"Optimism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miss Bibby's phrase—ever her gentle optimism. If you lost your temper, your manners, your courage, any of your higher qualities, you had "forgotten yourself," forgotten the fine, upright man you were by nature and become for a moment the shadowy ghost of that black unknown self that ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... My optimism is truly not the hiding myself from inevitable grief, for with towering waves the sea of sorrow has pounded against my beacon towers. The fires were not extinguished and beamed ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... this, "Expediency is man's wisdom. Doing right is God's"; or, "All great thoughts come from the heart"? Good are the words "The coward amongst us is he who sneers at the failings of humanity," and a healthy optimism rings in the phrase "There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness; from that uppermost pinnacle of wisdom whence we see that this world is well designed." In more playful mood is "Woman is the last thing which will be civilized by man." Let us hurry away abruptly, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no very long stay in Europe to detect a strange drooping of spirit. The rank corn and cotton optimism of the West quickly feels the deep sadness that lurks behind French balls, Prussian parades, and Italian festivals. Europe, when once you pry beneath its surface and find what its people are thinking and feeling, seems cankered and honeycombed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Mr. Pannebakker, I am inclined to exclaim, "Thou almost persuadest me to be a pessimist!" It is unfortunate that our English tongue contains no word that stands somewhere between pessimism and optimism—that symbols a judicial cast of mind which sees the Truth without blinking and accepts it without complaint. The word Pessimist was first flung in contempt at those who dared to express unpalatable truth. It is now accepted by a large number of intellectuals, and if ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... with him. He was not a rebuke, but a stimulus, and banished morbidity. Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift that she supposed herself to have already lost—not youth's creative power, but its self-confidence and optimism. He was so sure that it was a very pleasant world. His complexion was robust, his hair had receded but not thinned, the thick moustache and the eyes that Helen had compared to brandy-balls had an agreeable menace in them, whether they were turned towards the slums or towards the stars. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... pessimist and has a pea-green liver. Listen to him and the business will die painlessly, by inches. Applerod is also a jackass, and I presume him to be honest; but I never tested it. He suffers from too much health, and the surplus goes into optimism. Listen to him and the business will die in horrible agony, quickly. But keep both of them. Let them fight things out until they come almost to an understanding, then ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... on the contrary, always brings before me the rush and hurry of the world of people, and the wood pewee its under-current of eternal sadness. Into the mood induced by the melancholy pewee song breaks how completely and how happily the cheery optimism of the chickadee! Brooding thoughts are dissipated, all is not a hollow mockery, and life is still ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... an exception may be made in Senator Aldrich's case, whose successor, Henry F. Lippitt, appears to be a man much like his predecessor. Whether the change will be beneficial or otherwise remains to be seen, but my optimism is so great I do not believe that anything but good can come permanently to this great country of ours. I confess to a liking ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... blessed mankind; and she thought: "If Willoughby would open his heart to nature, he would be relieved of his wretched opinion of the world." Nature was then sparkling refreshed in the last drops of a sweeping rain-curtain, favourably disposed for a background to her joyful optimism. A little nibble of hunger within, real hunger, unknown to her of late, added to this healthy view, without precipitating her to appease it; she was more inclined to foster it, for the sake of the sinewy activity of mind and limb it gave her; and in the style of young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... almost stupidly. He had liked Hannaford, and had often invited him to play chess in the evenings, hoping with unconquerable optimism to "wean him from the Casino." The quiet man, with his black patches, his calm manner and slow smile as unreadable as the eyes of the Sphinx, had seemed to George Winter a curiously tragic yet mysteriously attractive figure. "Hannaford ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was a being who said "Yea" to life, accepted it as a glorious gift, and was determined to live it with all his might, it was Alan Seeger. Such a frame of mind is too instinctive and temperamental to be called optimism. It is not the result of a balancing of good and ill, and a reasoned decision that good preponderates. Rather it is a direct perception, an intuition, of the beauty and wonder of the universe—an intuition too overpowering ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... glorious Summer Night, which came near the middle of the book. There is a cheering doctrine of mystical optimism which will have it that a sufficiently intense devotion to any ideal never fails of at least one moment of consummate realisation and enjoyment. Such a moment was granted to Matthew Arnold when he wrote A Summer Night. Whether that rather vague life-philosophy of his, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... of retrenchment, and the anxious cultivator of all industrial arts, to prepare a war budget, and to meet as well as he might the exigencies of a conflict which had so cruelly dislocated all the ingenious devices of financial optimism." ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... satisfied with her convenient optimism, got into her carriage with her daughter, her daughter's diamonds, and her precious son-in-law, her daughter's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... delicious, with its wise and kindly humor, its just perspective of the true values of things, its clever pen pictures of people and customs, and its healthy optimism for the great world in general."—Philadelphia ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... history of Israel in the near past is told by the shepherd Icabo. To him Numeo and Zicareo offer consolation, and they pour balm into his wounded heart. The vividness of Usque's style, his historical insight, his sturdy optimism, his poetical force in interpreting suffering as the means of attaining the highest life in God, raise his book above the other works of ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... fear and pessimism we say are deeply implanted in the consciousness of man, and we must interpret both his optimism, and all its expressions in philosophy and in religion, and also his aggressive behavior as in large part the result of a conscious or an unconscious effort to overcome his fear. The social consciousness is full of marks of age-long ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... wealth. He became a printer's apprentice at twelve, but as he received no salary, the need of a purse could not have been urgent. He must have carried it pretty steadily, however, from its appearance—as a kind of symbol of hope, maybe—a token of that Sellers-optimism which dominated his early life, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... religion of gloom. It was otherwise. The Lacedaemonians, like those monastic persons of whom they so often remind one, as a matter of fact however surprising, were a very cheerful people; and the religion of which they had so much, deeply imbued everywhere with an optimism as of hopeful youth, encouraged that disposition, was above all a religion of sanity. The observant Platonic visitor might have taken note that something of that purgation of religious thought and sentiment, of its expression in literature, recommended in Plato's Republic, had been already ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... a lightsome tone of self-sufficiency. They were gay, even jaunty. It was in this very epoch that the verse was born which for many years sang blithely from the top of the first column—sang of Denney's public-spirited optimism as to Slocum County ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Grande to the Athabaska, for the greater part, the frontier sky was blue and cloudless during most of the year. The rainfall was not great. The atmosphere was dry. It was a cheerful country, one of optimism and not of gloom. In the extreme south, along the Rio Grande, the climate was moister, warmer, more enervating; but on the high steppes of the middle range in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, western Nebraska, there lay ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... His optimism softened the asperities which men found in the character of the Governor. He attracted to the grim old man the loyalty of the youth of the State, and at the same time won that loyalty for himself. He had come forward at a time when men were ready ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... or ten in little more than as many lines is indeed reaching too near to poetry for good prose. This, however, is a trifle, and might pass if the tone of the writer was not so obviously that of cheap pessimism. I know not which is cheapest, pessimism or optimism. One forces lights, the other darks; both are equally untrue to good art, and equally sure of their effect with the groundlings. The one extenuates, the other sets down in malice. The first is the more amiable lie, but ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... startled as he snapped on the lights and grunted out something which optimism might translate into an affectionate husbandly greeting. She came dutifully forward and raised her face, still exquisite and cool from the outer air, for her lord's home-coming kiss. That resolved itself into ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... original sin, future rewards and punishments, the incarnation, immortality, the two principles of the Manicheans, the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persians, the doctrine of emanations, the empire of light and darkness, metempsychosis, optimism, and other absurdities that have found credit among the different nations of the earth, where there is always to be found some hollow vision of a dream, by way of answer to a ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the same rustic tastes, the same love of the free spaces of wild nature and the scenes of rural life. But Mistral, wherever he looked, saw human life as happy and simple, through the prism of his creative imagination and the optimism of his happy life. Fabre, on the contrary, behind the sombre realities which he studied, saw only the ferocious engagement of confused living ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... is striving to lead English art. Under the guidanceship of the Academy English art has lost all that charming naivete and simplicity which was so long its distinguishing mark. At an Academy banquet, anything but the most genial optimism would be out of place, and yet Sir Frederick Leighton could not but allude to the disintegrating influence of French art. True, in the second part of the sentence he assured his listeners that the danger was more ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... spirit of his times—growing out of a condition which, as Barclay said in his speech, was like Emersonian optimism set to Wagnerian music. In Sycamore Ridge factories rose in the bottoms near the creek, and shop hands appeared on the streets at night; new people invaded Lincoln Avenue, and the Culpeppers, to maintain their social supremacy, had to hire a coloured ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... they really are, but it's a fact. Same joyous slambang, same line of sharps hanging on the outskirts, same row, racket, and joy in life, same struggle; yes, and by golly! the same big hopes and big enterprises and big optimism and big energies! Wouldn't you like to be ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... consequent advancement in standards of living. Progress has, of course, been unequal among industries, and some, such as coal, lumber, leather, and textiles, still lag behind. The long upward trend of fundamental progress, however, gave rise to over-optimism as to profits, which translated itself into a wave of uncontrolled speculation in securities, resulting in the diversion of capital from business to the stock market and the inevitable crash. The natural consequences ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... reasoning. He learned to be passionately unjust and false, for he wanted to persuade himself that he could accept the fact of war, and participate in it, without renouncing his pacifism of yesterday, his humanitarianism of the day before, and his constant optimism. It was not plain sailing, but there is nothing that the brain cannot attain to. When its master thinks it absolutely necessary to get rid for a time of principles which are in his way, it finds in these same principles the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... was now an aggressive, positive force, sure of herself, and apparently afraid of nothing in heaven or hell. She radiated something very like hope and courage about her, and talked as though the world were a glorious place and everybody in it kind and beautiful. Her optimism was certainly infectious. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... indeed sad as he rendered these woful ballads and yet his voice and manner were of the cheeriest, and I dare say he sang without reference to their real tragedy. It was a school of American balladry quite at variance with the cheerful optimism of those I had heard from the Belknap-Jackson phonograph, where the persons are not dead at all but are gayly calling upon one another to come on and do a folkdance, or hear a band or crawl under—things of that sort. As ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... with Germany for a month, and the Press of the Allies was full of cheerful optimism regarding what one of your London journalists had called "the Russian steam-roller." We in holy Russia believed in "the mills of God," and the nation as a whole was confident that it could resist the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... leaping, the capering, the tumult of voices and the stamping of slushy moccasins with which they assaulted that stately forest must have frightened every wild thing thereabout into a deadly rigor, dark's irrepressible energy and optimism worked a veritable charm upon his faithful but almost dying companions in arms. Their trust in him made them feel sure that food would soon be forthcoming. The thought afforded a stimulus more potent than wine; it drove them into an ecstasy of frantic motion ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... illimitable optimism was returning. Sufficient for the day that she was there, that she loved him, that she belonged to him, that just now he was the arbiter of her destiny! Far off in the mountains he dreamed of, alone, just they two, what might not happen? ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... reflected that old V.V. was undoubtedly a queer one. Chuck full of hazy optimism, he was of late. Hazy optimism: O'Neill repeated the phrase, liking it. Still it was possible he might manage to work on the girl's feelings—O'Neill was sure it was the girl—whatever that was worth. He was a kind of appealing fellow, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... weeks before I was a man with some confidence in my fellows; life had its charms, hope sustained me. Rosy views are for those whose faith has not been shattered. Optimism could find no support in my bitter experiences. Hermits may find seclusion in crowds, thought I. No one could find me at my new address, and it was my intention to seek no new friends, and to avoid every one I knew. I did not ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... overnight's optimism remained with Philip when at eleven o'clock on the following morning he was ushered into Elizabeth's rooms. It was a frame of mind, however, which did not long survive his reception. From the moment of his arrival, he seemed to detect a different atmosphere in his surroundings,—the demeanour ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vague modern "religion" whose chief object is to strip the world of the dignity of its real tragedy and endow it with the indignity of some pretended assurance. This is the role of that superficial optimism so inherently ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... riders fetched a great deal of straw and made ourselves comfortable in one of those waggons that are marked outside, with such splendid optimism— ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... the past three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that the Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was over; but seasons came and went without anything happening to justify such ill-founded optimism. The animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of its career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on, in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it was extremely difficult to get rid of. The unkinder wits of the neighbourhood ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... benighted men in the flesh cannot make the conditions, and thus continue to wallow in darkness. The Spirits are kind. They do not damn those poor benighted ones, but still hold out, in beautiful optimism, the hope that all those who do want to know the truth will ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... frailties of mortality, but everywhere the author reverently bows to that august and unsearchable name, acknowledges the grand and benevolent design—the admirable adaptation of every created thing to its end and place, and finally concludes in a strain of grateful and exulting Optimism, that we confess we have not fully arrived at—namely, that everything "is very good." (p. 387.) From this impression we have only one constructive drawback to notice in the author's mechanical but fanciful constitution of the universe, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... are as yet on other men's backs. Even if the Porter's Knot, which all must bear sooner or later, is already on the shoulder, the light heart of four-and-twenty is untroubled. It believes, in its optimism, that it will tumble the load of carks and cares into the first ditch, and live in freedom ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... ploughed field. For single-handed indications, supposing them to be correctly given—which, as I have said, I have never known; but supposing them to be correctly given—they are not sufficiently distinct to turn a horse, except in a case of optimism. That is, supposing for a short time a perfectly broken horse, in perfect temper, perfectly on his haunches, going perfectly up to his bit, and on perfect ground. Without all these perfections—suppose even the circumstance of the horse being excited or alarmed, or becoming violent ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... women whose presence seems to radiate sunshine, cheer and optimism. You feel calmed and rested and restored in a moment to a new and stronger faith in humanity. There are others who focus in an instant all your latent distrust, morbidness and rebellion against life. Without knowing why, you chafe and fret in their presence. You lose your ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... optimism was the sort of desirable quality that is a good thing to have, but all the optimism in the world is valueless in face of impregnable difficulty. And the difficulty of tracing Chatfield and his sick companion in a city the size of Bristol did ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... "keen-witted pessimist out and out," the Reverend Dr. Abbott's "horrid example" has shown me the following sentence:—"Pessimism is as little consonant with the facts of sentient existence as optimism." He says he published it in 1888, in an article on "Industrial Development," to be seen in the "Nineteenth Century". But no doubt this is another illusion. No superior person, brought up "in the Universities," to boot, could possibly have ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... naturally to pessimism. And how could it do otherwise? A knowledge of the Spiritual Power working in and through us as well as in and through all things, a power that works for righteousness, leads to optimism. Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power. The one who is centred in Deity is the one who not only outrides every storm, but who through the faith, and so, the conscious power that is in him, faces storm with the same calmness and serenity that he faces fair weather; for he knows ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... robust faith helps us in a different way. His daring and triumphant optimism makes us ashamed of doubt. In "Abt Vogler," in "Rabbi Ben Ezra," in "Pompilia," in "Christmas Eve," we are caught up and carried onward by an unflinching and overcoming faith. Perhaps the most convincing arguments ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... father Josiah; and against the present incompetence of the rulers and misery of the monarchy is thrown up a picture of the true king and the Messianic days, xxiii. 5-8. The latter section, xxiii. 9-40, denounces the prophets for their immorality, their easy optimism and their ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... sea almost at his feet. He sharpened his pencil and numbered the page of his notebook. Then he looked up towards the Hall garden and found himself dreaming. The sunshine was delicious, and a gentle optimism seemed to steal ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the girl's father resumed with his tranquil optimism: "Oh! I am not anxious. Things will go on all right, you'll see. For my own part, I am delighted. I had asked the Virgin to grant me her protection in my affairs—you know, my great invention of navigable balloons. Well, suppose I told you that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... have considered the situation in which he now found himself a future development out of the question. Mojave had brimmed with optimism and pride and accomplishment and eagerness. Base Mojave loomed vital in national defense, constituted a main element ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... had declared to Ellerey that there was no certainty that the Princess had failed, he did not believe in his own optimism. True, death seemed certain in the tower, but it had been kept at bay until now almost miraculously, it seemed to him, and a faith in Captain Ellerey had grown up in him. The Princess's resolution to deliver herself to the brigands appeared little short of madness ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... molded into new forms. It was written when the strife raged fiercest between ancient and modern ideals; and, finally, it was written in all the plenitude of my powers, when my soul was sanest and most joyful in the possession of an enviable optimism and an all-embracing love and sympathy for humanity that, to my misfortune, can never again find place ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... handled the liquors, kept himself in a genial stage of inebriation and sat in smiles and loud calico talking of gold mines and hidden treasure. Jack Kelso said that a little whisky converted Berry's optimism into opulence. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... pledge to the young and unspoiled soul of a coming day when all that is false and unbelieving and wicked shall be cast into the consuming fire of divine holiness. He has faith in the great day of the Lord; and with the splendid optimism, the hope peculiar to his years, he cries: "I can, and I will, hasten the coming of my Lord." This is one great element of a young man's strength—hope in goodness, which goes so far to sustain the toil that can realize it. "I have written unto ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... fully and firmly convinced that he himself was led and helped by this same Providence, which specially watched over the launching of his projects for the welfare of mankind. No, my feeling was of quite another kind. Nothing was farther removed from me than this sometimes quite childish optimism. It was not enough for me to advertise the sufferings of a few individuals and, when possible, alleviate them; I sought the causes of them in brutality and injustice. Neither could I recognise the finger of a Universal Ruler in a confusion of coincidences, conversations, newspaper articles, and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... cared for as has been previously suggested in arthritis proper provisions for comfort being made. Good nursing is always essential to a successful issue. However, the author cannot view cases of open stifle joint with the same optimism concerning their course and outcome that is expressed by a number of writers on this subject. It is a grave condition wherein the prognosis should ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... the housework herself, the difficulties of shopping on a limited purse, and her husband's fretfulness and fault-finding, might have soured a less unselfish disposition: she had married, however, "for better or for worse," and took the altered circumstances with cheery optimism. She was a great lover of nature and of scenery, and the nearness of the moors, with their ever-changing effects of storm and sunshine, and the opportunities they gave for the study of birds and insects, proved compensation for some of the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... of us. And there's been such a fine note of optimism in the exercises. (speaks with the heartiness of one who ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... and optimism that characterize the American people, San Francisco lifted her head from the ashes, and, as Kipling says, "turned her face home to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... became clearer, revealing the bare motionless arms of several windmills stretching out into the clearer air, some distance away, in different directions. I roughly judged that I could not be far from the frontier. I might even have crossed it! Though I did my best to suppress undue optimism, this last rather improbable idea persisted in occupying my thoughts. It is true I had seen nothing recently on the way to arouse suspicion, but, owing to the marshy nature of the country, the guards might well be few and far between. The spirit of approaching ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... And it was Mademoiselle Brun who could not settle to her French literature, nor compose her thoughts at all. For change is the natural desire of youth, and the belief that it must be for the better, part and parcel of the astounding optimism of that ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... merged the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... caribou or moose; the grouse had seemingly buried in the drifts. The only creatures that had not hidden away from the winter cold were the wolves and the coyotes, furtive people that could not be coaxed into the range of Virginia's pistol. For all her outward optimism her heart grew ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... history, we know that in abundant instances, the decay of nations can be traced largely to the base teachings of their religious instructors. To maintain that such religions were "the best possible ones" for the time and place is the absurdest optimism. In what a religion shares of the abstractly true it is beneficent; in what it partakes of the untrue it is deleterious. This, and no other canon, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... this year of 1917, and to me the world seems to have travelled so far since its publication in 1862, that its aims, its ideals, and its point of view, are hardly credible. Through it all runs that facile spirit of optimism which seems to me to have distinguished much of the thought of the mid-Victorian era, that air of "All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds," that insular pride of which I have been speaking, but which to us now appears the narrowest and worst form of parochialism, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... art; nor, for the matter of that, to produce what was then the future, including ourselves and our advantages and disadvantages. The existence of art has by no means implied, as Ruskin imagined, with his teleological optimism and tendency to believe in Eden and banishment from Eden, that people once lived in a kind of millennium; it merely shows that, however far from millennial their condition, there was stability enough ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... in serving, giving, sacrificing. If we are persecuted for Christ's sake, there is great joy. Life's problems are met with faith. A colored woman who had to wash for a living was very happy all the time. Rich women would marvel at her peace of mind, and one time one of them chided her for her optimism, which to the rich woman seemed based on nothing. "Why, suppose you should get sick, or suppose something should happen," said her rich friend. "Oh, I never supposes," said the poor woman. "That is what is the matter with you, you supposes and supposes and imagines all lands of ill coming on ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... OPTIMISM, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... She and her uncle had been too apt to talk of things as they ought to be, and not as they actually were. With all Jane's quiet good sense, there were points on which she could be enthusiastic, and on this evening the successful cousin was struck by the warm expressions of an optimism in which he could not share, uttered by one who had good cause for complaint ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... practice the gentle art of cheering us all up—an art so easily lost in these days of sorrow, suspense and anxiety—yet we have received many delightful contributions in harmony with this request, and so the cheerful note, the finer optimism, recurs again and again, and is sustained ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... tell of the older artist—not so vigorous, a vein of tenderness beginning to show instead of his youthful blazing optimism. Claude Monet must have had a happy life—he is still a robust man painting daily in the fields, leading the glorious life of a landscapist, one of the few romantic professions in this prosaic age. Not so vain, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... courage, and enthusiasm than the rat-like existence of the Germans in foul-smelling, ill-lighted, unsanitary burrows far beneath the surface of the ground. Few men can remain for month after month in such a place and retain their optimism and their self-respect. One of the German dugouts which I saw on the Somme was so deep in the earth that it had two hundred steps. The Germans who were found in it admitted quite frankly that after enjoying for several weeks or months the safety which it afforded, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... men were still inclined to rebel. They felt that they were in great numbers and that they were strong: they believed—with that optimism of excited youth—that their will must prevail in the end. In their opinion the Caesar had done nothing to atone for his crime against the praefect of Rome, or for his dastardly cringing before the power of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ruinous legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest days were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was creeping through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska's serfdom was near at hand. So they preached, and knew they were ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... delicate essence than hers; he has struck, at times, a deeper note. But his nature was frailer, his muse not so easily within call, his character as intolerant of restraint as her own, but less self-sufficing; and the morbid taint of thought then prevalent, and which her natural optimism and better balanced faculties enabled her to throw off very shortly, had entered into him ineffaceably. Whether or not she brought a fresh blight on his mind, she certaintly failed to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... appear that a tremendous amount of optimism, energy and self-reliance lay in the leaders of the small community, in digging through the bank of a stubborn cliff, in throwing a rude dam across a great flood stream and in planting their homes far out on a plain ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... ourselves back to prosperity. I am going to be honest at all times with the people of the country. I do not want the people of this country to take the foolish course of letting this improvement come back on another speculative wave. I do not want the people to believe that because of unjustified optimism we can resume the ruinous practice of increasing our crop output and our factory output in the hope that a kind Providence will find buyers at high prices. Such a course may bring us immediate and false prosperity but it will be the kind of prosperity ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... most wonderful thing I have seen to-day has been a man," she boldly said. "Your faith, your optimism, your dreams in the face of the awful facts of life, and with it a tenderness of sympathy I never thought in you, have been a revelation to me. I feel more and more ashamed of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... massing facts as to physical defects of school children should not be to cause alarm, but to stimulate remedial and preventive measures, to invoke congratulations and aggressive optimism, not doleful pessimism and palliative ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... the front was full of the powder and shot of action and riotous optimism. I'm afraid mine ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... had. You'll recollect it all presently, and what a lark that will be!" Sally's ingenious optimism made matters very pleasant. She did not like to press the conversation on these lines, lest Mr. Fenwick should refer to a loan she knew her mother had made him; indeed, had it not been for this the poor man would have been hard ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... manfully this condition of things, and not seek for infallibility where it can find none. It will adopt as its motto that noble saying of Bishop Butler—noble, because so unflinchingly true, though opposed to a sentimental optimism—'Probability is the very guide ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... had undertaken without remonstrance, he felt ashamed. He began to wonder whether there might not have been some other way—whether he had any right, even for his country's sake, to send a girl on such a mission. Misgiving began to sap his optimism, and there was no Mahommed Gunga to stir the soldier in him and encourage iron-willed pursuance of the game. He began to doubt; ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of these men and their methods and their politics is concerned, I can answer for myself. I have been fed on that sort of knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into mistakes from excess of optimism." ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in the name of religion to look for a remedy, not in fighting against surrounding evils, but in cultivating aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much of our popular religion seems to be expressly directed to deaden our sympathies with our fellow men by encouraging an indolent optimism; our thoughts of the other world are used in many forms as an opiate to drug our minds with indifference to the evils of this; and the last word of half of our preachers is, 'dream ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... that the morale and fitness of the shivering crew was of more value at the moment than caution; and around the roaring fire, feeling my soaked clothes warming to the blaze and drinking boiling hot tea from a mug, it seemed that we were right. Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting Hjalmar dress her hands which had been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about her ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the interpretation which the Norwegian side chose to give the Communique, these—to Sweden—very desirable guarantees became an illusion, it may very reasonably be asked if the Norwegian side was entitled to exact too much from the Swedish delegate's possible optimism respecting the prospects of coming to a definite conclusion on the ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... how I'd like to see a milliner's window again!" cried Beatrice, rudely shattering his thin-spun tissue of optimism. "These skin-clothes, all the time, and no hats, and no chiffons and no—no nothing, at all—! Oh, I never half appreciated things till they were ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... it does not utterly disregard the existence of temporal evil. Whitman accepts the fact of disease and wretchedness like an honest man; and instead of trying to qualify it in the interest of his optimism, sets himself to spur ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sought to beguile themselves—each for the sake of the other—with all the tricks and chimeras of optimism, but that was only the masquerade of the clown who laughs while his heart is sick and under whose toy-bright paint is ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Ruszky in the north and of Ivanov in the south in setting a term to the terrifying sweep of the German advance produced a temporary optimism in Russia comparable with that which followed the victory on the Marne; and in neither case did the Allies realize the extent of the advantage gained by the Germans or foresee the years that would pass before ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... made no reply, but accompanied them to Frazer's apartment. In the adjoining room they found Margaret, terribly scared, but listening eagerly to the doctor's cheery optimism. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... sunshine his spirits took another rise. After all, he could be much worse off. He had a good house, arms and food, and in time a ship would come. A ship must come, and, with his usual optimism, he was sure ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of what it might lead to, for no one could have foreseen that the first part, "Geduld en moed," would fall into disuse and be forgotten, because these good qualities do not come easily to men, and the second, "Alles sal reg kom," would be made an excuse for a sort of lazy optimism, by which anything could be justified which comes easiest ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... This was Mrs. Gallito's explanation of all the eccentricities in which her husband might indulge. "And," with unwonted optimism, "maybe it's a blessing, too, 'cause he's awful queer. And, anyway, he's what they call a man's man. Why, you might think he lived all by himself up there in Colina; but he don't. He's got more old Spaniards around"—she ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with—just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never cared for anybody else, and I guess ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... his mind constantly turning upon women; and if his thoughts of them are often cruelly false, it is not Hamlet but his mother who is to blame: her conduct has hurled him from the peak of optimism into the bottomless pool of pessimistic doubt, above the foul waters of which he keeps struggling to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... rock of fact upon which so many shining generalizations have come to wreck, Mrs. Peachey had cast about helplessly for some floating spar of logic which might bear her to the firm ground of established optimism. "I declare, Tom, I believe you are out of your head!" she exclaimed, adding immediately, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be so ungrateful when the good Lord has kept you out of the poorhouse. If you weren't tipsy, I'd give you a hard shaking. Now, you ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... infant mortality high. The best for which we could hope in the way of morals among these people was that a natural unmorality was some offset to the existing conditions. The features of the native life which appealed most to us were the universal optimism, the laughing good-nature and contentment, and the Sunday cleanliness of the entire congregation which swarmed into the chapel service, a welcome respite from the perennial dirt of the week days. Moreover, nearly all had been taught to read ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... only were in his favor. The first was his native determination and optimism; the second, the interest aroused by published reports of the phenomena that had led to his expulsion from his aunt's house. Already, although only a few days had elapsed since the knockings were first heard, the newspapers had ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... end. The cooks built a cunningly-contrived kitchen in a section of one of the old Turkish trenches and firmly announced their intention of cooking for us every kind of delicacy that could be made—out of army beef, onions, and potatoes!—for which pleasant piece of optimism we were duly grateful. Then we heard that an E.F. canteen had set up house about a day's trek to the south-west, whereupon a limber went forth and returned on the third day heavily laden with tins of fruit, biscuits, various ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... OPTIMISM OF LEIBNITZ.—From all these general views on matter, on mind and on the mind, Leibnitz arrived at a radical optimism which is the thing for which he has since been most ridiculed, and by which, at any rate, he has remained famous. He believes that all ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... the human race. Simplicity of thought and staunch adherence to an uncompromising philosophy of optimism distinguish the work of Dr. Frank Crane. His writings are helpful, encouraging, inspirational. His followers are legion. Thousands of Evening Journal readers in New York City and suburbs look forward to his daily articles. ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... energy, the dulness of the average intellect, and the vast deadweight of superstition and dread of the light with which all improvement must have to reckon. And yet I also feel that, if a complacent optimism be impossible, the world was never so full of interest. When we complain of the stress and strain and over-excitement of modern society we indicate, I think, a real evil; but we also tacitly admit that no one has any excuse for being dull. In every direction there is abundant opportunity for ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the capital the optimism that reigned in the mind of Pope. McClellan was withdrawing his army from Virginia, but the eyes of the nation were turned toward Pope. Many who had taken deep thought of the times and of men, were more alarmed about Pope than he was about himself. They did not like those jubilant dispatches from ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as one who rouses himself from deep preoccupations And he began to question her in a business-like way upon the steps she had taken and the inquiries she had made. He displayed none of the airy optimism of their previous talk over the downland gate. He was helpful, but gravely dubious. "You see," he said, "from my point of view you're grown up—you're as old as all the goddesses and the contemporary of any man ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... me to be a thousand chances against it," Hadria continued. "Artistic power, to begin with, is a sort of weakness in relation to the everyday world, and so, in some respects, is a nice conscience. I think Emerson is shockingly unjust. His beaming optimism is a worship of success disguised under lofty terms. There is nothing to prove that thousands have not been swamped by maladjustment of character to circumstance, and I would even go so far as to suggest that perhaps the very greatest of all are ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was cold, calm and clear. For the first time after many weeks the sun was mildly warm, and all felt with a spring of optimism that a new era had begun. The sea which had been kept open by the wind was immediately overspread with thin, dark ice, which in a few hours was dotted with many ice-flowers aggregates of fern-like, sprouting fronds similar to small bouquets ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... years, although marked by loneliness and bringing him a full measure of grief (his wife, Christiane Vulpius, whom he had met shortly after his return from Italy, died in 1816, followed in 1830 by his only son), exemplified that earnest striving so characteristic of Goethe. A serene optimism, a deep love of life, was his to the very last. To this das Lied des Tuermers, written May 1831, bears eloquent witness. A ripe mellowness seems to blend here with the joyous spirit of youth. Goethe died ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... known how to be nattering enough. She was being helpful in her own way, with an extraordinary black bonnet on her head, a good mile off by that time, trying to discover in the village shops a piece of eatable cake. The pluck of women! The optimism of the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... lines—the comic song, of which "Pretty Polly Perkins" may be considered the best example; the Irish song; and the Motto song, inculcating a sweet reasonableness and content amid life's many trials and tribulations. Although, no doubt, such optimism was somewhat facile, it cannot be denied that a little dose of silver-lining advice, artfully concealed in the jam of a good tune and a humorous twist of words, does no harm and may have a beneficial effect. The chorus of "A ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... fine gray hair, she might have served a sculptor for a study of the stoic spirit. Then, going to the bag, her compressed lips twitching, her gray eyes piercing into its clasp with a kind of distrustful optimism, she lifted the pincers and tweaked ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... desirable. No doubt they do, and that is the great reason why we find that good men and women cling to the belief, and are pained by its being questioned. But, surely, it is not legitimate to assume that, in the order of the universe, whatever is desirable is true. Optimism, even when a God is already believed in, is a thorny doctrine to maintain, and had to be taken by Leibnitz in the limited sense, that the universe being made by a good being, is the best universe possible, not the best ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... At any rate, after an ocean voyage of nine days one's spirits rise perceptibly as the ship nears Nantucket; and the icy-bright sunlight of New York harbour, the sight of the buildings aspiring to blue skies restore the throbbing optimism which with us is normal; and it was with an effort, when I talked to the reporters on landing, that I was able to achieve and express the pessimism and darkness out of which I had come. Pessimism is perhaps too strong a word, and takes no account of the continued ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that all the peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping troika to pass. That may be, they may stand aside, respectfully or no, but in my poor opinion the great writer ended his book in this way either in an access of childish and naive optimism, or simply in fear of the censorship of the day. For if the troika were drawn by his heroes, Sobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov, it could reach no rational goal, whoever might be driving it. And those were the heroes of an older generation, ours are ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as February 14, believed that there was no "serious danger". February 16, he still felt that "if, on our side, we keep cool, things will come to no dangerous pass". [56] But within the next week, three acts in Washington modified Webster's optimism: the filibuster of Southern members, February 18; their triumph in conference, February 19; their interview with Taylor about ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... it said, with an optimism that now has its humorous side, I viewed myself prospectively as a ready and fertile writer, producing a steady flow of books of very various sorts. Hence it occurred to me that a pseudonym might have a ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... which she passes, the various viewpoints which she holds until she comes finally to realize that service for others is the only thins that counts, are told with that same intimate knowledge of character, that healthy optimism and the belief in the ultimate goodness of mankind that have distinguished all of this author's writing. The book is intensely alive with human emotions. The reader is bound to sympathize with Mrs. Norris' people because they seem like real ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman |
