest and greatest ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... helped," he makes some remarks of no particular interest, and then comes back to the old and ever new subject, the cud that humanity has been chewing from the time of Adam and Eve, and will have to chew till the extinction of the race, whether pessimism or optimism ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... desk and of copy readers is to reduce all reporters to a dead level, but in spite of this Jeff managed to get himself into his work. He brought to many stories a freshness, a point of view, an optimism that began to be noticed. From the police run Jeff drifted to other departments. He covered hotels, the court house, the state house and ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Vergil could escape all this, that he could retain through the period of transition the memories of Rome's former greatness and the faith in her destiny that he had imbibed in his youth. The time came when Octavian, after Actium, reunited the Empire with a firm hand and justified the buoyant optimism which Vergil, almost alone of his generation, had been able ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... the greatest importance in maintaining an even flow, and this is especially influenced by fear and depression. Blushing, pallor, cold hands and feet, are circulatory disturbances based largely on emotions. Better than a hot-water bottle or electric pads are courage and optimism. A patient of mine laughingly tells of an incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... fighting pessimism, but not wallowing in it; an optimist, who does not study pessimism by learning to enjoy it, whose imagination is greater than his curiosity, who seeing the sign-post to Erebus, is strong enough to go the other way. This strength of optimism, indeed the strength we find always underlying his tolerance, his radicalism, his searches, prophecies, and revelations, is heightened and made efficient by "imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the combining but the apprehending ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... possible for a well-trained mind to completely rout the worst case of the "blues" in a few minutes; but the trouble with most of us is that instead of flinging open the mental blinds and letting in the sun of cheerfulness, hope, and optimism, we keep them closed and try to eject ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a private conviction that when Prouty acquired anything beyond a blacksmith shop and a general merchandise store it got more than it needed. Conceived and born in windy optimism, it had no stamina. The least observant could see that, like a fiddler crab's, the progress of the town was backward. But these truths were admitted only in moments of drunken candor or deepest depression, for to hint that Prouty had no future was as ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... wished the time would come soon. He somewhat felt a great responsibility in the matter. This sense of responsibility caused him to assume more and more optimism as his nervousness increased. Each day of waiting found him covering his disappointment and anxiety with a ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... would bring a righting of affairs. Four charges hung heavy above him: that of horse-stealing, of burglary, of highway robbery, and worse, the final one of assault with attempt to kill. Fairchild turned wearily away; he could not find the optimism to join Harry's cheerful announcement that it would be "all right." The appearances were otherwise. Besides, up in the little hospital on the hill, Fairchild had seen lights gleaming as he entered the jail, and he knew that doctors were working there over the wounded body of the fiddler. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... here and there, they will play much havoc with the course in the future. From this point the way in which the work is proceeded with will naturally depend to a large extent on the length of the schemers' purse, and on their optimism or otherwise as to their future prospects; but I am sure that it is best to employ as many men as can be afforded at the outset, and so grapple with the execution of the plans in a thorough and determined manner. In the making of a golf ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... she was pathetically devoted, and lived in her native county almost throughout her life. In her later years she received a Civil List pension. She died on January 10, 1855. The quietness of the country is in all Miss Mitford's writing, but it is a cheerful country, pervaded by a rosy-cheeked optimism. Her letters, too, scribbled on small scraps of paper, are as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... underground refuges, to which the unco' guid had given the name of "funk-holes," but did no damage. Its purport was half-divined by the defenders. The news was still said to be good, but there were head-shakings, and even the stoutest optimism found itself unequal to the strain when it was announced that rations were to be cut down. If things were going well, "Why, in the name of success," asks Mr. Pearse in his notes for 9th February, "should our universal provider, Colonel Ward, take this occasion to reduce ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... this principle, we realize that such a faculty as Conscientiousness must be near the very summit, and that propensities to theft and murder must belong to the base. That such propensities exist in many, we know, and it is an absurd optimism which would ignore such facts because they are abnormal. The world is full of human abnormality, because it is not yet above the juvenile age of its growth, which is the age of feebleness and folly, disease and crime. The imperfect organism of childhood is incapable of resisting ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... nothing,—he—no say nothing,—he never be no better," and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a passionate burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about his master, his ready optimism declared ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... time that he was committed to rather a dishonest part; he was pledged not to give a shock to her optimism. This might cost him, in the coming days, a good deal of dissimulation, but he was now saved from any further expenditure of ingenuity by certain warning sounds which admonished him that he must keep his wits about ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... training school for evolving intelligence—a vast gymnasium for the development of moral fibre. We become mentally clever by playing at the game of life. We match our courage against its adversities and acquire fearlessness. We try our optimism against its disappointments and learn cheerfulness. We pit our patience against its failures and gain persistence. We are torn from the pinnacle of ambition by opponents and learn toleration of others. We fall from the heights of vanity and pride, and learn ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... had for some years given himself up to the enjoyment of his gains and to an ostentatious display of his magnificence. It was a rude shock to the indolent and self-complacent dreams of a sanguine optimism, which looked that "to-morrow should be as to-day, only much more abundant," when tidings came that revolution had raised its head in the far south-east, and that an energetic prince, in the full vigor ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... their power the ruinous legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska's serfdom was near at hand. So they preached, and knew they were ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost greedily, of expectation and virile optimism. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... solicited as far afield as Vermont in the North and Kentucky in the Southwest. All that Washington had hoped for, and all that Aaron Burr is supposed to have been hopeless of, were epitomized in these great works of internal improvement. They bespoke cooperation of the highest existing types of loyalty, optimism, financial ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... 2002-06, with a stable exchange rate and low inflation. Growth jumped to 7.5% in 2007, driven by higher world prices for minerals and metals. Risk premiums on Peruvian bonds on secondary markets reached historically low levels in late 2004, reflecting investor optimism regarding the government's prudent fiscal policies and openness to trade and investment. Despite the strong macroeconomic performance, underemployment and poverty have stayed persistently high. Growth prospects ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... as he rendered these woful ballads and yet his voice and manner were of the cheeriest, and I dare say he sang without reference to their real tragedy. It was a school of American balladry quite at variance with the cheerful optimism of those I had heard from the Belknap-Jackson phonograph, where the persons are not dead at all but are gayly calling upon one another to come on and do a folkdance, or hear a band or crawl under—things of that sort. As Cousin Egbert bent over a frying ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... spoken as with the intention of a large vague optimism; but there was plainly something in the girl that would always make for lucidity. "Do you mean about Carrie Donner? I DON'T believe it, and at any rate I don't think it's any one's business. I shouldn't have a very high opinion of a person who would give up a friend." She ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Monte Alloro, found himself in surroundings so different from those he had left that it seemed incredible they should exist in the same world. The Duke of Monte Alloro was that rare survival of a stronger age, a cynic. In a period of sentimental optimism, of fervid enthusiasms and tearful philanthropy, he represented the pleasure-loving prince of the Renaissance, crushing his people with taxes but dazzling them with festivities; infuriating them by his disregard of the public welfare, but fascinating them by his ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... proud, censorious Emerson of 1870; but his love of absolute statements ofttimes led him into strange contradictions, and the injustice which results from judging our fellow-mortals by an inflexible standard was the final outcome of his optimism. Hawthorne was more charitable when he remarked that without Byron's faults we should not have had his virtues; but the truth lies ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... chronological and, quite incidentally, a critical survey of George Gissing's chief works. And comparatively short as his working life proved to be—hampered for ten years by the sternest poverty, and for nearly ten more by the sad, illusive optimism of the poitrinaire—the task of the mere surveyor is no light or perfunctory one. Artistic as his temperament undoubtedly was, and conscientious as his writing appears down to its minutest detail, Gissing yet managed to turn out rather more than a novel per annum. The desire to excel acted as a spur ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... world which reveals to us at every point of our investigation one certain and unalterable fact—an unbroken uniformity of natural law. We must not dream; we must act, and, before we act, we must think. Human nature does not change very greatly. Bergson is apt to encourage easy optimism, to leave the door open for credulity, superstition, idle expectation; and he is disposed to set instinct above reason, "a very dangerous doctrine, at ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... but I share Mary's optimism. I honestly believe that Signor Mannetti knows a great deal more about the Grey Room than he has let ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Canadian West is the newness of the country. Youth is stamped everywhere clear and bold; the dash and buoyancy of the people reflect it faithfully. Optimism is the predominant note in that land of immensities and great possibilities. Untrammelled by set traditions and cast-iron customs, every one is there to start a new life. The past does not seem to exist for the Westerner; the future is his ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... conditions and political institutions as beyond its control or assumed that they will obediently modify as economic and administrative necessity dictates. Declare the Social revolution, we were told in a note of cheery optimism by the Marxist apostles, and political institutions will come like flowers in May! Achieve your expropriation, said the early Fabians, get your network of skilled experts spread over the country, and your political ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... get the material for their gloomy discourses. Faith is not to believe the Bible, but to believe in God; if you believe in God (or, for it's the same thing, have that assurance you speak about), where is there any more room for terror? There are only three possible attitudes—Optimism, which has gone to smash; Pessimism, which is on the rising hand, and very popular with many clergymen who seem to think they are Christians. And this Faith, which is the Gospel. Once you hold the last, it is your business (1) to find ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... savage mood for all that. This, thought I, is a dismal-looking outcome—two men and a dead horse left high and dry on the sun-flooded prairie. And a rampant ache in my head, seconded by a medium-sized gash in the scalp, didn't make for an access of optimism at that moment. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... not of immediate danger, such as to compromise his safety in this island—bare, as it was, of wild beasts and savages—he was wrong. This very day his optimism was to be ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... became charged with optimism. It seemed a simple thing to defeat a side which was practically a Ripton "A" team. The centre three-quarters were there still, it was true, but Allardyce and Drummond ought to be able to prevent the halves ever getting the ball out to them. The team looked on those two unknown ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... young men approached the agitated mother from the juvenile gathering. Their faces were solemn. Their own optimism had given way before the protracted delay. Tim Gleichen and Peter Furrers came first, Andy, the choreman, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... inclination always to say, 'My dear fellow, can't you put your case better?' I want good stuff about Divine and human nature—not this vagueness and platitude. Why don't they tell one something about the optimism of God, even before the spectacle of men's weakness? But, instead, we are told to moan about this vale of tears; we are promised chastisements, disappointments, woes, persecution. A philosophy of suffering makes men strong, but a philosophy ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your University professors are bound to preach optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... now, the resolve once made, she did not lose her sense of tranquil optimism, her mild happiness, her widespreading benevolence. The result of this talk with John aroused in her an innocent vanity, for was it not indirectly due to herself that John had been able to see a way out ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... of life. His poems, he tells us, are to be "hymns of the praise of things." They are to make for a certain high joy in living, or what he calls himself "a brave delight fit for freedom's athletes." And he has had no difficulty in introducing his optimism: it fitted readily enough with his system; for the average man is truly a courageous person and truly fond of living. One of Whitman's remarks upon this head is worth quotation, as he is there perfectly successful, and does precisely what he designs to do throughout: ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experiences. For it is in this intensely personal world of moral failure and divided will that men are most acutely aware of themselves and hence of their need of that other-than-self beyond. The sentimental idealizing of contemporary life, the declension of the humanist's optimism into that superficial complacency which will not see what it does not like or what it is not expedient to see, makes one's mind to chuckle while one's heart doth ache. There is a brief heyday, its continuance dependent upon the uncontrollable factors of outward ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... to the purchase of the Lost Dog from Barney Fallan. The Lost Dog consisted quite simply of a hole in the ground guarded by an excellent five stamp-mill. The latter's existence could only be explained by the incurable optimism of Barney Fallan—certainly not by the contents of the hole in the ground. To the older men of the camp it seemed a shame, for the newcomers were nice, fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed lads to whom everything was new and strange and wonderful, their enthusiasm was contagious, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... added to it. Money moved easily; wages were stiffening; tradesmen were in demand. There was material for many good stories in his investigations. He began writing features on the city's prosperity and prospects. The rival paper did the same, and there was soon started between them a competition of optimism. The great word became "boost." It stood, apparently, for any action or attitude that would increase prices. The virus was now in the veins of the community; pulsing through every street and by-way of the little city. Dave marvelled, and wondered ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... tender poem, A Mother showing the Portrait of her Child. Blessed optimism! that amid all the shortcomings of human nature sees the best, lifts souls upward, and helps to make the ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... man, grey with age, to marry a girl whose appeal to the senses was already so obvious? The eyes and prominent temples of the idealist supplied the answer. Deacon Hooper was a New Englander, trained in the bitterest competition for wealth, and yet the Yankee in him masked a fund of simple, kindly optimism, which showed itself chiefly in his devoted affection for his wife. He had not thought of his age when he married, but of her and her poverty. And possibly he was justified. The snow-garment of winter protects the ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... would have known how to be flattering enough. She was being helpful in her own way, with an extraordinary black bonnet on her head, a good mile off by that time, trying to discover in the village shops a piece of eatable cake. The pluck of women! The optimism ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... that any distinguishable alarm of Mark's was ground enough for a difference of his wife's. He was always nervous about the child, and as they were predestined by nature to take opposite views, the only thing for the mother was to cultivate a false optimism. In Mark's absence and that of his betrayed fear she would have been less easy. I remembered what he had said to me about their dealings with their son—that between them they'd probably put an end ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... the illusions the human animal, in its ignorance and its optimism, devises to change life from a pleasant journey along a plain road into a fumbling and stumbling and struggling about in a fog. Of these hallucinations the most grotesque is that the weak can come together, can pass a law to curb the strong, can set one of their number to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... this forlorn tribe is too inconsiderable to render their history important, even though their manners and characters were more calculated than they are represented to be, to excite interest or call forth sympathy on the part of the reader. The enthusiastic eulogist of Optimism will readily reconcile their condition to the principles which claim his admiration, by the obvious discovery, that their natures are in alliance with their circumstances, and by the easy belief, that hitherto no hope or idea of greater comfort had enhanced the magnitude of their present ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... which sounds as if it came straight from Shakespeare's lips. This battle-cry of invincible optimism is uttered in the play by Shakespeare's favourite hero, Henry V. It is hard to quarrel with the inference that these words convey the ultimate verdict of the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... truth, and maintaining that truth must necessarily be developed by error, and virtue by vice. According to this fundamental law of "human progress," Atheism itself may be providential; and the axiom of a Fatalistic Optimism—"Whatever is, is best"—must be admitted equally in regard to truth and error, to virtue ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... seemingly buried in the drifts. The only creatures that had not hidden away from the winter cold were the wolves and the coyotes, furtive people that could not be coaxed into the range of Virginia's pistol. For all her outward optimism her heart grew ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... is a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoor being realizes that this is the highest point of life which ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... for the future seem to me, although I am not a practical woman of business, more sketchy than well defined. Sometimes, after listening to him, I have come to the conclusion that even so attractive a quality as absolute optimism can be overdone, and that the principle of never crossing a bridge before you come to it can reasonably be modified by observing before you actually get to the water whether there is any bridge at ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... come upon him staring dispiritedly at the fire, and his dejection softened her and drew out her womanly sympathy. She had renewed her efforts to cheer him up, seeking to stir him out of the gloom that imprisoned him. With the healthy optimism and exuberance of her normal youth she could not but deplore the mischance that had changed him into the sullen, silent ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... spoilt child. The wonder turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. Panic hardens into pessimism; or else, what is often equally depressing, optimism. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... who has had an opportunity of personally sounding the undercurrents of German public opinion, this quiet optimism that has become noticeable only in the past few weeks (totally different in character from the enthusiasm that followed the declaration of war) has seemed particularly significant. Three months ago I was incessantly asked by Germans "how ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... discover a barrier other than he had a mind to surmount, he could always return to the old road. Fate might point, but she should never push him against his will. Thus he argued, confident within his soul. He had the optimism, the trust of youth to his balance. He had not yet learned the deepest of Fate's subtleties, the apparent ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... "That's optimism for you!" says he. "You expect us to put a premium on the sort of work you've been ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... back to the Waldorf and take hold of the lever again. I left him, driving uptown by way of Broad and Wall streets so I might see the crowds outside the Stock Exchange and in front of James Stillman's money trap. By the time I reached the hotel I had recovered some of my optimism, and went to work to catch up with the mail and messages accumulated in my absence. At three o'clock I called up Mr. Rogers. He was very jubilant. At the stroke of twelve, he told me, it required four big policemen to close the bank doors in the faces of hundreds of belated ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.' The pure river of the water of life will cast out from humanity the malignant components that are there, and will sweeten it all. Ay, all, and yet not all, for very solemnly the Prophet's optimism pauses, and he says that the salt marshes by the side of the sea are not healed. They are by the side of it. The healing is perfectly available for them, but they are not healed. It is possible for men to reject the influences that make for the destruction ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... And how could it do otherwise? A knowledge of the Spiritual Power working in and through us as well as in and through all things, a power that works for righteousness, leads to optimism. Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power. The one who is centred in Deity is the one who not only outrides every storm, but who through the faith, and so, the conscious power that is in him, faces storm with the same calmness and ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... manly fellows that ever were!" As Miss Sally Ford, Mrs. Toland had flashed about on many visits to her girl friends admiring, exclaiming, rejoicing in their joys, and now, as a mother of growing girls and boys, there still hung between her and real life the curtain of her unquenchable optimism. She loved babies, and they had come very fast, and been cared for by splendid maids, and displayed in effective juxtaposition to their gay little mother for the benefit of admiring friends, when opportunity offered. And if, in the early days of her ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... rushing like a falling comet, some one blundered. The world called it a disaster; the official statement, an accident, an open switch; the press called it an outrage. Pessimism called it fate—stern mother of the unsavory. Optimism called it Providence. At all events, the train jammed shut like a closing telescope. Undiluted Hades was very prevalent for over an hour. There were groans, screams, prayers—all the jargon of those about to precipitately ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... the reach, and the burdens of the world are as yet on other men's backs. Even if the Porter's Knot, which all must bear sooner or later, is already on the shoulder, the light heart of four-and-twenty is untroubled. It believes, in its optimism, that it will tumble the load of carks and cares into the first ditch, and live in ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... knack and uses his art with consummate skill in this collection, where will be found dramatic tragedy and profound pathos in strong contrast with keen humor and brilliant wit, all permeated by an uncompromising optimism. No man has probed the heart of the immigrant more deeply, and his interpretation of these Americans of tomorrow is at once a revelation and an inspiration: a ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... over out of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with—just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never cared for anybody else, and I guess ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... admitted, "you are brave men. I do not know why I should ever have doubted it. Your pose is excellent. I have no wish, however, to see you buoyed up by a baseless optimism. A somewhat remarkable chance has delivered you into my hands. You are my prisoners. You, Peter, Baron de Grost, I have hated all my days. You have stood between me and the achievement of some of my most dearly-cherished tasks. Always I have said ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... secret. Around that whole enormous circle such cries and such confessions were being poured like noxious vapours, from a thousand cities; but that incorruptible ether remained unsullied as on the first morning, the black smoke of it all lost in the optimism ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... was stricken with tuberculosis. He was taken to Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment happily restored him to health. One of the dreariest aspects of such an experience is its tediousness and loneliness. Yet the maintenance of one's good spirits and optimism is an essential part of the treatment. And it was in this work that Page now proved an indispensable aid to the medical men. As soon as Dr. Alderman found himself stretched out, a weak and isolated figure, cut off from those activities and interests which had been his inspiration for forty years, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... news is not good, but the more territory that Germany takes, the more the British rub their hands and cry victory. Their courage and optimism ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... positive force, sure of herself, and apparently afraid of nothing in heaven or hell. She radiated something very like hope and courage about her, and talked as though the world were a glorious place and everybody in it kind and beautiful. Her optimism was certainly infectious. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... faddist and a dreamer; while Stephen could never remember the time when his father had not seemed to him the living embodiment of prejudice, obstinacy, and caprice. He had always reckoned it indeed the crowning proof of Meynell's unworldly optimism that, at the moment of his father's accession to the White House estate, there should have been a passing friendship between him and the Rector. Yet whenever thoughts of this kind presented themselves explicitly to Stephen he ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Dalrymple." "Were you ever at the Derwent?" "I was, and from my report, I believe, it was that the first settlement was made there." He was one of the few early explorers of Australia whose vision was hopeful; and experience has in every instance justified his foreseeing optimism. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... and frailties of mortality, but everywhere the author reverently bows to that august and unsearchable name, acknowledges the grand and benevolent design—the admirable adaptation of every created thing to its end and place, and finally concludes in a strain of grateful and exulting Optimism, that we confess we have not fully arrived at—namely, that everything "is very good." (p. 387.) From this impression we have only one constructive drawback to notice in the author's mechanical but fanciful constitution of the universe, by which ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... materialisms and epicureanisms of the religious character falls the scorching splendour of the Easter Vision, with its ruthless condemnation of whatever is not glorified by Love, passing over into the uplifting counter—affirmation, indispensable to Browning's optimism, that— ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... be a thousand chances against it," Hadria continued. "Artistic power, to begin with, is a sort of weakness in relation to the everyday world, and so, in some respects, is a nice conscience. I think Emerson is shockingly unjust. His beaming optimism is a worship of success disguised under lofty terms. There is nothing to prove that thousands have not been swamped by maladjustment of character to circumstance, and I would even go so far as to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... continually bemoaning a lack of opportunity acknowledges his own lack of resources—is wanting in creative force. Every golden moment is an opportunity for him to step out from the shadows into the sunshine. Optimism sees opportunity in the ordinary ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... High Tide"—the title selected for this little volume of short stories, and having a real significance for each of them, which the reader may find out for himself—does not reflect the poet's meaning, and, least of all, its easy optimism. In every one of these stories is presented a critical moment in one individual life— sometimes, as in "The Glass Door" and in "Elizabeth and Davie," in two lives; but it leads not to or away from fortune—it simply ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... his mind certain statements which he proposed to make to the big men of the Comas. He had assorted and classified those statements before he entered the castle of the great corporation. With youth's optimism he had anticipated a certain measure of sympathy—had in some degree pictured at least one kindly man in the Comas outfit who would listen to a young ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... had immediately written to him to come and dine. He might have come from round the corner, instead of from New York and across the wintry ocean. This was a part of her 'cosiness,' her friendly, motherly optimism, of which, even of old, the habit had been never to recognise nor allude to disagreeable things; so that to-day, in the midst of so much that was not disagreeable, the custom would of ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of years, however, even if Emile could see no better with his eyes, his other faculties had developed so largely as to surrender to him again the joy of independence of outside help, and with characteristic self-reliance and optimism he once more tackled his ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... trouble. But he had a word or two to say about this individual case. There had been but a little over three weeks of the agony. The case was a particularly bad one, and he didn't mind admitting that the patient was particularly intractable and doubting. Optimism had much to do with a recovery in most cases of illness, and optimism was here lacking. But he would wager a box of cigars that the patient was on his feet again within two weeks. The wager was taken with great promptness, and then the patient was loaded into a cab ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... that there are no insurmountable obstacles standing in the path of our progress, that we are competent to solve the things that confront us, that they will be solved, and that humankind will be benefited by the virtue of our assuming an optimism in which we ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... later, she hurried homeward, this mystical optimism was to her something like a rose to a sick man—beautiful to contemplate, but of little practical application in alleviating pain. Her mind turned away from it. It turned away, too, from the pillar of cloud, of which the symbolism began to seem deceptive. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... boys might be forced to accept Miss Abingdon's customary hospitality. Canon Wrottesley received his wife's statement as to the improvement of her health with ingenuous pleasure. He believed that she was really looking better, twitted her kindly on her pale cheeks, and with the optimism which declines to harbour fears and apprehensions he refused to believe that she was seriously ill. The canon himself had had a bad cold lately, and his evident wish to believe that his own malady was as serious as Mrs. Wrottesley's had something ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... masterful devotion, perhaps to a person, perhaps to a cause. Once this devotion is given, it can never be changed by any circumstance except the last and most inexcusable treachery, and then it will be apt to turn into a madness of hatred which nothing will appease. There is no optimism in this character, very often a clear-sighted and painful acceptance of facts; faults are distinctly seen and difficulties are estimated at their full strength, sacrifice is discounted, and defeat is accepted. But the die is cast, and for weal ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... fallen from the state in which it was created, the instruction of this sublime story will be of no avail. But they who think justly, and feel with strong sensibility, will listen with eagerness and admiration to its truth and wisdom. Voltaire's Candide, written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's Rasselas; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson say[1027], that if they had not been published so closely one after ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... optimist, and that spontaneous optimism is his distinctive mark among all the novelists of the contemporary school. There are characters in his works quite as depraved as those in Flaubert and in Zola. But from the way in which he describes them one feels that he despises their ignominy, and ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... forget," he said. "Zoeth and I've cruised together for a good many years and if one of us has to go under I'd rather 'twas me. I haven't got much money but what I've got is his, and after that so long as I can get trusted. But there," with an attempt at optimism, "don't you fret, Mary-'Gusta. Nobody's goin' under yet. We'll have Zoeth up on deck doin' the fishers' hornpipe in a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln |
