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More "Gayety" Quotes from Famous Books



... it fully covers the moral and physical effects of castration and penis amputation for disease. M. Roux, who amputated the penis of a brother of Buffon, in 1810, reported that, in that case, M. Buffon lost none of his customary gayety. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... took them to lunch at a new restaurant, just opened in the town, a place which surprised Isabel with its metropolitan air, and, though George made fun of it to her, in a whisper, she offered everything the tribute of pleased exclamations; and her gayety helped Eugene's to make the little occasion ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... householders wear good clothes and have a liking for a reasonable gayety, but very few of them can pretend to what is vaguely called social standing, and, to do them justice, not many of them waste any time lamenting it. They have, taking one with another, about three children apiece, ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... certain new reporter on the "Despatch" the stir and gayety of the streets meant little more than that the days had come when it was night in the afternoon, and that he was given fewer political assignments. This was annoying, because Beasley's candidacy for the governorship had ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington

... her brave pretense of gayety. With alacrity she responded to Verinder's challenge of a bet on the relative sizes of their catches. But as soon as the rest were out of sight she sat down in a shady spot and ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... were not sad. There was in her a gayety and strength of spirit that bore her up. The brilliant scene gave her an excitement that helped her to bear the thought of her everyday trials. It had been hard to work all day, preparing for the evening—hard for the mind and body—and she had lately lived on poor fare, and wanted ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... run, I {now} renounce. Why so? —I have found, by experience, that there is nothing better for a man than an easy temper and complacency. That this is the truth, it is easy for any one to understand on comparing me with my brother. He has always spent his life in ease {and} gayety; mild, gentle, offensive to no one, having a smile for all, he has lived for himself, {and} has spent his money for himself; all men speak well of him, {all} love him. I, {again}, a rustic, a rigid, cross, self-denying, morose and thrifty person, married ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some as high as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is their favorite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a strange air of rude gayety to the street. Milk-women, with a little crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the chief material of the Parisian cafe-au-lait. Gay wine-shops, painted red, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Miss Gore upon the veranda," she smiled over her shoulder with careless gayety. She was extraordinary. But I'm sure that never before had I hated the girl as at that moment. Thoughtfully I made my way to ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... returned. She was delighted to talk about her "connections," and she supplied him with every detail He could trust himself now; his self-possession was complete, or, so far as it was wanting, the fault was that of a sudden gayety which he could not, on the spot, have accounted for. Of course it was not very flattering to them—Mrs. Percivals own people—that poor Dora's husband should have consoled himself; but men always did it (talk of widows!) and he had ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James

... over and tore into small pieces a programme of the dances, which she had picked up from an adjoining chair. The action, insignificant though it was, seemed to bring her back into touch with the real and actual world, the world of music and wild gayety, of swiftly moving feet, of laughter and languorous voices. For a brief space of time she had escaped, she had wandered a little way into an unknown country, a country from whose thrilling dangers she had emerged with a curious feeling that life would never be altogether the same again. She ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... months all was gayety and rejoicing in Segovia, not a little heightened by the exciting preparations for the much desired war. The time had now come when Ferdinand could, with safety to the internal state of his kingdom, commence the struggle for which he had so impatiently ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... a week of the beautiful weather that midsummer brings, and the days passed full of gayety. Both Archdale and his mother did everything for the enjoyment of their guests. They showed them the most beautiful views on shore, and by sailing took them to places of interest not to be reached by land, while dinner-parties and garden-parties ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... the smell of coffee that lingered in the air; Trina herself, fresh as if from a bath, and singing at her work; the morning sun, striking obliquely through the white muslin half-curtain of the window and spanning the little kitchen with a bridge of golden mist—gave off, as it were, a note of gayety that was not to be resisted. Through the opened top of the window came the noises of Polk Street, already long awake. One heard the chanting of street cries, the shrill calling of children on their way to school, the merry rattle of a butcher's cart, the brisk noise ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... there were some, whose sense of propriety and moral feelings were not entirely destroyed, who held him in merited contempt. For my own part, I always had a dread of the man. That odious smile, forever hanging on those large red lips, singularly annoyed me; that imperturbable gayety, exhibited on all occasions of life, troubled me like the constant presence of a hideous phantom; that phrase, which he appended like a moral to every thing he did, that detested phrase, 'A capital joke,' sounded in my ears ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... several others are introduced, whose letters are characteristic: and it is presumed that there will be found in some of them, but more especially in those of the chief character among the men, and the second character among the women, such strokes of gayety, fancy, and humour, as will entertain and divert, and at the same time ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... my delightful William, but I am accustomed to that. And, then, again, while Bob asleep is an interesting physiological study, Bob awake adds to the gayety of nations, samples of which crowd about my easel, Holland being one of the main highways of ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the day soon passed. Carley went to dinner with friends and later to a roof garden. The color and light, the gayety and music, the news of acquaintances, the humor of the actors—all, in fact, except the unaccustomed heat and noise, were most welcome and diverting. That night she slept ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... The mixed gayety and gloom in the plan of any modern novel fairly clever in the make of it, may be likened, almost with precision, to the patchwork of a Harlequin's dress, well spangled; a pretty thing enough, if the human ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... complexion, constituted an imposing whole, severe and almost glacial. Fortunately, it was easy to perceive through this rough bark, the inexhaustible benevolence of the good man; the kindness that always accompanies a serene mind, and even some rudiments of gayety. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... twinkling out, and she did not turn on the light of the sitting room chandelier. Did he love her at all; or if he did, did he know what this waiting all day meant to a woman? Then, it came to her in a flash, his wistful look in the morning behind the forced gayety, his reference to the last ride, to keeping resolutions. Was that resolution for the sake of his work at all; or for her? Of course, Matthews had told him in the Desert; and with the thought, the weight that had oppressed her rolled from her ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... the first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave—that prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal depravity—can yet paint himself in the light of harmless loveliness and innocent gayety. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... something also in them that might remind us of the variegated and spotted angel wings of Orcagna, only the Venetian sail never looks majestic; it is too quaint and strange, yet with no peacock's pride or vulgar gayety,—nothing ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... game-preservers, of the society for promoting rural deans, at your double system of contradictory law, at special pleading at quarter-sessions,{C} at the technical rigour of your institutions, at the delay, chicanery, and expense of your judicial proceedings, at the refinement, ease, wit, gayety, and disinterested respect for merit, which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by making ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... certainly, putting "Reading" out of the question, three fine summer months might be worse spent, than in climbing the mountains, and whipping the trout-streams, of that romantic land. Many a quiet sea-side town, or picturesque fishing-village, might be mentioned, which owes no little of its summer gayety, and perhaps something of its prosperity, to the annual visit of "the Oxonians:" many a fair girl has been indebted for the most piquant flirtation of the season to the "gens togata," who were reading at the little watering-place to which fate and papa had carried her for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... sudden pauses timed so accurately and making so elegant an effect, that one did not know what to admire most,—the beautiful manner of moving, or the majesty of the halts, now expressing excessive gayety, now a beautiful and haughty disdain. Who could dance with such elegance and grace as the royal brother and sister? None, I believe; and I have watched the King dancing with the Queen of Spain and the Queen of Scotland, each of whom ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... sermon in his barrel—as it happened—of any lightsome character, so he had to preach a very grave one—a very serious one—and it made the matter worse. The gravity of the sermon did not harmonize with the gayety of his head, and the people sat all through it with handkerchiefs stuffed in their mouths to try to keep down their joy. And Harris told me that he was sure he never had seen his congregation—the whole body of his congregation—the entire body of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... he, "good-by. Sometimes in the midst of your fashionable career, in your gayety and so forth, pause," he says, "and give a thought to the broken-hearted pauper who has told you his ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... moment is waging the most serious war it has ever been engaged in. We do not understand it. A few weeks ago I visited France. We had a conference of the Ministers of Finance of Russia, France, Great Britain, and Belgium. Paris is a changed city. Her gayety, her vivacity, is gone. You can see in the faces of every man there, and of every woman, that they know their country is in the grip of grim tragedy. They are resolved to overcome it, confident that they will overcome it, but only ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... acquire gayety by only watching other people who are gay," I declared. "Paris is not for those who have anxieties, Louis. If ever I were suffering from melancholia, for instance, I should choose some other place for ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... cried Don Luis, with forced gayety, as he thrust a hand under the arms of Tom and Harry. "Come, we will have our ride and our talk. We will be back here in half an hour and then we shall hear this affair ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... was because there was so much gayety around that these little girls looked so real. From the side of their weather-beaten boat dragged an old fishnet. Each girl had on her head a queer half-hood, black, and from under this Nellie's brown hair fell in tangles on her bare shoulders, and Dorothy's beautiful yellow ringlets framed ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope

... handsome; his eye, though deeply ensconced under his eyebrows, was full of sparkle and gayety: the features of Brougham were harsh in the extreme. 2. To Lentullus and Gellius bear this ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor; in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... for she is all fashion and gayety, while Bluebell prefers her books and the quiet of ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... wilderness. In the passion of love, for instance, a cause unknown to the sufferer, but which is doubtless the spring-flood of hereditary instincts accidentally let loose, suddenly checks the young man's gayety, dispels his random curiosity, arrests perhaps his very breath; and when he looks for a cause to explain his suspended faculties, he can find it only in the presence or image of another being, of whose character, possibly, he knows nothing and whose beauty ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the garden. Angelique, with that complete self-control which distinguishes a woman of half a heart or no heart at all, changed her whole demeanor in a moment from gravity to gayety. Her eyes flashed out pleasure, and her dimples went and came, as she welcomed the Intendant to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... appears rather absurd. Thus we wonder how a mere brute like Gianettino can have become such a power in the state right under the eyes of the wise and good Andrea, who is subject to no illusions with regard to him. No objection can be made to Fiesco's mask of gayety and cynicism in the first two acts, for that is historical. But was it necessary for him to deceive and torture the wife to whom in the end he appears loyally devoted? In any case it is clear that the exposition ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... quietly to the situation. She was distinctly one of the poorer girls; she had no fine dresses to attract attention, no visitors, no friends in the town. She had more study hours, and less time, therefore, for the companionship of other girls, gladly as she would have welcomed the gayety of that side of school life. Still, water will find its own level in some way, and by the spring of the second year she had naturally settled into the same sort of leadership which had been hers in the smaller community of Riverboro. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... with much gayety on the part of us all. When the small boy, tutored by his father, had driven in all the required nails, he lifted a triumphant face to his mother. "There they are!" he exclaimed. "Now let's hang the tin things on them, and see how ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... prescribed for her, bathed, slept all she could, and worked for health with all the force of her frail being, and as the days went by it seemed to the Harvester her weight grew lighter, her hands hotter, and she drove herself to a gayety almost delirious. He thought he would have preferred a dull, stupid sleep of malaria. There was colour in plenty on her cheeks now, and sometimes he found her wrapped in the white shawl at noon on the ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... which eminently it is not. To be adequate to the requirements—rarely very exacting in any case—made of one, never to show stupidity, to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feeling for what is elegant and refined, to abhor pedantry and take gayety at once lightly and seriously, and beyond this to take no thought, is to be clever; and in this sense the Louis Quinze painters are the first, as they certainly are the ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... so control your feelings, while endeavoring to conceal them, with such an excess of gayety?" eagerly ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... her to say that about wishing she could see more of people like us, who are interested in real things, instead of the foolish round of gayety that takes up so much of her time and gives her ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... in maintaining the blissful delusion until evening. The dinner was full of gayety, the lad continued to pour out detail after detail, and his listeners to heap ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... and all the other sweet swans of song; they drew after them the gems of the opera; there was selling of Libretti, (and in Boston, 'los-an-gers'); there was the donning of scarlet and blue striped cloaks, gay coiffures and butterflying fans; there was flirting, and fun, and gentle gayety in the New York Academy, and with the Boston Academies it was not otherwise, only that among the latter the Saxon predominateth, and the dark-eyed, music-loving children of Israel, who so abound in most opera audiences, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of gayety lighted Suzanne's gray eyes as she heard these words; but the self-satisfied du Bousquier ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... therefore, how this linkage takes place—how, for example, it comes about that the colors of a painting are something more than mere colors, being, in addition, embodiments of trees and sky and foliage, and of liveliness and gayety and other feelings appropriate to a spring landscape. Let us consider ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... After any of these interviews between her lovers, of which there were several, she usually retired to solitude, and there indulged her grief. It was in such a situation I found her one evening, after she had been for some time supporting a fictitious gayety.—'You now see, my child,' said I, 'that your confidence in Mr Thornhill's passion was all a dream: he permits the rivalry of another, every way his inferior, though he knows it lies in his power to secure you to himself by a candid declaration.'—'Yes, pappa,' ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... new gloom in her husband, about which he was entirely reserved towards her—for he dreaded to expose his lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception—soon received a painfully strange explanation, alien to all her previous notions of what could affect her happiness. In the new gayety of her spirits, thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual, causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep out of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived had dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole curious and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty look of at least a wife-beater ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... early in his boyhood the future prophet showed signs of disinclination for a worldly life, and an invincible dislike of the court. Under the House of Este, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy for its gayety and splendor. No city enjoyed more brilliant and more frequent public shows. Nowhere did the aristocracy maintain so much of feudal magnificence and chivalrous enjoyment. The square castle of red brick, which still stands in the middle ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... observe their relations. He was more and more conscious of the exciting effect she produced on himself, doubly so, indeed, because of that sudden stroke of melancholy wherewith—like a Rembrandt shadow, she had thrown into relief the gayety and frivolity of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... we hear, Father, may be exaggerated; and even if the city itself be doleful, which I doubt, there is sure to be light and gayety in the precincts of the Court and in ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... with smiles. She felt that the penetrating eyes of Mr. Somerset were never withdrawn from her face. Offended with his perverseness, and their scrutiny, she tried to baffle their inspection. She attempted gayety, when she gladly would have wept. But when the coach mounted the top of Highgate Hill, and she had a last view of that city which contained the being whose happiness was the sole object of her thoughts and prayers, she leaned out of the window ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... would consider equally ill-suited to the habitations of divinity. What religion therefore forbids among us, the religion of the Greeks did not merely tolerate but enjoin. Nor was the extreme and even profane gayety of the comedy without its excuse. To unite extravagant mirth with a solemn seriousness was enjoined by law, even in the sacred festival ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... hour there was an intimation of privity to the event which had taken place, an implication of the unity of the natural and the supernatural, strangely different from that robust gayety of the plain day which later seemed to disown the affair, and leave the burden of proof altogether to the human witness. By this time Hewson had already set about to putting it in such phrases as should carry conviction to the hearer, and yet should convey to him no suspicion of ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... is nothing; O, not of the slightest consequence!" That unlucky peach! How many blunders, how many pauses, how many absent-minded remarks it occasions! She makes the most frenzied attempts to regain her former gayety, but in vain. Her gloves are stained and sticky with the flowing juice, and she is oppressed by the conviction that all her partners for the rest of the evening will hate her most heartily. An expression of real vexation steals over her pretty ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... little bit," said Ermengarde. Her heart felt like lead. Her gayety had deserted her, but she was in the toils of a much older and cleverer girl ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... The gayety of his companions, the sense of duty accomplished, the Jungfrau all white upon the sky, over there, like a vapour—nothing short of all this could have made the hero forget what he left behind him, for ever and ever it may be, and without farewell. However, at the last houses ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... was the officer dismissed from the Guards for the affair of the duel—Alexis Chabrine. He was very intelligent; his conversation was sprightly and interesting. He described with impulse and gayety the Commandant's family, society, and in general the whole country round. I was laughing heartily, when Ignatius, the same old pensioner whom I had seen mending his uniform in the Captain's waiting-room, ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... situation, the spirit of concord and charity had never ceased for a single moment to preside among them. The man who was appointed by the others to communicate with, and answer the questions of their deliverers, displayed, in all his replies, a gayety quite in keeping with the French character. On being asked what day he thought it was, and on being informed that it was Monday, instead of Sunday, as he had supposed, "Ah!" said he, "I ought to have known that, as we yesterday indulged ourselves freely in drinking—water." ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... products. All the work that is done on the stage cannot stand upon the same level, any more than all the work that is done in literature. You do not demand that your poets and novelists shall all be of the same calibre. An immense amount of good writing does no more than increase the gayety of mankind; but when Johnson said that the gayety of nations was eclipsed by the death of Garrick, he did not mean that a mere barren amusement had lost one of its professors. When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and said he ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... the balcony and sat down. Mary Cresswell leaned forward. It was interesting. Beneath her was an ordinary pretty ball—flowered, silked, and ribboned; with swaying whirling figures, music, and laughter, and all the human fun of gayety and converse. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... tremulous motion of a butterfly's wing, with her blue brocade petticoat tilting airily as she moved, like an inverted bell-flower, with a locket set in brilliants flashing on her white neck, with her pink-and-white face smiling out with gentle gayety from her fair curls, stepped delicately, pointing out her blue satin toes, around the ball-room, with one little white hand ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... look, he refused to connect it with the episode of their landing. It was a fleeting look, at most, gone almost before he surprised it, and, for the most part, Edith showed a seemingly quite natural gayety that helped him to forget ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... this sudden gayety that shakes the grayest boughs? A voice is calling fieldward—'T is time to start the ploughs! To set the furrows rolling, while all the old crows nod; And deep as life, the kernel, to cut the golden sod. The pen—let nations have it;—we'll plough ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... had tried to learn from 73 [An Indecipherable.] what the real result from Berlin was; and did not think it much, though the Walpole people," all hanging so perilously upon Prussia for their existence, 'affected a great gayety; and indeed felt what a gain it was even to have renewed the Negotiation with his Prussian Majesty.' Here is a King likely to get himself illuminated at first-hand upon English affairs; by Ministers lying abroad for ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... fellows I know over there are doing something. I'd like to run over, but what's the use? Nobody around, street's dark, no gayety, nothing." ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and her laugh had the mild gayety of champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr. Bilkins, who ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... subject or his own preoccupation with it, had somewhat unsettled him. He cleaned his pen obtrusively, going to the window for a better light, and whistling from time to time with a demonstrative carelessness and a depressing gayety. He once broke into a murmuring, meditative chant evidently referring to the previous conversation, in its—"That's so—Yer we go—Lessons the first, boys, Yo, heave O." The rollicking marine character of this refrain, despite its ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... days had the Posada witnessed a gayer scene. Indeed, for the time being, they had returned like a far-off echo of those times when Dona Fernandez reigned supreme in her beauty and men admired and flattered and paid homage to her. Little wonder she sighed in the midst of the gayety and alternately flushed and paled as her thoughts traveled back over ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... destroyer of health and reason—and licentious extravagance an outrage on the poor. I chose my own way of life—a middle course between simplicity and luxury—a judicious mingling of home-like peace with the gayety of sympathetic social intercourse—an even tenor of intelligent existence which neither exhausted the mind ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... ladies are met together in a life of sumptuousness and gayety, a king is pretty sure to find favorites, and royal favorites rarely content themselves with pleasing the king; they desire to make their favor serviceable their family and their friends. Francis I. had made choice one, Frances de ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... flung back the white skirt against the slender limbs, showing the flowing lines as she moved. In her jaunty yachting cap, the heavy chestnut hair escaping in blowing tendrils, a warmer color whipped into her soft cheeks by the breeze, there was a sparkle to her gayety, a champagne tang to her animation. One guessed her an Ionian goddess of the sea reincarnated in the flesh of ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... was evidently very tall, and by his firm seat in the saddle, had been early accustomed to equestrian exercises; but his limbs were slight almost to delicacy, and though completely ensheathed in mail, there was an appearance of extreme youth about him, that perhaps rendered the absence of all gayety the more striking. Yet on the battle-field he gave no evidence of inexperience as a warrior, no sign that he was merely a scholar in the art of war; there only did men believe he must be older than he seemed; there only his wonted depression gave place to an energy, a fire, second to none ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... was out in the room when he arrived, but she instantly came over and alighted on his roof, to have a look at him. Most expressive was her manner. She stood in silence and gazed upon him a long time; all her liveliness and gayety were gone, and she appeared to be struck dumb by this new complication of her affairs. It was plain that she was not pleased. Perhaps her dislike was evident to the new bird, for suddenly he flew up and snapped at her, which so surprised her that she hopped a foot into the air. When the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... moral tales. In his story of "Rinconete y Cortadilla" he evidently derives the names from rincon (a corner) and cortar (to cut). His last work was "Persiles and Sigismunda," the preface of which is a near presentiment of his closing labors. He says: "Farewell, gayety; farewell, humor; farewell, my pleasant friends. I must now die, and I desire nothing more than to soon see you again happy in another world." His industry was wonderful. We can but have a grateful feeling towards the Count de Lemos for adding to his physical comfort ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... grand scale, hanging gardens were constructed and walled in by galleries with marble columns, costly furniture was brought from Europe, and here the new emperor and empress held their court, with a brilliant succession of fetes, dinners, dances, and receptions. All was brilliance and gayety, and as yet no shadow fell on their dream of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... Ian Stewart was there. With Mrs. Fletcher's connivance, he took Mildred home alone in a canoe, by the deep and devious stream which runs under Wytham woods. She went on talking with a vivacious gayety which was almost foolish. He saw that it was unreal and that her nerves were at high tension. His own were also. He did not intend to propose to her that day; but he could no longer restrain himself, and he began to speak to her of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... so much of decay as of unthrift, and yet hardly of unthrift, seems to prevail in the neighborhood, which has none of the aggressive and impudent squalor of an Irish quarter, and none of the surly wickedness of a low American street. A gayety not born of the things that bring its serious joy to the true New England heart—a ragged gayety, which comes of summer in the blood, and not in the pocket or the conscience, and which affects the countenance and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... there for more than six months," says Molly, "and I didn't pine for anything. I thought it charming. It is all very well for you"—dejectedly—"who are tired of gayety, to go into raptures over calmness and tranquillity, and that; but if you lived in Brooklyn from summer until winter and from winter back again to summer, and if you could count your balls on one hand,"—holding up five wet ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... that the complaints of Carrat were entirely wrong, but they. served only to increase the gayety of the ladies who had taken him for the object of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... beauty definite in its appeal; before she was seven-teen she had her little reputation for it; she moved easily into a circle higher than even her father had ever known. She was witty, young, lovely, and in this happier atmosphere her natural gayety and generosity might well develop. She went about continually, and every year the circle of her friends was widened by more ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... meanwhile Agnes would approach the wigwams of the women, and by her winsome smiles, her hearty laughter and gayety soon won their confidence. She spoke the language of the Indians fluently, and sang many of the Puritan hymns in their tongue, so that they were "much entertained," ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller

... ballroom should suggest gayety, light and beauty. The floor, of course, is the most important detail. A polished hardwood floor offers the most pleasing surface for dancing. If the wood seems sticky, paraffine wax adds a smoothness that actually tempts ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... attention of handsome Harry Kendal seemed to pall upon the beauty. Gray Gables was dull; she wanted more life, more gayety. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... different conditions one of those sudden changes in the weather such as I had witnessed on the previous day. In a moment the sun disappeared, the infinite variety of cheerful colors was obscured, and a chilling wind began to blow. Then the subdued gayety which existed a few moments before gave place everywhere to a strange trepidation. The leaves of the trees rustled, the flags on the ships fluttered, the boats moored to the palisades tossed to and fro; the waters ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... ceremony. It was thus that the father and mother of Lady Jane, anticipating that she might one day become a queen, watched and guarded her incessantly, subjected her to a thousand unwelcome restraints, and repressed all the spontaneous and natural gayety and sprightliness which belongs properly to such ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... fiend—Oh, the pity of it! In the light of her discovery Kathleen remembered many idiosyncrasies which the drug habit would explain; often that winter she had found Miss Kiametia dozing in her chair at the theater, at dinners, in motors, but had put it down to over-fatigue from too much social gayety. Miss Kiametia's variable likes and dislikes, her sudden whims and fancies, her irritability—all were traceable to ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... population of the State—the French and the Indians. The French settlements about Kaskaskia retained much of their national character, and the pioneers from the South who visited them or settled among them never ceased to wonder at their gayety, their peaceable industry and enterprise, and their domestic affection, which they did not care to dissemble and conceal like their shy and reticent neighbors. It was a daily spectacle, which never lost its strangeness for the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, to see ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... Mrs. Toomey out on a day like this, nor any particular keenness to detect the signs of agitation which Mr. Pantin noted in his swift glance. She was coming to borrow—he was as sure of that as though she already had asked, and if any further confirmation were needed, her unnatural gayety when he admitted her and the shortness ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... Bonbright Foote II had worked; the same chairs, the same fittings, the same pictures hung on the walls, that had been the property of the first crown prince of the Foote dynasty. It was not a bright place, suggestive of liveliness or gayety, but it was decorously inviting—a place in which one could ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... and other amusements. Work of this kind done in the open air, where everything is temporary, and every utensil prepared on the spot, gives life a truly festive air. At such times, there is labor and no care,—energy with gayety, gayety of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... perceived that her charm had been spoiled. An uncontrolled petulance, I thought, and emotional egotism, an absence of poise and a habitual dissatisfaction had marred her womanhood. During the meal, she showed that false gayety, spurious kindliness and reactionary softness that mark the woman addicted to tantrums. Withal, she was a woman who might be attractive ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... which came to nothing, and writing the "Heritiere de Birague," his first novel, which he sold for one hundred and sixty dollars. Through these early letters, in spite of his chilly circumstances, there flows a current of youthful ardor, gayety, and assurance. Some passages in his letters to his sister are a sort of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... and the like, and sent out for Flowers, (which it seemeth strange enoughe to me to buy,) which gave the Chamber a gayer Aire, and soe my Husband sayd when he came in, calling me the fayrest of them alle; and then, sitting down with Gayety to the Organ, drew forthe from it heavenlie Sounds. Afterwards Mr. Marvell came in, and they discoursed about Italy, and Mr. Milton promised his Friend some Letters of Introduction to Jacopo ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... that an insolent young man, with moist protuberant eyes, had come up where she stood there, alone, motionless on the public street. He put his arm in hers, clasped her hand in a fat, soft palm, and, "Allons, ma belle!" he said with a revolting gayety. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... lasses, the Ladies T——, very much. All young people interest me, and must be wonderfully displeasing if they do not please me. I met them frequently, but they were naturally full of gayety and life and spirits, which I naturally was not. The little society I went into in Rome oppressed me dreadfully with its ponderous vapidity, and beyond exchanging a few words with these bonnie girls, and admiring their sweet pleasant faces, I had nothing to do with them. There was ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Betty's father had pulled forward a flowered tea-chest for himself, he went on with his singing, and then played a Spanish dancing tune, with a nod to Betty, so that she skipped at once to the open garret-floor and took the pretty steps with much gayety. Aunt Barbara smiled and kept time with her foot; then she left the prim rocking-chair and began to follow the dance too, soberly chasing Betty and receding and even twirling her about, until they were both out of breath and came back to their places very warm and excited. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett

... wasn't one given to talking much about the things he cherished deeply. But more than once after the boy had gone he recalled the picture the lad had made sitting there in the firelight; remembered the brightness of his smile and the gayety of his laughter. Even a flute could not furnish music as light-hearted. It was long since anything so joyous had echoed through the dim, dingy rooms. He wished he could fool himself into believing he was as young as he felt ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... on my nerves, on my heart.... Proclaim to the rich—your wealth is your misfortune, withdrawn within the latitude of your senses.... Let the enemies of nature at thy voice keep silence and swallow their rabid serpents' tongues.... The wretched shun the society of men, the tapestry of gayety turns to mourning.... Such, gentlemen, are the Sentiments which, in animal relations, mankind should have taught ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... fearing any hell, reference to her age neither alarmed her, nor caused the slightest flurry in her peaceful life. She was too philosophical to regret the loss of what she did not esteem of any value, and saw Chapelle slipping away from her with tranquillity of mind. It was only during moments of gayety when she abandoned herself to the play of an imagination always laughing and fertile, that she repeated the sacrilegious wish of the pious king of Aragon, who wished that he had been present at the moment ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... place (supposing its influence on the mind to be included in the picture and that it comes to the aid of the theatrical perspective, with reference to what is indicated in the distance, or half-concealed by intervening objects); the contrast of gayety and gravity (supposing that in degree and kind they bear a proportion to each other); finally, the mixture of the dialogical and the lyrical elements (by which the poet is enabled, more or less perfectly, to transform his personages into poetical beings)—these, in my opinion, are not mere licenses, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... She said to herself, "I wonder if that is true? I wonder if it wouldn't be the very thing she would like?" But she answered blithely, "Oh, one gets used to it. Then I can't take you anywhere? I'm sorry. Some day I hope my round of gayety will cease, so that we can have a quiet evening together. I miss your husband. I always ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... awful possibilities, for whose realization no array of threatening agents is required,—no lightning, or tempest, or battle; a peaceful household lamp, a gust of perfumed evening air, a false step in a moment of gayety, a draught taken by mistake, a match overlooked or mislaid, a moment's oversight in handling a deadly weapon,—and the whole scene of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... White Nunnery, I spent the most of my time in the nursery. But the name gives one no idea of the place. The freedom and careless gayety, so characteristic of other nurseries, had no place in this. No cheerful conversation, no juvenile merriment, or pleasureable excitement of any kind, were ever allowed. A merry laugh, on the contrary, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... danced every dance with a gayety of manner that she did not truly feel. Some of the joy of that party was lacking, but she would not question the ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... which he had glimpses from the first, returned to her. One night, at the dance given by some of the guests to some others, she went through the gayety in joyous triumph. She danced mostly with Lanfear, but she had other partners, and she won a pleasing popularity by the American quality of her waltzing. Lanfear had already noted that her forgetfulness was not always so constant or so inclusive ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... and banish every other feeling than that of deep love for her. But from the night of the coronation, a change had fallen upon the youth, which Father Omehr's keen eye had not failed to remark. He displayed no longer the same thoughtless gayety or the same dreamy abstraction. He had reveries, it is true, proceeding from the fear of losing the Lady Margaret, or the hope of gaining her. The missionary had refrained from questioning the young knight, nor did Gilbert reveal any secret to his venerable ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... The mere anticipation fluttered my pulse, and when my partner approached to claim my promised hand for the dance, I felt my cheeks glow a little sometimes, and I could not look him in the eye with the same frank gayety as heretofore. ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn

... surprised to see me, and knew me as little as I did them. I had no change of linen, and when I wanted any thing washed, it was done in the night, while I was in bed. I had no women to arrange my hair and dress me, which is very inconvenient. Still I did not lose my gayety, and they were in admiration at my making no complaint; and it is true that I am a creature that can make the most of every thing, and am greatly ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... arrival of his child at Ashfield, and spoke in terms which were warm for him, of the interest which both his sister and himself felt in her welfare. "He was pained," he said, "to perceive that she spoke almost with gayety of serious things, and feared greatly that her keen relish for the beauties and delights of this sinful world, and her exuberant enjoyment of mere temporal blessings, would make it hard to wean her from them and to centre her desires upon the eternal world. But, my friend, all things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... themselves; and in the hardened and shameless youth it will be hard to recognize any trace of the innocence of infancy. But, perhaps, instead of viciousness, carelessness is developed, and youth is brightened by gayety, amiability, and ready generosity. Occasional derelictions from truth and honor find ready apologists among friends, because the boy or the girl is so "good-hearted"; but a closer inspection readily shows that the goodness of heart is very superficial, that the left hand is often ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... a new world — All is gayety, good-humour, and diversion. The eye is continually entertained with the splendour of dress and equipage; and the ear with the sound of coaches, chairs, and other carriages. The merry bells ring round, from morn till night. Then we are welcomed by the city-waits ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... say, you knew in Copenhagen, has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness, he is affected—ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... substituted for amiable and useful characteristics. By a deplorable consequence of these pretended miracles of grace we frequently see sorrow succeed to enjoyment, a gloomy and unhappy state to one of innocent gayety, lassitude and chagrin to activity and hilarity, and slander, intolerance, and zeal to indulgence and gentleness; nay, what do I say? cruelty itself to humanity. In a word, superstition is a dangerous leaven, that is fitted to corrupt even the most ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach









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