"Contentment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... letter from Wagner's cook, telling a friend of how the king came incognito to visit Wagner, and how the house was upset by the descent of Cosima and her children. They had come to stay. At Triebschen, near Lucerne, Wagner lived with the Von Buelow family, and began to know contentment. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... the little valley, which four days ago was smiling with all the health of nature and the contentment of industrious man, is waxing pestiferous with the awful odor of decaying human bodies. Buzzards, invited by their disgusting instinct, gather for a promised feast, and sit and glower on neighboring perches or else circle round and round in the blue empyrean over the location ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... nature. I have never cared much for flowers, except in a general way. But now I noticed a great change. A wild flower growing in a ditch by the wayside seemed to me to be almost a living thing, and spoke in its mute way of its life of peace and contentment, and mocked, by its very humility, the world of men which was so full of noise and death. Colour too made a most powerful appeal to the heart. The gleam of sunlight on the moss that covered an old thatched roof gave one a thrill of gladness. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... had been prevented from coming this afternoon, and she had written to explain and relieve his anxiety. It was like her. It was just the sweet, thoughtful thing he would have expected her to do. His contentment with the existing scheme of things returned. The sun shone out again, and he found himself amiably ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... but less contentment. He was compelled to acknowledge that he had expected to meet Carinthia again at the Baths. Her absence dealt a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in; for though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was unfeigned, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and looked around at the hotel room walls with contentment. She looked like the proverbial cat who has swallowed the cream. "It looked to me as if it worked," she said. "Mike seemed pretty normal—except that he had ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... goes skipping and bounding along a street in the capital. His movements are gay and alert; there is a sparkle in his eyes, a smirk on his lips, a pleasing flush on his beaming face.... He is all contentment and delight. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Solomon to gratify his wives,[324] it was an uxorious sin; when the judges sinned for Jezebel's sake,[325] and Joab to obey David,[326] it was an ambitious sin; when Pilate sinned to humour the people,[327] and Herod to give farther contentment to the Jews,[328] it was a popular sin. Any thing serves to occasion sin, at home in my bosom, or abroad in my mark and aim; that which I am, and that which I am not, that which I would be, proves ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... long engaged, I see no evil in the course I am now taking, while I humbly trust it may be the means of effecting some little good. God grant that the pictures I shall feel bound to draw of my own past degradation and failings, contrasted as they must be with my present contentment and hopes, may induce some one, at least, of my readers to abandon the excesses so common among seamen, and to turn their eyes in the direction of those great truths which are so powerful to reform, and so convincing ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... sideling trot which is all they are equal to, and after flicking their ears until they are too lazy to continue, they hang their hats and stockingless feet over the carriage lamps and chew sugar-cane, looking the picture of contentment. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... losses and crosses of his past life, there was contentment in his eye. He was gratified by the prosperous appearance of his crops. The maize was now "in the milk," and the ears, folded within the papyrus-like husks, looked full and large. It was delightful to hear the rustling ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... close of the second and the opening of the third session of the Legislature, from the 31st of May, 1794, to 5th of January, 1795, quiet and contentment prevailed in the province; and the short speech of Lord Dorchester (for his speeches were always short and to the point) at the opening of this third Session was chiefly one of congratulation, commendation and suggestion. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... had stolen inside of Farmer Brown's henyard, leaving the gate halfway open. He had set himself to work to open the little sliding door through which in the daytime the hens passed in and out of the henhouse. As he worked he had been filled with great contentment and joy. He knew that Bowser the Hound had disappeared. He felt sure that there was nothing to fear, and he fully expected to dine that night on chicken. Then along came a mischievous little Night Breeze ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... being hereby frustrate, why should it not, saith he, be in the husband's power, after some unprevailing means of reclamation attempted, to procure his own peace by casting off this clog, and to provide for his own peace and contentment in a fitter match? Woe is me! to what a pass is the world conic that a Christian, pretending to Information, should dare to tender so loose a project to the public! I must seriously profess that, when I first did cast my eyes upon ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my mother's apron string, and venturing ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea, As I roam'd the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam'd, Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war, Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... invention for the traveller, but it may be questioned if it is of any other benefit than that of pecuniary convenience to the places through which it passes. How many delightful hamlets, pleasant villages, and even tranquil county towns, are losing their primitive characters for simplicity and contentment, by the passage of these fiery trains, that drag after them a sort of bastard elegance, a pretension that is destructive of peace of mind, and an uneasy desire in all who dwell by the way-side, to pry into the mysteries of the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ambition, had deprived herself of liberty, he should restore, not take it from her; and as he had been induced to take this charge upon himself, not from his own ambition, but at the entreaty of a great number of citizens, they would do well to be satisfied with that which produced contentment among the rest. With regard to the danger he might incur, he thought nothing of it; for it was not the part of a good man to avoid doing good from his apprehension of evil, and it was the part of a coward to shun a glorious ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... overcomes opposition. (3) A consecrated man is courageous and uncompromising, but none the less cautious. See Nehemiah. (4) There is a wise providence of God that includes all nations and displays perfect righteousness, perfect knowledge and perfect power. See the book of Esther, also the others. (5) Contentment may be false and harmful. See Hag. and Zech. (6) The comparative strength of the friends and enemies of a proposition does not determine the results. God must also be considered. (7) It pays to serve God. the Moral Governor ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... good medicine. Happiness, hope, and a sense of gratitude was in each heart. The old room grew wonderfully cozy and bright; the faces that gathered round the table and the fire were full of love, and sweet, reasonable contentment. When supper was over Richard and Elizabeth went quietly into the great entrance hall, where there was always a little fire burning. They had their own hopes and joys, in which no heart, however near and dear, could ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Only mind, I did not say we were not to enjoy our roast beef more than our bread and cheese; that would be not to discriminate, where there is a difference. If bread and cheese were just as good to us as roast beef, there would be no victory in our contentment." ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... blundered over loose stones. The front-files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the Gurkhas had doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There would be amusement. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... be judged. It does not suffice at any time, much less does it suffice at the present day, to be content with the uniqueness of the pleasure which you derive from each single act of comprehension made vocal. That contentment is the comfortable privilege of the amateur and the dilettante. It is not sufficient to get a unique pleasure from Mr De la Mare's Arabia or Mr Davies's Lovely Dames or Miss Katherine Mansfield's Prelude or Mr Eliot's Portrait of a Lady, in each of which the vital ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... but for the faint stir of the coverlet over her heart she was so pallid, so still, that she might have been dead. Moved by an uncontrollable fear he bent toward her and touched her hand. Her gaze slowly widened, and, turning over her palm, she weakly grasped his fingers. A great sigh of contentment fluttered from her dry lips. "Gerrit," she whispered, barely audible. He leaned forward, blinded by ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... daylight. Always, there was the sore spot in his heart, and often it ached almost unbearably at night, or when the world hurt him with its beauty, which he must see without Her; but usually he kept the spot well covered up; and being healthy as well as young, he had cultivated that kind of contentment which Thoreau said was only desperate resignation in disguise. He took an interest in books, in politics, and sport and motor cars, and a good many other things; but on the terrace, the blue of the sea; the opal lights on the mountains; the gold glint of oranges among ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... arts which ennoble and support human action; in short to participate in the spiritual treasures which are, as it were, the birthright of those born under a luckier star. This desire, which opens to the diligent the way to material prosperity and inner contentment, seems for society as a whole an important incentive to industrial progress, and turns the discontent of the slaves of machinery into happiness of men conscious of their own success. The more the old order changes which held the work people in the ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... be interested, replied the transported Monarch, can you doubt of it, have not my Countenance, my Eyes, even my very Silence, which I have respectfully observ'd till now, have not all these informed you, that my Happiness entirely depends on your Repose and Contentment. Let not the charming Nasica be angry, continued he, perceiving, that she heard him with Resentment, I love you indeed, but my Passion is so pure, so submissive, that it can give no just Offence to your severe Vertue. I little imagined, interrupted she, that all these splendid ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... your feet on your library fender, stupefied with contentment and your soles scorching, your heart is not black; it is only fat. How can it know the lean formality of the furnished room? Your little stenographer, who must wear a smile and fluted collars on eight dollars a week, knows it; ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... as Benton talked a slow grin of contentment spread across the visage of Mr. McGuire, hinting of some enterprise that appealed to his venturesome soul with a lure ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... free agency you speak of, is in choosing of these lesser paths—some of which are full of the snares of temptation, the chasms of ruin, and the pitfalls of destruction; and some of the flowers of peace, the bowers of plenty, and the green woods of contentment. But how to follow the proper one is the difficulty; for they run into one another—cross and recross in a thousand different ways—so that the best disposed as often hit the wrong as the right one, and are entrapped before they are ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... thatched sheds and standing water was a paradise to him; and when we walked up planks to deserted mixing and crushing mills, and actually saw where the clay was stirred with long iron prongs, and chalk or lime ground with 'a tind of a mill,' his expression of contentment and triumphant heroism knew no limit to its beauty. Of course on returning I found Mrs. Austin looking out at the door in an anxious manner, and thinking we had been out quite long enough.... I am reading Don Quixote chiefly, and am his fervent admirer, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own carelessness. I would dress you in purple and fine linen if I may, yet you would reproach me and think I was weary of your homely faces. Like the beggar-maid you would entreat to be allowed to go back from queenly glory and pomp to the tatters and contentment of your years. So shall it be! but between you and me there must be no divorce, so long as time shall last for me. Other friends will come and go, but nothing shall dissolve our union based upon gratitude and such love as man's heart may have ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... on Willie's shoulder, saying kindly, 'My boy, I understand now why you have that smile; for you have learned a secret which few people know—the secret of contentment. I shall have to call you The Contented Boy.' And with that, he ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... Councillor! A husband's name is a far bigger shield than a father's. I assure you that the world forgives a married woman what it would not forgive an angel. And I must tell you, also, that Dick's very life depended on the contentment which he felt in his success. It is the part of humanity to ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... tried every plan Jack proposed and a few of my own. It was no use. That day-after-Christmas feeling promptly suppressed any effort towards contentment. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... through the beaming landscape with a directness that took Distance by the throat. The surface improving as we left Pau behind, I drew on the seven-league boots—surreptitiously. Very soon we were flying.... With a steady purr of contentment, Pong, tuned to a hair, swallowed the flashing miles so easily that pace ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... commenced to take life easy than Skinner commenced to dominate the business. He attended an efficiency congress and came home with a collection of newfangled ideas that eliminated from the office all the joy and contentment old Cappy Ricks had been a life-time installing. He inaugurated card systems and short cuts in bookkeeping that drove Cappy to the verge of insanity, because he could never go to the books himself and find out anything about his own business. He had to ask Mr. Skinner—which ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... war ended, on Henry VII.'s accession, ballads took the place of war-songs in the heart affections of the people, and they sang songs of peace and contentment. Bard, scald, minstrel, gleeman, with their heroic rhymes and long metrical romances, gave way in the evolution of song and harmony to the ballad-monger with his licence. However, in turn they became an intolerable nuisance, and a wag wrote of them ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... plain to them, that for the few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word. Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself and the rest ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... living fact, indeed life's very secret—then, his heart may be touched and he may begin to understand. And then it may occur to him that this ardour, and the sacrifice it impelled, the hard life which it supported, witness to another level of being; reprove his own languor and comfort, his contentment with a merely physical mental life, and are not wholly to be accounted for in terms ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... the fisherman, since Undine always deserved at least ten times as many reproofs as she received; so he continued to feel in his heart an affectionate tenderness for the ancient mistress of the house, and his whole life flowed on in the calm stream of contentment. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... improved than the material physiognomy of the city. I see a thriving, orderly community,—no trace of antagonism, but a free, good-natured intercourse between all classes, and a general look of ease and contentment. Of course, there are poor in Turin, as everywhere else,—except Japan, if we may credit travellers; but nowhere are my eyes saddened by the spectacle of that abject destitution which blunts, nay, destroys, the sense of self-respect. The operatives, especially,—what are here called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... ecstatically as she and Peggy were preparing for bed. They had found quarters with the family of Justice Green, old friends of Mrs. Ashley. "Just think, Peggy Owen! Thee had a whole winter of it at Middlebrook. And with the main army at that. I should think thee could never find contentment in ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... meaningless. The little god shoots hard and straight when his mark is still in the golden dawn of life. All the way back he lay with his head among the cushions, dreaming of ministering angels, his whole soul steeped in quiet contentment as it dwelt upon the sweet earnest eyes which had looked so tenderly into his. It had been an eventful day with the student. He had saved his side, he had broken his collar-bone, and now, most serious of all, he had realized that he ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cover of night, when the sentinel is drowsy at his post, will slip out into the darkness, weary of the fatigue, regardless of the consequences—a deserter from the cause that is so ill-understood. There are going to be many who, through a passing village where all is peace and contentment, will hear the tempting whisper of mutiny. What is the good of it all—to what does it lead, this endless forced march towards a vague encounter with the enemy who are never to be seen? If only they might pitch tents there and then—there and then dig trenches, make positions, occupy heights—put ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... kindred one of HUNGRY, for there is here no aspiration, no waiting for better things, but an animal joy in all that comes. It could never be the face of an artist; it is the face of a VIVEUR - kindly, pleased and pleasing, protected from excess and upheld in contentment by the shifting versatility of his desires. For a single desire is more rightly to be called a lust; but there is health in a variety, where one may balance ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mineral-man and refiner especially to be diligent. The same was a Saxon born, honest, and religious, named Daniel. Who after search brought at first some sort of ore, seeming rather to be iron than other metal. The next time he found ore, which with no small show of contentment he delivered unto the General, using protestation that if silver were the thing which might satisfy the General and his followers, there it was, advising him to seek no further; the peril whereof he undertook upon his life (as dear unto him as the crown of England unto ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... house they fill, Ne looke for entertainement, where none was: Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: The noblest mind the best contentment has. 310 With faire discourse the evening so they pas: For that old man of pleasing wordes had store, And well could file his tongue as smooth as glas, He told of Saintes and Popes, and evermore He strowd an ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... province by tending towards an economic condition of the labour market, unimpeded by artificial restrictions, arising from religious differences and imposed at the hands of employers of labour. Another factor in the contentment of the Ulster Presbyterians under the varying vicissitudes of Irish government is to be found in the history of the Regium Donum. The Scottish settlers in 1610 having brought with them their ministers, the latter were put in possession of the tithes of ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... matter of golf, women—many of them no more than girls—play so well that men cannot affect any assurance of superiority. On my own course I sometimes come upon a middle-aged married couple playing with great contentment a friendly game. The wife always drives the longer ball, and upon most occasions manages to give her husband a few strokes ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... grain, saluting us from afar, bidding us welcome as pilgrims, wishing us as many years of prosperity as there were kernels in their sheaves, and kissing the hands that gave them the harvest-toll. The whole landscape had an air of plenty, peace, and contentment. The people all greeted us cordially; and once a Mevlevi Dervish and a stately Turk, riding in company, saluted me so respectfully, stopping to speak with me, that I quite regretted being obliged to assume an air of dignified reserve, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... pleasure in this. He loved to see her eyes sparkle at some unexpected act of kindness on his part, and as day by day passed away and he marked the improvement in her looks, saw the lines of care wiped out and an expression of contentment come on her face, more genial feelings filled his life. As he repeated to himself often, "I have a home and a mother now," and the fact made even the dirty town in which he lived seem like a paradise. He was glad, too, to take business friends to his new home, and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... ceased singing and yodeling, the whole summer long, for there was hardly another human being in the world as happy as he was up there with his goats. Often, however, when he lay stretched out in his contentment on the Pulpit-rock, and gazed down into the sunny valley below, he had to think how he had sat that time with the heavy burden on his heart, under the Rain-rock, and all happiness was gone; and he would say again and again in his heart: "I know now what I will do, so that it ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth, $450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses, and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I present the tax books of Georgia which show that the negro, twenty-five years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed property, worth twice that much. Does not that record ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... scene of his comrade's captivity. The other design shows us four tame bulls. The first submits with evident impatience to his master. The next two stand quietly, with an almost comical effect of good nature and contentment. The fourth advances slowly, browsing. In each composition the ground is indicated, not only beneath the men and animals, but above them, wherever the design affords room. It is an example of the same naive ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... is a gathering together of the faculties of the soul within itself, in order that it may have the fruition of that contentment in greater sweetness; but the faculties are not lost, neither are they asleep: the will alone is occupied in such a way that, without knowing how it has become a captive, it gives a simple consent to become ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... clad in buckskin like a savage, brown almost as a savage, as active and as alert, seemed to fit not ill with these environments, nor to lack either confidence or contentment. He walked on steadily, following the path along the bayou bank, and at length paused for a moment, throwing down his burden and stooping to drink at the tiny pool made by the little rivulet which trickled down the face of the bluff. Here he bathed his face and hands ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... get on the foot-boards, the latter is for the time being master of the situation. Should the locomotive superintendent dictate to him, it would be to confess that the driver was unworthy of his high trust, and so the superintendent is content to look on; but it is the contentment born of the conviction that he has chosen for the task a driver whose experience is great, and whose watchfulness and care and knowledge of enginery have given him a claim to the chief service his company has for him. Not that there is any more risk in running the Queen's train ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... soil. In New England no tradition exists of a distinction of ranks; no portion of the community is tempted to oppress the remainder; and the abuses which may injure isolated individuals are forgotten in the general contentment which prevails. If the government is defective (and it would no doubt be easy to point out its deficiencies), the fact that it really emanates from those it governs, and that it acts, either ill or well, casts the protecting spell of a parental pride ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... with one voice, and they did, to Rose's great surprise and secret contentment; though Archie had all the care of her, for the other two were leaping fences, running races, and having wrestling matches all ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... astonished by every feature of the family life which he saw about him. Elizabeth was cheerful, even happy, while John Hunter was another man. Jake figured out the changes about him wistfully, craving a part in the good-fellowship. Here was contentment such as Jake had never witnessed. Not a trace of the old tragic conditions seemed to remain. Jake had missed the key to the situation by his absence at the time of the blizzard, but he was keenly aware that some change had been wrought. He studied Hugh Noland and was even more enthusiastic ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... their Teutonic neighbors, for they are straining their attention to detect a familiar German word—such as "Mein Herr," or "Ach." When once they have heard the expected syllables, they smile a placid smile of contentment, and remark, one to another, "I can understand pretty nearly everything that is said,—with the exception, of course, of an ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... tranquillity, a masterless dog, upon the lawn. I take up this writing again after an interval of some weeks. I have been in Paris, attending the Sabotage Conference, and dealing with those intricate puzzles of justice and discipline and the secret sources of contentment that have to be solved if sabotage is ever to vanish from labor struggles again. I think a few points have been made clearer in that curious riddle ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... complexion which became her; and her eyes were kind, dark, and steady. She sold milk with patriarchal grace. There was not a line in her countenance, not a note in her soft and sleepy voice, but spoke of an entire contentment with her life. It would have been fatuous arrogance to pity such a woman. Yet the place where she lived was to me almost ghastly. Less than a dozen wooden houses, all of a shape and all nearly of a size, stood planted along the railway lines. Each ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soul of man could thus lie down in its night of sorrow or of racking passion, on the margin of the waters of hope, confident that the slumber of contentment and peace will seal his eyelids, heavy with long vigils in a world where conflicting interests need constant watching, and that the stillness of the unfathomable depths of those waters will impart its ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... diligent. The same was a Saxon borne, honest and religious, named Daniel. Who after search brought at first some sort of Ore, seeming rather to be yron then other mettal. [Sidenote: Siluer Ore brought vnto the Generall.] The next time he found Ore, which with no small shew of contentment he deliuered vnto the General, vsing prostestation, that if siluer were the thing which might satisfie the Generall and his followers, there it was, aduising him to seeke no further: the perill whereof he vndertooke vpon his life (as deare vnto him as the Crowne of England vnto ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... the truth is, I'm just sort o' tickled over things in general, an' I'm a-settin' here gigglin', jest from pure contentment." ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... to say what I could not have said had you not told me what you have. I want you, Kitty. I want to fill your life with beauty and happiness and contentment. I want you to go with me to see and know the natural wonders of the world, and the wonders that men have wrought. I want to surround you with the beauties of art and literature, with everything that your heart craves. I want ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... to a drop in the temperature of the entente cordiale which had thus far obtained between himself and the gambler. Penfield's eyes promptly lost much of their genial glow, and simultaneously his face seemed weirdly less plump and rosy with prosperity and contentment. Notwithstanding this, with no loss of manner, he lifted a ceremonious glass to the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... figure much too bulky for so young a man, though of a good stature. With crispy curling brown hair, and amiable bright blue eyes. An extremely communicative man: a man with whom loquacity was the irrestrainable outpouring of contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, on the other hand, a cautious man, with twinkling beads of eyes in a large overhanging bald head, who inwardly but intensely enjoyed the comicality of openness of speech, or hand, ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... at her while he spoke, but on finishing looked off at the sea again and continued to agitate his foot. He knew now what he had done and why; and the sense of her fixed dark eyes on him during his speech and after didn't alter his small contentment. Yet even when she still said nothing he didn't turn round; he simply kept his corner as if that were his point made, should it even be the last word between them. It might have been, for that matter, from the way in which she presently rose, gathering herself, her fine umbrella and her ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Contentment's realms no fears invade, No cares annoy, no sorrows shade, There plac'd secure, in peace we rest, Nor aught demand to make us blest. While pleasure's gay fantastic bower, The splendid pageant of an hour, Like ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... evening at the Greenlawn Apartments, a time supposedly of contentment, yet Mrs. Mimms was quick to sense the disturbing vibrations in the warm air. She pressed through the crowds entering and leaving the supermarket. A faint mustache of perspiration formed on her upper lip. No one offered to help her with the bags. With a professional eye Mrs. Mimms noted the drawn ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... to set the example of liberality to other countries. Act thus, and it will be in perfect consistency with the course you have hitherto taken. Act thus, and you will provide an additional guarantee for the continued contentment, and happiness, and well-being of the great body of the people. Act thus, and you will have done whatever human sagacity can do for ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... the sight of which she loved so in April and May. Always for years when the season came round had she gathered one of those buds and carried it home, and it was more to her than any summer flower. The bliss of life passed over into contentment with death, and her delight was so great that she could happily have lain down amid the hum of the insects to ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... had never suffered before. But there was nothing in his countenance to show that he was in pain. Seward had received some long epistle, crossed from end to end,—indicative, I should say, of a not far distant termination to that college tutorship,—and was reading it with placid contentment. It did not occur to him to look across at Grey, but had he done so, I doubt whether he would have seen anything to attract his attention. But Grey, though he was wounded, would not allow himself to be dismayed. There ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Lord Napier were speaking of Mr. Briggs; 'Ah, John,' saith Marchiston, 'Mr. Briggs will not now come:' at the very instant one knocks at the gate; John Marr hasted down, and it proved Mr. Briggs, to his great contentment. He brings Mr. Briggs up into my Lord's chamber, where almost one quarter of an hour was spent, each beholding the other almost with admiration, before one word was spoke: at ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... reigned in peace and glad contentment in his fatherland; and how the joyous sunshine shone wherever he went, and poured a flood of light and warmth and happiness into every nook and corner of his kingdom; and how, at length, after ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... done my duty to my country. If sustained by my fellow-citizens, I shall be grateful and happy; if not, I shall find in the motives which impel me ample grounds for contentment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... ups and downs, as the driver of the property wagon said when we entered this hilly district," replied the manager, with the contentment of a man who has found a snug haven after a hard ride in a comparatively unbroken country. "Affluence we may know, but poverty is apt ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... her into his arms and held her close. And without saying a word, his manner gave assurance of contentment ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... it is, the air is so pretty, the women sang so softly and sleepily, the music sounded so soothingly as we glided along the water, that I felt in a pleasant half-dreamy state of perfect contentment, and was sorry when, arriving at the landing-place, we had to return to a carriage and civilized life, with nothing but the garlands of flowers to remind us of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the continued and increasing prosperity of our country. By the favor of Divine Providence we have been blessed during the past year with health, with abundant harvests, with profitable employment for all our people, and with contentment at home, and with peace and friendship with other nations. The occurrence of the twenty-fourth election of Chief Magistrate has afforded another opportunity to the people of the United States to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... tenure might have made prosperity and contentment the lot of the native race, and, perhaps, have rendered possible such a solution of the Irish problem as was effected between England and Scotland two centuries ago. What was chiefly required for agrarian peace was a recognition of that sense of partnership in the land—a relic ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... when I've got it, but it's called a 'Scorodonia' in Sowerby, and something very ugly besides;—I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish: and now—how will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the family relations to their contentment? ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... cruelty in conjugal love: in its normal state it is all peace, contentment, happiness, while romantic love, in its normal state, is chiefly unrest, doubt, fear, anxiety, torture and anguish of heart—with alternating hours of frantic elation—until the Yes has ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and that was stretched out to that same Peter when he was ready to sink. The breast that is girt with the golden girdle of priestly sovereignty is the same tender home on which John's happy head rested in placid contentment. All the love that ever flowed from Christ flows from Him still. To Him, 'whose nature and whose name are Love,' it matters nothing whether He is in the house at Bethany, or in the upper room, or hanging on the Cross, or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Socrates. 'Opening this box,' which is Socrates, says he, 'you would have found within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible disregard of all that for which men cunningly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil, and turmoil themselves.' In such wise must his book be opened, and the 'high conceptions' with which it is stuffed will presently be apparent. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... of all the riot and wickedness about the Black Hills, the mad striving after sudden gold, and the total lack of real joy in its use after getting it, suggested to Jim a sermon founded on the proverb: "Better is a dinner of herbs and contentment therewith, etc...." But, for once in his life, Hartigan was a little abashed by the situation and, reciting the verses from memory, he managed to get them mixed and rendered them thus: "Better is a stalled ox and contentment therewith than a dinner of herbs with a brawling woman." It made an ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... much like the previous one, except that there was a quiet contentment about Amos in spite of his real mourning for his baby daughter, that had been foreign to him for years. It was the garden that did this. Not only was it a wonderful garden to look on and to eat from, but with it Amos paid for milk and butter from the Nortons and for a part of his ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... hand to her. Bertha cast a glance at Rupius. It seemed to her that an expression of contentment should now be observable on his features. To her amazement, however, she saw that he was gazing into the corner of the room with an almost ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... chosen work. He is more alive, more possessed with the belief that life with its opportunities is worth while, than is the case with the ordinary man going about his petty concerns. In common life, the busiest man is the happiest man, that is the most satisfied; and this contentment springs from the consciousness of doing something worth doing, the advantage of which will remain. With the man of genius, the feeling rises to elation, to rapture, when he considers the transcendent, imperishable nature of his work. "Dass ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... full of sweet, trustful thoughts. She was conscious of a presence within her heart and all around that she knew was Divine, and in spite of her anxiety about her father and the uncertainty of the future, she had a rest and contentment of mind that she had never experienced before. Then she felt such a genuine sympathy for the sufferers about her, and found them so grateful when she spoke to them gently and kindly, that she wondered she had never before discovered the joy of ministering to others. She ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... began a serious conversation. How sad that Mozart, passionate as he was, keenly alive to all the beauties of the world, and full of the highest aspirations, never knew peace and contentment, in spite of all that he enjoyed and created in his short life. The reason is easily found in those weaknesses, apparently unconquerable, which were so large a part of his character. The man's needs were many; his fondness for society extraordinarily great. Honored and sought by all the families ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... such enterprise as may seem convenient to be undertaken with such few as we are presently able to make, and withal of such certain likelihood, as with God's good success which it may please him to bestow upon us, the same may promise to yield us any sufficient contentment: we do therefore conclude hereupon, that it is better to hold sure as we may the honour already gotten, and with the same to return towards our gracious sovereign and country, from whence, if it shall please ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... like things that would love you. And then, too, in her eyes the shop meant Madame Jupillon's three dogs, three wretched curs; she always had them on her knees, she scolded them and kissed them and talked to them; and when she was warm with their warmth, she would feel in the depths of her heart the contentment of a beast rubbing against her little ones. Again, the shop to her meant all the gossip of the quarter, the rendezvous of all the scandals,—how this one had failed to pay her note and that one had received a carriage load of flowers; it meant a place that was on the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... had thus far been effected with very little regard to the wants of human nature. There were no women there. Without the honored wife there cannot be the happy home; and without the home there can be no contentment. To herd together five hundred men upon the banks of a foreign stream, three thousand miles from their native land, without women and children, and to expect them to lay the foundation of a happy and prosperous colony, seems ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... frontier, which in this record grows to epic meanings and dimensions. Its savage hardships, though never minimized, take their due place in its powerful history; the defeat which the victims underwent cannot rob the victors of their many claims to glory. If there was little contentment in this border there was still much rapture. Such things Mr. Garland reveals without saying them too plainly: the epic qualities of his book—as in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi—lie in its implications; the tale itself ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... know, is situated upon a small, crooked and very dirty street, yet none the less, it is an abode of contentment for those who know good living. When Helena and I entered the door I felt as one again at home. Here were the sanded floors, the old water-bottles, the large chandelier with its cut glasses in the middle of the room, the small tables with their coarse clean linen. The same old ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... has written PLAIN, in unmistakable characters. Yet if the outward features had been a reflex of the soul within, few faces would have been more attractive than that of Hester Cameron. At the feet of the sexton's wife, for such she was, reposed a maltese cat, purring softly by way of showing her contentment. Indeed, she had good reason to be satisfied. In default of children, puss had become a privileged pet, being well fed and carefully shielded from all ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... preach—I hate to prate— - I'm no fanatic croaker, But learn contentment from the fate Of this East India broker. He'd everything a man of taste Could ever want, except a waist; And discontent His size anent, And bootless perseverance blind, Completely wrecked the peace of mind Of this East ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... not see her face, so was ignorant of the conflict. If her hand trembled within his own he did not notice it. She looked down at the profile so clearly outlined. What strength, what sweetness, what contentment! To-morrow she would tell him, but not to-day. This moment was hers, and no past memory had the right ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... tumults, and seditious fames, differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; especially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced: for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith; conflata magna invidia, seu bene seu male gesta premunt. Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the suppressing of them with too much severity, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... during the whole of their young lives. Under her wise management all jealousy was avoided between the two sets of children; urged on by her stirring example, Thomas Lincoln supplied the yet unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows, and life became more comfortable for all its inmates, contentment if not happiness reigning ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... with the characteristic contentment of her people under all circumstances, she settled down quietly to aid him and make his home happy; bore him many children (most of whom were dead at the time I saw her, as those living were separated from her at that period), reared and educated ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... ceremony finished and at an end—for it lasted three days, to the great contentment of the people—Messire Bruyn with great pomp led the little one to his castle, and, according to the custom of husbands, had her put solemnly to bed in his couch, which was blessed by the Abbot of Marmoustiers; ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... me so abruptly,' said Olinthus, 'hast thou been happy? has thy heart found contentment under these priestly robes? hast thou, still yearning for the voice of God, heard it whisper comfort to thee from the oracles of Isis? That sigh, that averted countenance, give me ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... beauty of interdependence should also be taught. Herein, indeed, lies more than at first appears. To make the most out of little is the great work of life; to be contented with what one has, and to make the best of it with happiness and contentment is surely no small lesson, and one which is constantly, though indirectly, taught in the kindergarten work and ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to his own desires. Excepting that peace which, through God's infinite mercy, is derived from a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, but for every blessing which I enjoy; health of mind and activity of mind, contentment, cheerfulness, continual employment, and therewith continual pleasure. Sua vissima vita indies, sentire se fieri meliorem; and this as Bacon has said, and Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys in retirement. To ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... tears and regrets, we have torn ourselves away from the cabin, where we could have spent another month or six weeks in perfect contentment; but a storm being predicted, and duck-shooting and fly-fishing being part of our Colorado programme, we accepted the loan of a house on a farm down in the valley, and are installed in it. It wanted a certain amount of pluck, on first seeing our accommodation, to come down. Our house is one ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... all forest fruits; the time when all men are incipient hunters, when the first frosts have given pungency to the air, when to be abroad on the hills or in the woods is a delight that both old and young feel,—if the red aborigine ever had his summer of fullness and contentment, it must have been at this season, and it ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Contentment! have thou that, and all is had; Thrust thy slipper on, and think thee that the earth ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... and saving qualities, together with good character, are the essential points to be observed by young men and women, equally well by husband and wife, in order to maintain prosperity and contentment. ...
— Plain Facts • G. A. Bauman
... young man how hard her lot had been to conceal a love which she had no right to own, because it had never been asked; how hard it had been for her to simulate contentment and cheerfulness, but after all how it had been her comfort and support, because she had never doubted that he ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... discussion in the house, and confined the general conversation exclusively to fish. That this thoughtful act was appreciated by the overworked politician it is needless to remark; he settled down to his brief respite with a tranquil contentment and complete blankness of mind which only the cleverest of us can ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... technicalities of the law or proceeding by the ordinary methods, or condemning to pecuniary fines; but observing throughout the provisions of the decrees that shall be given you. And in order that all may enjoy the blessings which must ensue from so mild a government, and may live in ease and contentment, and without any perturbation in the great undertakings that, God helping, will be accomplished, I am writing in like tenor to the bishop of the said islands in regard to what touches their ecclesiastical service. You shall give him my letter, which shall be delivered to you, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... the feeling of the thing. Your lawyer may be the best man in the world to lay out your money in a speculation, but he doesn't dare to buy contentment for you. He doesn't see it, and one hardly dares to try and make him see it. I'd give the half of it all to have the other half, but I cannot tell him that. I'd give one half so long as that fellow wasn't to be the owner of the other. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... a fortune to him. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a moment causes the heart to ache—abundance spreads the table of the poor man, and contentment smiles on every countenance."[11] Other accounts told glowingly of quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the early stages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when the tide of migration arrived ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... making a record in school. He had two daughters who helped their mother; he had a cottage, a little yard, a few flowers, a garden. He worked hard in a garage by day and evenings he cultivated his flowers, his garden, and his family. He had health, plus contentment a-plenty. His possessions were few and the care of them ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... comprehend,—the reward of which, in case of success, is never found in the venal pay nor in the patients themselves, but in the gentle satisfaction of conscience, in the invisible ideal palm gathered by true artists from the contentment which fills their soul after accomplishing a noble work. The physician strains towards good as an artist towards beauty, each impelled by that grand sentiment which we call virtue. This daily contest wiped out of Doctor Martener's mind the petty irritations of that ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the baby, whose black eyes fixed themselves on her mother in a momentary contentment; but, at the first movement, she began again her fretful ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... desolate. The bed of the lake is but a rushy swamp; and the massive ruins of the Castle only serve to show what their splendour once was, and to impress on the musing visitor the transitory value of human possessions, and the happiness of those who enjoy a humble lot in virtuous contentment. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... rusted for want of the oil of contentment it is not incomprehensible that the bulk of the people should have come to regard the Siege as a thing interminable; and faith in miracles was not the average citizen's predominant characteristic. The mere mention of the Column ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... be contented—or rather you must put up with it—if you can get nothing better. That's the meaning of contentment all the world over. You argue in a circle. You must be a mere clerk if you cannot do better than other mere clerks. But the fact of your having such an offer as that I now make you, is proof that you can do better than others; proves, in fact, that you need not be a mere clerk, unless you ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... rings throughout the land they coolly recommend rapid church extension, thus literally offering stone to those who ask them for bread. To get the substantial and give the spiritual is their practical Christianity. To spiritualise the poor into contentment with the 'nourishing broth' from thrice boiled bones, and to die of hunger rather than demand relief, are their darling objects. Verily, if these and men like these do not grind the faces of the poor, the Author of this Apology is unable ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... her love. And these simple tales pleased the old and riven oak-tree; they were not as heroic as the tales the winds, the clouds, and the stars told, but they were far sweeter, for they were tales of contentment, ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... the pack had denned to the south and few encroached on Breed's hunting territory. Deer were still plentiful, even after a winter of hard hunting, and he found little difficulty in supplying meat. There was but one flaw in his contentment. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... roll slowly through his nostrils as well as out at his mouth, so that it kept curling quietly round his nose, and up his cheeks, and into his eyes, and through his hair in a most delightful manner; at least so it would seem, for his reddish-brown face beamed with happy contentment. ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... with immense satisfaction and contentment—and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving—and that ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... abroad. At night they discussed theology, read aloud to one another, or translated scientific brochures from French or German. It sounds a terrible life of pressure and deprivation, and that it was physically unwholesome there can be no shadow of a doubt. But their contentment was complete and unfeigned. In the midst of this, materially, the hardest moment of their lives, when I was one year old, and there was a question of our leaving London, my Mother recorded ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... people prosperous, it gave them an exaggerated idea of the size of the British purse, and they may be disappointed at the limitation of our spending powers in the future. Also it was hard on the bravest and most chivalrous of fighting men. But it opened the eyes of the native, whose happiness and contentment were obvious directly we ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... Virginia with the unexpectedness and appalling swiftness of a bolt from the blue. From a tranquil state of contentment and comparative happiness she suddenly awoke to the fact that she had made a terrible mistake, and when she realized the full significance of her misfortune, she sank nerveless on to a sofa in her boudoir and gave ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... relation of master and slave as one of mutual affection, had only to witness these unique demonstrations of rejoicing at our approach, and the seemingly certain destruction of the slave owners, to be convinced that the happiness and contentment claimed for those in servitude was but a worthless fiction. The negroes, gathering in crowds along the wayside, would grasp the hands of the Union soldiers, calling down all manner of blessings upon them, and leaping and dancing in ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... of Godliness: God manifest in the flesh, believed on in the world and received up into glory. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... and favour spasmodic, and for a time perhaps, great intellectual and physical exertion, with a succeeding period of exhaustion. Simpler food favours long, sustained, uniform muscular strength, clearness of intellect, and contentment. Let no one misunderstand us; we do not assert that all who live on simple food have either clear intellects or are contented, because there are other factors besides food, but that such qualities are more easily retained or obtained under that condition. It is well known that ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... in his reply, thanked God "for having caused him to be born in such an age, under such a government, and for having made him the subject of a king whom he was constrained to love," and the thanksgiving was re-echoed by the whole Assembly. But this contentment did not last long. The embarrassments of the Treasury were too serious to be dissipated by soft speeches. The Notables were hardly dissolved before the archbishop proposed a new loan of an enormous amount; and, as he might have foreseen, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... how anybody with Christian faith can believe in ghosts," said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt a certain feminine contentment in hearing him. The minister was a child to her; she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and yet she loved to hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... door has been slammed, so to speak, for another twelve months. Nevertheless, we all found that a strain of philosophy smoothed out the rough realities, and in a short time were facing the situation with composure, if not actual contentment. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... corporation of Edinburgh; and by Mr. Canning, who considered it was intended to undermine the barriers which resisted the inroads of a more wide and sweeping innovation. Mr. Canning also brought forward the unexampled prosperity of Edinburgh, and the contentment which pervaded its population, as a convincing proof of the excellence of the old system. After expatiating on the advantages connected with the Scotch representation, he remarked that his objection to the present motion was its application, as a single instance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to go and stay with her in Rome—and I shall now. Morri and I are the dearest friends—and her things did look lovely the day she came to see us at Tours—with the prince's coronet on them—" and then the first shadow came to her contentment. "That is the only pity about you—even with a castle, you haven't a coronet, I suppose?" regretfully. "I should have liked one on my ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... at last regained the haven of my repose and happiness. I have returned to my fortress of contentment. But how is it that this roof of rushes, so dear to me, does not receive me as a friend, and the walls say not to me, 'Thou art welcome.' Nothing has changed, since my departure, in this abode I have chosen. There is my table and my bed. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... springing from the crevices of the craggy precipices in rich abundance. Then, again, to see the caution observed in taking up their resting or abiding places for the day, where they may be warmed by the sun, listening to the roar of many waters, and figuratively, we may say, chewing the cud of contentment, and giving themselves up to the full enjoyment of their nomadic life and its romantic haunts. Usually before reposing one of the herd, generally an old doe, may be observed intently gazing below, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Kazan and Gray Wolf found a home under a windfall. It was a small comfortable nest, shut in entirely from the snow and wind. Gray Wolf took possession of it immediately. She flattened herself out on her belly, and panted to show Kazan her contentment and satisfaction. Nature again kept Kazan close at her side. A vision came to him, unreal and dream-like, of that wonderful night under the stars—ages and ages ago, it seemed—when he had fought ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... lovely stream I liken to the truly good man's life, Amid the heat of passions, and the glare Of wordly objects, flowing pure and bright, Shunning the gaze, yet showing where it glides By its green blessings; cheered by happy thoughts, Contentment, and the peace that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Little there remains to tell. Under the beneficent rule of Omar and Liola power, prosperity and contentment have now returned to the mysterious ancient realm, within which I have been the first stranger to set foot. As principal official of the ruler of the land that, although familiar to me, is still a mystery to the Royal Geographical Society, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... near you! Then you are as stupid as you are scoundrelly. Ah, do you imagine that it is for your paternal contentment that your master has burdened himself with that wolf-cub? Do you know what your master said to me? 'I have only one means of subduing that savage beast you sold me, you egregious cheat.—The chances are, that madman loves his little ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... church of St. Maclou, will not be easily forgotten. Thus you see of what various, strange, and striking objects the city of Rouen is composed. Bustle, noise, life and activity, in the midst of an atmosphere unsullied by the fumes of sea coal:—hilarity and apparent contentment:—the spruce bourgeoise and the slattern fille de chambre:—attired in vestments of deep crimson and dark blue—every thing flits before you as if touched by magic, and as if sorrow and misfortune ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... bring up that. I do not want to know her. My darling is happy with Mrs. Carew—too happy. O God! Give me no opportunity for disturbing that contentment. Don't you see that I am consumed ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... therefore, acted as a moat; and it was with that, or some similar feeling of security, we stretched ourselves at full length on the soft moss, and basked in the sun. P——, as usual, drew forth his pipe, and soothing himself with its fumes, exemplified absolute comfort and contentment in the placidity of his countenance. R—— dangled his legs over the edges of the rock; and I, assuming the same attitude, gazed with him on the mountains towering and straggling, at a great distance ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... and only saddle-horses:[332] whereas Lassels hints that no one with much pretension to fashion could go through Paris without a coach followed by three lacqueys and a page.[333] Evelyn, at any rate, thought the expenses of a traveller were "vast": "And believe it Sir, if he reap some contentment extraordinary, from what he hath observed abroad, the pains, sollicitations, watchings, perills, journeys, ill entertainment, absence from friends, and innumerable like inconveniences, joyned to his vast expences, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard |
