"Geniality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... major?" he cried, advancing upon him with outstretched hand and as much show of geniality as ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and to absinthe he united opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of his liaison with the "Ondine" of his muse; she saw only the increasing delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her. Intellectually, too, she felt for him compassion. She recognized and respected in him the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the arrogance of youth, it promised to its ambition. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw her laughing and chatting with such unforced geniality that she muttered: "It's perfectly absurd to imagine that her husband is on the eve of bankruptcy. Even if he tried he couldn't keep such trouble utterly from his wife, and I've seen enough of people to be sure she does ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... a rallying tone of such geniality that Thomson grew more sanguine than ever as to the remission of the more serious part of his sentence, and, with a ghastly grin in response to Rogers' patronising smile, he began to slowly strip. He even, after drawing his shirt over his head, summoned the courage ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... did you enter the service?" he asked with that affectation of military bluntness and geniality with which he always ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Kramers—a pleasant conception which the presence of a De Vaurigard revealed to him as a petty and shameful fiction; and yet his humility, like his little fit of trembling, was of short duration, for gay geniality of Madame de Vaurigard put ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... The latter was among the first to establish iron foundries and engine works at St. Petersburg. At the time of my visit he was far advanced in years, and unable to attend personally to the very large business which he had established. But he was nevertheless full of geniality. He greatly enjoyed the long conversations which he had with me about his friends in Scotland, many of whom I knew. He also told me about the persons in his employment. He said that the workmen were all serfs, or the sons of serfs. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Gillow's," he exclaimed, with an assumption of feverish geniality, "and bring back a couple of rabbits—I mean bottles. They must be ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... land-owner, though his family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much fitted for an English squire. He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked the geniality which is the very body, the outside expression of humanity. Proud of his family, he had the peculiar fault of the Goth—that of arrogance, with its accompanying incapacity for putting oneself in the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... supernatural gravity, without warning, without beginning, the smile, broad, full and effulgent, was instantaneously present. Then equally without warning and without fading the smile ceased to be. Under its effulgence the observer unfamiliar with Mr. Rae's smile was moved, to a responsive geniality of expression, but in the full tide of this emotion he found himself suddenly regarding a face of such preternatural gravity as rebuked the very possibility or suggestion of geniality. Before the smile Mr. Rae's face was like a house, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... "I'll sit here and read for a few minutes," she said, as she tucked Eleanor under the covers. Then, since she was quite desperate for subjects of conversation, and still determined by the hot memory of her night's vigil to leave no stone of geniality unturned, she added: ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... I seen at her feet—how splendid, handsome, gallant, brilliant, chivalrous, lordly, and gay! And to all, from her, the same happy geniality—the same kindly, laughing, frolicsome, innocent gayety, with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... without geniality. Geniality had become impossible to a man always overworked and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who will thank me for not being reserved. Doubtless it will not suit hundreds of people as well as some other localities in Southern California, but I found no other place where I had the feeling of absolute content and willingness to stay on indefinitely. There is a geniality about it for which the thermometer does not account, a charm which it is difficult to explain. Much of the agreeability is due to artificial conditions, but the climate man ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the lodge-keeper, as ten minutes later the gates rolled back again to welcome their lord, in an unusually genial temper (and, indeed, there was always about this old man as great a capacity for geniality on one side as for temper on the other; it is usually so with explosive characters). He even checked his horse and asked after "the missus" in so many words; although two days before a violent message had come down to complain of laxity in the gate-opening, owing to the missus' indisposition ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... contained so much of rank and experience in the great world. Surrounded by all that he loved best, the people, the lights, the colors, and the anticipation of what was to come, the Intendant shone. One forgot his pimply face and portly figure in the geniality that was not assumed, and the ease of his manners. He spoke to Robert more than once, asked him many questions about Albany and New York, and referred incidentally, too, to the Iroquois, but it was all light, as if he were asking them because ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... had made himself persona grata to everybody in the car except his dark-eyed neighbor across the way. That this dispenser of smiles and cigars decided to leave her out in the distribution of his attentions perhaps spoke well for his discernment. Certainly responsiveness to the geniality of casual fellow passengers did not impress Mr. Collins as likely to be an outstanding, quality in her. But with the drummer from Chicago, the young mining engineer going to Sonora, the two shy little English children just in front of him traveling ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... you have given me in seating me at the head of your table involves a duty of weight and delicacy. At such a board as this, where Genius sits smiling at Geniality, the President becomes a formality, and the burden of his duty is to make himself a pleasant nobody, yet natural to the position. Like the apprentice of the armorer, it is my task only to hold the hot iron on the anvil while the skilled ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... ruler, who, however inferior in the ordinary equipment for regular war, holds such valuable assets on his side. And my own experience is that the Afghans are not unreasonable. Like every one else, they will "try it on," but if handled courteously, kindly, with geniality, and, above all, with complete candour, they will generally see reason. And remember one thing. In spite of all that has happened, our mistakes, our bluster, our occasional lapses from complete disingenuousness, ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... to love the country and the people when they knew them thoroughly; they respected them for their bravery, which they had proved a thousand times; they felt attracted toward them on account of their geniality of temperament and their warm social feelings; even their defects of character and their impulsive nature were pleasing to them. They soon sought their company and relationship; they began to intermarry with them; and from ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... sometimes with all the bitterness of a satirist. Even his bitterness is never venomous, however. He is genial beyond the majority of inveterate controversialists and propagandists. He does not hesitate to wound and he does not hesitate to misunderstand, but he is free from malice. The geniality of his comedy, on the other hand, is often more offensive than malice, because it is from an orthodox point of view geniality in the wrong place. It is like a grin in church, a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Thorn had sunk to, out of its palmy state, see in Nanke's Wanderungen durch Preussen (Hamburg & Altona, 1800), ii. 177-200:—a pleasant little Rook, treating mainly of Natural History; but drawing you, by its innocent simplicity and geniality, to read with thanks whatever is in it.] And all that fine German country, reduced to rebel against its unwise parent, was cut away by the Polish sword, and remained with Poland, which did not prove very wise either; till—till, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... geniality, smoking his cigarette in content. And as he ran from one topic to another his hearers stared at him in a kind of torpor. Never once did they exchange a glance with each other; their eyes were frozen to Maurice. The cheerful ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... conceptions of Jesus have generally prevailed down the centuries. One view interprets His character in terms of asceticism; the other in terms of aestheticism.[2] Some regard Him as the representative of Hebrew sorrow and sacrifice; others see in Him the type of Hellenic joy and geniality. There are passages in Scripture confirmatory of both impressions. On the one hand, there is a whole series of virtues of the passive order which are utterly alien to the Greek ideal; and, on the other hand, there is equally prominent a tone of tranquil gladness, of broad sympathy ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... in obtaining a fit and proper person for the post. Robert Hendrick was by birth and education an Ulster man; but having been for several years employed in the south-west, he had acquired something of that geniality, tact, and courtesy which is, perhaps, deficient in the hard Scotch character of the Northerns. There was nothing of professional piety or of the professional reader about Hendrick. A bright, active, ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... all our friends at Helena?" inquired the doctor, after he had secured a favorable report of Eva and the baby. "All well, of course, or I should have heard from them!" he went on, with the geniality that Latimer remembered so well. "And little Arthur—he must ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... maintained a constant geniality in their humor, even in the treatment of distressing themes. For example, Josh Billings made the announcement that one hornet, if it was feeling well, could break up a whole camp meeting. Bill Nye, Artemas Ward and ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... to compare the atmosphere of the Satires and Epistles to the "geniality of a warm winter day"; and Wordsworth to be attracted by his appreciation of "the value of companionable friendship"; and Andrew Lang to address to him the most personal of literary letters; and Austin Dobson to give his Horatian poems ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... imagination, in the faculty of discerning spirits and detecting laws, we doubt if any living novelist is his equal; but his genius, in its creative action, has been heretofore attracted to the dark rather than the bright side of the interior life of humanity, and the geniality which evidently is in him has rarely found adequate expression. In the many works which he may still be expected to write, it is to be hoped that his mind will lose some of its sadness of tone without losing any of its subtilty and depth; but, in any event, it would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... full of such animal life as our brave lads, it will be readily imagined that existence is not wholly composed of shadow; indeed, few careers are so full of brightness and geniality as those of our fighting men. 'Tommy Atkins' is a unique creation. I know not from whence he springs. There is something in his environment which evolves him, I suppose; it is not a question of years of association with men ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... Sam, with unruffled geniality. 'I wouldn't double-cross you for worlds. If, however, you think you can manage without my assistance, it will then be my melancholy duty to beat you to the kid, and collect him and the money entirely on my own account. Am I to take it,' he ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... not think the voices here are generally musical; they are nasal and a little loud and, though Americans have a great deal of geniality and love of fun, I am so slow at picking up the language, that I probably miss much of the irony and finesse that characterises our better kind of humour. The Canadians, who are of British stock, have a better sense of humour; but it is always a dangerous subject to write about, and ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... amusing, in such lightness of air, that the Prince should again present himself only to speak for the Princess, so unfortunately unable, again, to leave home; and that Mrs. Verver should as regularly figure as an embodied, a beautifully deprecating apology for her husband, who was all geniality and humility among his own treasures, but as to whom the legend had grown up that he couldn't bear, with the height of his standards and the tone of the company, in the way of sofas and cabinets, habitually kept by him, the irritation and depression ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... add a touch of picturesque geniality, of excitement even to the pond, being as occasional in its daily life as the crossing of a deer or an otter or the circling of an osprey in summer. Any one of these causes a momentary stir, a local disturbance down ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... five. He was rarely seen to be on foot, and thus avoided old acquaintances. When some journalist or one of his former associates waved him a greeting, he responded with a bow, polite enough to avert annoyance, but significant of such deep contempt as killed all French geniality. He thus had very soon got rid of persons whom he would rather never ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... relaxed to the state of geniality, was willing to let bygones be bygones in the broadest sense of the word. He had big plans afoot—he had had them the night he came home and found Gaston and Joyce hanging over the baby. These plans had been set aside while ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Englishmen in their own tongue, his fame was celebrated by the French poet, Eustace Deschamps, as the "great translator" who had sown the flowers of French poesy in the realm of Aeneas and Brut the Trojan. His broad geniality stood in strong contrast to the savage patriotism of Minot. In becoming national, English vernacular art did not become insular. Chaucer wrote in the tongue of the southern midlands, the region wherein were situated ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... prejudices as any beerseller in his dominions; his subjects might see him at almost any hour of the day or night; and out of the somewhat tough material of his character popular imagination had no difficulty in framing an idol of parental geniality and wisdom. Fifteen years of failure and mismanagement had, however, impaired the beauty of the domestic fiction; and although old-fashioned Austrians, like Haydn, the composer of the Austrian Hymn, were ready to go down to the grave invoking a blessing on their gracious master, the Emperor ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... his arm in a sling and a becoming pallor suffusing his classic features, he became an object of the greatest solicitude to his fellow-passengers. The fluttering attentions he received warmed him into geniality, and in return he dispensed regal favors. He allowed Mrs. Weston to consult him concerning her presentation at court the following spring, he let Andy Black arrange his tie, and permitted Elise Weston to cut ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... had scrubbed a lump of crystal and found it to be a diamond. How was it she had never before discovered these depths of affection and geniality below his awe-inspiring exterior? She had not ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... that Semper Idem was to leave the hospital, hale and hearty, Doctor Bicknell's geniality was in nowise disturbed by the steward's report, and he proceeded cheerfully to bring order out of the chaos of a child's body which had been ground and crunched beneath the wheels of an ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... at a short distance, escorting the older women, making somewhat obvious efforts to control his own irritability, and to impart some sort of geniality to the proceedings. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... criminal knows this and often makes use of his knowledge. A man who has "cussed out'' the other fellow is no longer dangerous, he becomes calm and kind, and feels instinctively the need of repairing the damage he has committed by "going too far.'' He then exhibits an exaggerated geniality and care upon which many criminals count, and hence intentionally provoke the examiner until he does things and says things ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... geniality, indeed, to outface the rigid piety of Jean Paul Victor. His missionary work had carried him far north, where the cold burns men thin. The zeal which drove him north and north and north over untracked regions, drove him until ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... hope. That he was every inch a man no friend or foe ever questioned. Ready, forceful, animated, keen, playful, by turns, and thoroughly artificial; he was one of the most admirable platform speakers that ever appeared before an American audience, his personal geniality, too, being so abounding that, excepting in a political sense, no antagonism existed between him and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... engrossed by their search for gold to run up huts; but many of them sleep in the open air or under the shelter of the trees. A pilot-coat or a pea-jacket is protection enough for those who do not enjoy the luxury of a tent; but the dryness and geniality of the climate are such that injury is very rarely experienced from the night exposure. There are very few women at the first opening of new diggings, the life is too rough and rude; and some of those who do come, rock the cradle—but not the household one—with the men. The diggers, however genteel ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... his life-long relation to its people. He looked a Netherlander rather than a Spaniard, and felt one, so that, so far as he showed favors, he showed them to this opulent people. Charles, with his many faults, had yet a rude geniality, which softened or seemed to soften his asperity toward those ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... was deeply wounded. It had not been her father's way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had softened his faults to ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... do not presume to say what I think about him as a spiritual guide and example; I confine myself to humbler topics. Whatever else he is, Henry Scott Holland is, beyond doubt, one of the most delightful people in the world. In fun and geniality and warm-hearted, hospitality, he is a worthy successor of Sydney Smith, whose official house he inhabits; and to those elements of agreeableness he adds certain others which his famous predecessor could scarcely have claimed. He has all the sensitiveness ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... may cry "Down with draperies!"—but we members of that choicer cult known as domestic science stand loyally by them, for though in draperies there may he microbes, there is also largess of coziness and geniality. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... the mouth under the black mustache wrinkled with his smile. And as he walked by her side they began a wrangle that was none the less pleasant to Ann Veronica because it served to banish a disagreeable preoccupation. It seemed to her in her restored geniality that she liked Manning extremely. The brightness Capes had diffused over the world glorified ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... through the door, the air of geniality the doctor had been wearing during the brief interview vanished from his countenance, and it relapsed into its wonted ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... grim kind of geniality, at which I did not know whether to be encouraged or not: I did as he told me, and looked about me with as easy an air as ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... amidst sacred groves and graceful palms, lighten the banks. On the broad steps of the bathing ghats are assembled crowds of pious worshippers in clothes of every brilliant hue. The river has an aspect of kindliness and geniality and life-givingness. Its waters and rich silt have brought plenty to many a barren acre, and the dwellers on its banks know well that it issues from the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... obliterated and badly mended with fumbling, indecisive touches. His restless hands unceasingly wrung each other as if he had that moment made his own acquaintance and was trying to infuse a false geniality into ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... and malignant tyrant to good-natured, interestingly talkative old gentleman. After the manner of human nature, Mildred and her mother, in their relief, in their pleasure through this amazing sudden and wholly unexpected geniality, not merely forgave but forgot all they had suffered at his hands. Mildred was not without a suspicion of the truth that this change, inaugurated in his own good time, was fresh evidence of his contempt for both of them—of his feeling that he could easily make reparation ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... are sacrificed to the severe demands of the national ends, to which they must surrender themselves in this service of abstract generalisation. The Roman state is not a repetition of such a state of individuals as was the Athenian polis. The geniality and joy of soul that existed there have given place to harsh and rigorous toil. The interest of history ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... human in feeling, betraying the nicest choice of words and the most studied care for elegant and effective arrangement, and yet penetrated by geniality, enlivened by humor, elevated by high moral aims, often using the dangerous weapons of irony and satire, and yet always well-mannered and kindly,—these papers reveal the sensitive nature of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... visit," said the author, addressing his guests with all the geniality of which he was master (for they seemed somewhat stiff and ill-at-ease), "gives me peculiar gratification. I regret not having asked some of my friends, the critics, up here to make your acquaintance. I am sure you would all come to ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... were really at fault. And so, even in that lighthearted battalion, his sterling worth compelled respect. All honoured his efforts and wished him God-speed. "While there were many," says Colonel Turnley, "who seemed to surpass him in intellect, in geniality, and in good-fellowship, there was no one of our class who more absolutely possessed the respect and confidence of all; and in the end Old Jack, as he was always called, with his desperate earnestness, his unflinching straightforwardness, and his high sense of honour, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton himself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Touchett. It was a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one; there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... a note of extreme geniality]. Thank you, Mrs O'Flaherty. Well, you see we've brought you back your son safe and sound. I ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... was geniality itself. "It is," he answered; "a very strong recommendation." He thrust out a friendly hand. "Good-night, my son, and good ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... cheese-mite, and was therefore strong on Cheshire and Stilton. Culture takes the grocer out of his molasses and makes him genial. We pay a heavy price for those fancy goods, Fine Arts and Philosophy. No performance is worth loss of geniality. That unhappy man called of genius, is an unfortunate man. Nature always carries her point despite ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... clutching the stranger's sleeve, with an effort at geniality. Simmons' clerk ruefully tested the weight of a small, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... what he was afterwards when he preached to thousands of eager people in the Boston Musichall; the same plain, simple, rustic, racy man. His congregation were his personal friends. They loved him and admired him and were proud of him; and his geniality and tender sympathy, his ample knowledge of things as well as of books, drew to him all ages and sexes ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... bright eyes that contradict so pleasantly the heavy cast of his features began to twinkle. Little lines of geniality formed at their corners and rayed out over his cheeks. He beamed kindliness, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... matter, enliven it with a multitude of characters, occupy the intellect of the thoughtful, the imagination of the lively; spread the board with solid viands, delicate rarities, and sparkling wines; and throw, along the whole extent of it, geniality and festal crowns. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... smooth, pleasant face, a good eye, and the yellow hair of his countrymen. His nature was all sunshine, geniality, and many a joke he practiced upon his comrades, taking all in good humor those passed upon him. One day, as a comrade had been "indulging" too freely, another ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... manner, the natural gallantry of the sailor. If it were but clear that Sylvia took as little thought of him as he did of her, to all appearance, Philip could even have given him praise for manly good looks, and a certain kind of geniality of disposition which made him ready to smile pleasantly at all strangers, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... thunderbolt, an explosion. Not a bit of it. M. Charnot smiled outright with an air of extreme geniality. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... story is doubted, and its narrow outlook is not that of prophetic Judaism. Observed as mediaeval Jews observed it, Purim was a thoroughly innocent festivity. The unpleasant taste left by the closing scenes of the book was washed off by the geniality of temper which saw the humours of Haman's fall and never for a moment rested in a feeling of vindictiveness. But the whole book breathes so nationalistic a spirit, so uncompromising a belief that the enemy ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... quickness saved him. He was perfectly aware of all those jealous masculine eyes, flickering now with repressed and delighted laughter over his discomfiture. He recovered himself in a moment and slipped easily and with unabated geniality into a conversation with ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... eyes smile it away in a moment. He stands six feet and an inch, his back his broad, his step springy; he carries his head erect on his massive shoulders with a leonine air of good-humoured defiance. To hear him greet you, to feel his hand-shake, is to get a lesson in geniality. I never knew a man who had so whole-hearted a contempt for insincerity and affectation. It was only the other day that I saw little TOM TITTERTON, of the Diplomatic Service, introduced to him. TOM is a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... it behooved him to be silent during such discussions, was encouraged by her geniality to venture, "I don't see how you can learn anything in such a turmoil; or how you can keep your mind on it, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... in this humour no man could excel him in geniality, and, to do him justice, a kindly temper and hearty spirits were the rule with him six days out of seven. On the other hand, he was easily ruffled and his tempers were hot while they lasted. Upon the very next morning there arose on the horizon a little cloud, a cloud that seemed at the moment ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... time might return again, was clearly enough felt by Sebastian the elder—a time like that of William the Silent, with its insane civil animosities, which would demand similarly energetic personalities, and offer them similar opportunities. And then, it was part of his honest geniality of character to admire those who "get on" in the world. Himself had been, almost from boyhood, in contact with great affairs. A member of the States-General which had taken so hardly the kingly airs of Frederick Henry, he had assisted at the Congress ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... whom seven or eight only were in any sense liberals, and not one of them a republican. It was now that he made the acquaintance of Lacaita, afterwards so valued a friend of his, and so well known in many circles in England for his geniality, cultivation, and enlightenment. He was the legal adviser to the British embassy; he met Mr. Gladstone constantly; they talked politics and literature day and night, 'under the acacias and palms, between the fountains and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... autograph, written with the very same pen with which I wrote my great book. This they called a privilege. They made us promise to go over to the Castle, which I have no great purpose of doing. We parted with mutual goodwill, and with that increase of geniality on my own part which comes on me at the end of a visit. Altogether I did not dislike it, though it did not seem to me particularly worth while. To-day my wife tells me that they told the Fitzpatricks that it was a great pleasure seeing me, because I was so modest and unaffected. That is a ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the stout woman. Sally scrutinised her. She had been pretty, but had grown fat. She had puffs round her eyes, and swollen lips, and a cat-like expression of geniality. Behind her agreeable smile there was suspicion of all mankind, suspicion and wariness, due to her constant need of self-control in the difficult business of managing noisy or cantankerous guests. Sally did not like her. "Tabby!" she thought ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... King's education ideal, and his personal fitness unrivalled. No other young American approached him for the combination of chances — physical energy, social standing, mental scope and training, wit, geniality, and science, that seemed superlatively American and irresistibly strong. His nearest rival was Alexander Agassiz, and, as far as their friends knew, no one else could be classed with them in the running. The result of twenty years' ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... his College and in his University, can be explained only by the fact that he possessed the qualities necessary for the work he had to do,—strong common-sense, moderation, and geniality. He had to live, as the most prominent man, in a society composed of three factions crowded together within the narrow limits of a University town, which even in quiet times is not always the abode of peace. He had to deal with the most burning ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... laugh Chesterton has. It is like a clap of thunder that suddenly startles the echoes in the valley; it is the very soul of geniality. There is nothing that so lays bare a man's character as his laugh—it cannot pretend. We can pretend to like; we can pretend to be pleased; we can pretend to listen; we can't pretend to laugh. Chesterton laughs because he is amused; he is amused at ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the western world, with every form of caravansary. Henrietta expressed the opinion that American hotels were the best in the world, and Mrs. Touchett, fresh from a renewed struggle with them, recorded a conviction that they were the worst. Ralph, with his experimental geniality, suggested, by way of healing the breach, that the truth lay between the two extremes and that the establishments in question ought to be described as fair middling. This contribution to the discussion, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... locket. At once dropping his search for a partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,—a Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more—what could one call it?—geniality, perhaps. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... stiff with dread anticipation and dislike. Dale's manner did not mislead her; his forced geniality, his gruff heartiness, his huge smile, were all insincere, masking evil. He seemed to her like a big, tawny, grinning beast, and her heart thumped with trepidation as she ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Robinson told nothing in itself, and the width of a whole great continent lay between him and the place of his fame. He was able to take his part freely amongst both the passengers and the officers. Even amongst the crew he soon came to be known; the men liked his geniality, and instinctively respected his enormous strength and his manifest force of character. Men who work and who know danger soon learn to recognise the forces which overcome both. And as sufficient time had not elapsed to impair his hardihood or lower his vast strength he was facile princeps. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... in on my way home to ask you a question about something that has excited my curiosity," said the Mayor, with careless geniality. "But I see you have ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Brotherly Love Baily notes the geniality of the people, who by many travelers are called aristocratic, and comments on Quaker opposition to the theater and the inconsequence of the Peale Museum, which travelers a generation later highly praise. Proceeding to New York at a cost of six dollars, he is struck by the uncouthness of the ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... his own high standards, never thinking of outward effect nor testing the pulse of the fickle public. As a man there is no doubt that he was warm-hearted and vigorous, but his was not the nature to come forward with captivating geniality. On the contrary he expects the hearer to come to him, and is too reserved to meet you more than half-way. That this austerity has proved a bar in the way of a wide-spread fame, while to be regretted, is unavoidable; ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the station. He wore large, very round spectacles. His black clerical coat and trousers and hat were scrupulously clean and smartly cut. He was not a dandy, but he was not shabby. He smiled a great deal, not nervously as curates are supposed to smile, not effusively, but simply with geniality. His aunt was a contrast, thin, straight, stiff white collar, little black bow-tie, coat like a man's, skirt with no nonsense about it. No nonsense about her anywhere. She was not unamiable, perhaps, but business ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... geniality of the two ladies. About the country of their visitors, their calling, and the objects of their journey, they put a thousand questions. The European costume, and especially the straw hats, interested them greatly. Yet there was a certain air of coldness and impassiveness ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... a man of great charm and geniality in society; even to Americans, though he detested America with the energy of fear—the fear of all who see its prosperity sapping the foundations of their class society. He died in 1865; and in 1867 his biography was published by Sir ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... work of fiction they cause an absence of that dignity to which even a novel may aspire. You feel that each morsel as you read it is a detached bit, and that it has all been written in detachments. The book is robbed of its integrity by a certain good-humoured geniality of language, which causes the reader to be almost too much at home with his author. There is a saying that familiarity breeds contempt, and I have been sometimes inclined to think that our author has sometimes failed to stand up for himself with ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... instinct of the natural diagnostician, she knew enough to realise that his methods and knowledge were up to date. Even that manner of his, though a little forbidding, had the merit of inspiring confidence. One felt he was a big man and could afford to dispense with geniality. Yet it was perfectly apparent that his practice never came first with him. Esther had not been in the house with him half a week before she made that discovery. Every free minute of the day found him engrossed ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... out with automatic geniality, as he descended the broken steps. "How are ye? All here? That's good; that's ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... making this small selection from a great mass of material has been twofold. First, I was willing to oblige a friend and comrade who is for me the pattern of wisdom, sincerity, good humour, justice, tranquillity, and geniality. But secondly I was still more concerned (a preference which you will be very far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... class which it was necessary to reach. He knew the men who at the University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to represent the University in the somewhat thankless task of coaxing and coercing backward communities to expend the necessary money and effort to bring their schools up ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... judgments; but I feel that I speak the truth when I describe him as a man of singularly strong common sense, of great acuteness, truthfulness, and integrity of judgment. These were great judicial qualities, and to these he added much simplicity and geniality of temper and manners; and all these were crowned by a firm, unhesitating, devout belief in the doctrines of our faith, which issued in strictness to himself and the warmest, gentlest charity to his fellow-creatures. The result was what you might expect. Altogether it would be hard ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... told the Major; and since he insists upon keeping up a burdensome geniality, she has been compelled to break her vow of not speaking to Kurrell. This speech, which must of necessity preserve the semblance of politeness and interest, serves admirably to keep alight the flame of jealousy ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... resist dissociation and defy analysis. Perhaps this fact accounts for Tolstoi's contempt for some of the classic art. It seems to me that most classic art is one of two things: either it smacks of smug content and over-fed geniality or it is permeated with a profound pessimism. The philosophers are worse than the artists; they are the ringleaders of the betrayers of humanity. Art at least makes the atonement of beauty for its mistakes, but this ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... face, even in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations of his mind and character. With his almost acid sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity in act, there went none of that large, unconscious geniality of the world's heroes. He was not easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind; his enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to be convincing; he had no waste lands nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharpened to a point. "He was bred to no profession," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in early manhood is described by friends as one of peculiar manliness, geniality, and unselfishness. It is said that, on one occasion, he put aside important work of his own in order to spend several days in the studio of a friend, whose gifts were quite inconsiderable compared with his, and whose prospects were all but hopeless,—helping forward ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... James Chance was one of the old English type of clergyman, cheery, genial, and whole-souled. Had he planned nothing higher than the infusing of some of his own geniality into the Indian nature; and, had his missionary work effected nothing greater than this, his would have been no unworthy part. As the spiritual husbandman, he strove so to break up the fallow ground, that the harvest of souls might be the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical conversation of drawing-rooms furnished with highly respectable matrons. When, alas! will respectability be charming? When will the women in good society vouchsafe to show rather less of their shoulders and rather more wit or geniality? Marguerite Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique, is one of those frank, very living personalities to whom all is forgiven, such unconscious sinners are they, such intelligent penitents; of such as Malaga one might ask, like Cardot—a witty man ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... "Was this not geniality itself? No other great man I have met is like him. I played the Funeral March, which was also to his taste. Then, after a little talk, I took leave, with the consciousness of having spent two of the most interesting hours ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... smoking in such close quarters, with even such a woman-stranger. 'I hope, madam,' he said, 'a segar does not offend you?' 'La! no, sir,' replied our rustic friend most good-naturedly, 'I like it.' My father's geniality is always called forth by the touch of his segar. He said, with a smile at the corners of his mouth: 'Perhaps, madam, you would try one yourself.' 'I would!' she answered eagerly. My father hospitably selected his best segar, which she took, saying: 'Thank ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... head of his table, peeling oranges and slicing pineapples for the ladies in his vicinity, sat the Bourgeois himself, laughing, jesting, and telling anecdotes with a geniality that was contagious. "'The gods are merry sometimes,' says Homer, 'and their laughter shakes Olympus!'" was the classical remark of Father de Berey, at the other end of the table. Jupiter did not laugh with less loss of dignity than ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... an attractive lady with dark hair and eyebrows and dancing eyes, and there was a geniality and even generosity in her rather imperious ways. In most matters she could command her brother, though that nobleman, like many other men of vague ideas, was not without a touch of the bully when he was at bay. She could ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... back, and added, with a simple geniality that seemed to spring rather from a desire to be kind than from ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... that day fairly at an end, and the hour arrived for relaxation. His expression, his very nature, seemed to have undergone a fundamental change. Gondremark at home appeared the very antipode of Gondremark on duty. He had an air of massive jollity that well became him; grossness and geniality sat upon his features; and along with his manners, he had laid aside his sly and sinister expression. He lolled there, sunning his bulk before the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alternately studying her husband and daughter. They might have been actors performing for her amusement. And yet, amusement is not precisely the word. For that hazel eye, with its frequent smile, had not a spark of geniality. After a time those about her found something ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was in the fire again between the two old antagonists; and the discord was all the worse because Huerlin was now convinced that Finkenbein had known of the plot and helped it along. The latter bore himself with unchanged geniality and comradeship; but since Huerlin now always suspected him, and took in bad part his jesting designations as "the Councillor," "Herr von Huerlin," and the like, the Sun-Brotherhood soon split into two parties. The manufacturer ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Benny Rowett, hands in trouser-pockets, came dandering along. He, too, taking the geniality of every one for granted, halted, spread his legs wide ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the sight of him she stood where she was. The man who faced her, with all his old confusion of nervousness and uneasy geniality, was, indeed, Uncle Mathew, but Uncle Mathew glorified, shabbily glorified and at the same time a little abashed as though she had caught him in the act of laying a mine that would blow up the whole house. He was wearing finer clothes than she had ever seen him in before—a ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... where he engaged himself in a similar way at a small town on the banks of the lovely Hudson river. At college, in spite of his rough western dress and manners, he earned for himself the reputation of a thoroughly good fellow. Indeed, geniality and warmth of manner, qualities always much prized by the social American people, were very marked traits throughout of Garfield's character, and no doubt helped him greatly in after life in rising to the high summit which he finally reached. It was here, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... house was occupied by Doctor Caspar Wistar, the eminent anatomist, known to the elite of the city and nation for his brilliant social gatherings and as the man for whom that beautiful climbing plant, the Wistaria, was named. Doctor Wistar's geniality, magnetism, intellectual leadership and generous hospitality made his home a gathering place for the most distinguished personages of his day in the professions, arts, sciences, letters and politics. Since he held a chair at the University of Pennsylvania and carried on ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... Balfour said: "I think you know each other," the manager of the Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed genially and said: "Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart." The geniality was genuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in it a veiled taunt. To him it ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... garment of life and to turn the grout in a drained cup. Better, after all, that we knew a painter only through his vision and a poet through his song, than that the image of a great man should be marred and made mean for us by the clumsy geniality of good intentions. A true artist, and such Rossetti undoubtedly was, reveals himself so perfectly in his work, that unless a biographer has something more valuable to give us than idle anecdotes and unmeaning tales, his labour is misspent and his ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... geniality.] I don't mind telling you now, Horsham, that ever since we met at Shapters I've been wondering how you'd escape from this association with Trebell. Thought he was being very clever when he crossed the House to us! It's needed a special providence. You'd never have ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... her wrap, retained with her on the back of the chair. Lee met the pleasant decisiveness of her capable hand, the doctor grasped his fingers with a robust witticism; and he was replying to the Davencotts' geniality when he had a glimpse of Mrs. Grove's face turned slightly from him: the curve of her cheek met the pointed chin and the graceful contour of her exposed long throat; there was the shadow of a tormenting ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... generally finds in the faces of those accustomed to command. He had a large face, with large regular features, and large clear gray eyes, all of which united to express an exceeding placidity or repose. It shone with intelligence—a mild intelligence—no way suggestive of profundity, although of geniality. Indeed, there was a little too much expression. The face seemed to express ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and throve in the warmth of its own geniality, a man who was loyal to himself alone, and had no geniality about him, was watching with contempt these British doings. Carne had tethered his stout black horse, who deserved a better master, in a dusky dell of dark-winged ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... that I was puzzled, for I had been quite unable to arrive at any distinct impression of the character of the man. For while, on the one hand, his manner to me was cordial, with the somewhat rough and unpolished geniality of a man of a coarse and violent temperament striving to conquer his natural disposition and render himself agreeable, I could find no fault with the arrangements he proposed to make for my own comfort ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... thought, very well suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality than he found himself glooming over Nan and tempted to go back and break in on that ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown |
