"Geniality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and "Squails," and I beat him so persistently that both sides of the House were mine and my geniality entirely returned. He might have been living to this hour had he not mentioned something about the brutality of The Island of Dr. Moreau. That settled it. I had heard that absurd charge once too often, and raising my Blaisdell binaural stethoscope I leaped upon him. With ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... she not know her own menfolk: fresh, slow, full-built men, masterful enough, but easy, native to the earth, lacking outwardness and range of motion. Whereas the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her husband, had yet a quickness and a range of being that made Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and local. She knew her husband. But in the vicar's nature was that which passed beyond her knowledge. As Brangwen had power over the cattle so the vicar had power over her husband. What ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the fairy-tale of the fair mouth dropping pearls. Then, as though grown weary of the idyllic romance she was composing, Fortune donned the tragic robes of Nemesis. Years of pain followed, which could not abate the spirits or disturb the geniality of the sufferer, but did somewhat abate the power and disturb the serenity of his work. Then came the inevitable end of all life dramas, whether comic or romantic or tragic, and friends who had ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... mere puppets for the utterance of his jests. Byron was also the author of a novel, Paid in Full (1865), which appeared originally in Temple Bar. In his social relations he had many friends, among whom he was justly popular for geniality ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... "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 ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... knows and admires as much as I do), to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tiny, radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with geniality and ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... optimistic eloquence lulled Helm to a very pleasant sense of security. Beverley was not so easy to satisfy; but his suggestions regarding military discipline and a vigorous prosecution of repairs to the blockhouse and stockade were treated with dilatory geniality by his superior officer. The soft wonder of a perfect Indian summer glorified land, river and sky. Why not dream and bask? ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... perhaps we do not always connect the ideas of sociableness and freedom of discussion with the days of Puritan rule; yet it must be admitted that something like geniality and openness characterized what Pepys calls the Coffee Club of the Rota. This "free and open Society of ingenious gentlemen" was founded in the year 1659 by certain members of the Republican party, whose peculiar opinions had been timidly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... reprobate must get his pocket money where he got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's generosity, he had it almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman down. He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and geniality. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as we naughty young ones called him, was all good- nature and geniality—a thorough clergyman after the ideas of the time, and a thorough farmer too; and in each capacity, as well as in politics, he suited my father or Mr. Henderson. His lady, in a blonde cap, exactly like the last equipment my mother had provided herself with in London, and a black ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and grim death meeting them at every corner, there is nothing for it but to be as hard and tough as one's circumstances. But give me rather the German heart in the little old German village, with the small earnings and spendings, the narrow sphere of life and experience, and the great vintage of geniality which is laid up from youth to age, and handed down with the old wine from father to son. I don't like your cosmopolitan German any better than I do your Englishman done to death with travel. I prize the home-flavor in all the races that are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... rose and resumed 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 smile on the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... without geniality. Geniality had become impossible to a man always overworked and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Irish novelists, was of English descent on his father's side. But Charles James Lever himself was Irish by birth, being born at Dublin on August 31, 1806—Irish in sentiment and distinctly Irish in temperament. In geniality and extravagance he bore much resemblance to the gay, riotous spirits he has immortalised in his books. "Of all the men I have ever encountered," says Trollope, "he was the surest fund of drollery." Lever was intended for medicine; but financial ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... drooping courage rose, I saw the world through clearer eyes. The next afternoon when I faced the ancient office-boy the remembrance of Gladys Todd's metaphor made me smile, and so overcome was he by this unusual geniality that he did take in my card ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... individuals 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... His persecuting geniality of countenance appealed to her to confirm this judgement by results, and she nodded and said: "Four," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... merges into the unholy, and we can scarcely see the dividing line. Black merges into white through manifold shades of grey. Falsehood slopes into truth through cunning expediences and white lies. Lust merges into purity through conviviality and geniality and good-fellowship. So is one thing losing itself in another, and vivid moral distinctions are being obscured ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... opening for more than talent. Genius may be defined in the severest manner as that which is generally characteristic; but a thousand times we repeat that one man's mode of knowing an object cannot differ from another man's. It cannot be characteristic, and its geniality cannot be externally manifested. To have said, therefore, of the poetry surviving from ancient Latium, from Castile, from England, that this is nationally characteristic, and knowable apart by inalienable differences, is saying no more than follows out of the very definition by ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Saturday night in the village of Lake Megantic. The work of the week is done. There is a brief respite from labor which, severe and unremitting, dulls the mind and chokes the fountains of geniality and wit. The young men,—indeed, there was a sprinkling of grey hairs, too,—had gathered in the one hotel the village boasts of. There was a group in the little room off the bar, and another group in the bar-room itself. It was well for the host that the ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... of 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 in his experiments, to the utter exclusion of all ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... seclusion with the lower rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the resemblance of an over-benevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its intended geniality upward to the exasperated eyes ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... of form and substance as to 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 cannot ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... He had taken a liking to these repetitions of nouns and verbs, which he listened to with a dignified, condescending air, slowly unrolling his screw of snuff the while; he only interrupted to interject little playful remarks with a geniality just touched with a trace of ferocity, that bespoke his real nature as an unctuous, cringing bully. He was jocular and pompous at the same time, and always made a pretence of being a long time in seeing the glass of wine put on the table for ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... follow a looked-for promotion to the office of supervisor. He spent his time in the performance of his duties, in collecting and writing songs for the above-mentioned compilation of Scottish melodies, and in meeting and conversing with the many friends whom his genius and geniality drew around him. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... better known as Phiz, was an artist of a departed school to whom we all owe a great deal of amusement. He was not so versatile nor so original as Cruickshank; he had not the genius, nor the geniality, still less the sense of beauty, of John Leech. In his later years his work became more and more unequal, till he was sometimes almost as apt to scribble hasty scrawls as Constantin Guys. M. Guys was an artist selected by M. Baudelaire as the fine flower of modern art, and the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... 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 devil of a fellow in Society. He warbles little songs of his own composition ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... have 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, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... it is not in the past alone that we should be awestruck with horrors: we, who have a slave-trade still on earth. But, to go back to the essay, I like what you say about the theory of constructing the Christian character without geniality; only you do not go far enough. You are afraid. People are for ever talking, especially you philanthropical people, about making others happy. I do not know any way so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with. I do ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... diffuse and lengthy conversationalists. I once made a terrible mistake. I complimented, from the mere desire of saying something agreeable, and finding my choice of praiseworthy qualities limited, an elderly, garrulous acquaintance on his geniality, on an evening when I had writhed uneasily under a steady downpour of talk. I have bitterly rued my insincerity. Not only have I received innumerable invitations from the man whom the Americans would call my complimentee, but when I am in his company I see him making heroic attempts to ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... activities, while it gives none at all of his influence. He was a teacher who impressed his personality, not only upon his students, but upon all who knew him. In his character were united force and refinement, firmness and geniality. In his earnest work with his pupils, in his lectures to the teachers of the New York Public Schools and to other audiences, in his personal influence upon all with whom he came in contact, he spread the taste for beauty, both of poetry and of life. When his body was carried ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... widely (though even more perhaps in seeming than in reality) from the opinions of a man of genius to whom I am bound by the twofold tie of the respect due to a profound philosopher and the affection given to a very old friend. But had I no other means of knowing the fact, the kindly geniality of Mr. Herbert Spencer's reply[1] assures me that the tie to which I refer will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of calling forth so ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the world," then, such as he, belief in love is the more inspiring. But for all his geniality, there is no indulgence for flabbiness—there is little sympathy, indeed, for any of the weaker ways. After Pauline—rejected utterance of his green-sickness—the wan, the wistful, moods of love find seldom recognition; ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... 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 the baby was taking his pitiful ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... that he had not handled his man skilfully. He remembered that even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his mock-modesty and his true geniality, had ceased after a while to be tolerable. Without such a manner to grace his method, Socrates would have had a very brief time indeed. The Duke recoiled from what he took to be another pitfall. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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 ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... well thought-out policy to share with popular shrewdness a portion of his takings. His benevolence was more partially shown towards the officials than to those from whom he derived his income; but because of his geniality, and—mostly, I should say—on account of his generosity, he was well liked by both sections of people. He was quite uneducated, and, like most clever men who have this misfortune, he had great natural gifts. His memory was prodigious, and he invested his savings with the judgment of an expert, ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... struck by the geniality of his fellow-travellers for the most part, and the very intelligent way in which they answered his inquiries. He was able to say on his return that he had met with nothing but kindness from beginning to end of ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... Charles Sumner, and it proved sufficient for the beginning of a friendship which existed through a quarter of a century. My last interview with him occurred in 1869. I found him then quite feeble, but full of his old kindness and geniality. His speech was somewhat difficult to follow, for he had been slightly paralyzed not long before; but after listening to him for half an hour, it was easy to understand nearly every word he uttered. He spoke with warm feeling of Longfellow, who had been in London during that season, and had ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... negotiation which the king had entered upon at the Hague remained without result; the Duke of Burgundy took the command of the armies of Flanders, with Vendome for his second; it was hoped that the lieutenant's boldness, his geniality towards the troops, and his consummate knowledge of war, would counterbalance the excessive gravity, austerity, and inexperience of the young prince so virtuous and capable, but reserved, cold, and unaccustomed to command; discord arose amongst the courtiers; on the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... gifts in a friendly, social, after-dinner way in their own homes. They become, in fact, so critical or so self-conscious that they prefer to pay to hear music rendered by recognized artists, and so a by no means inconsiderable element of geniality is lost to the social ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... himself. It is not the massive, exuberant play of Jean Paul. He does not challenge the slow-riding moon to a cricket match, nor hurl the stars from their orbits in his mad game in the skies. Neither has he the brusque but more solid geniality of Lessing. Imagination fails him for the one, and a strong power of logic for the other. But he tears the clouds of ignorance and prejudice that are beneath his feet into ribbons and sends them streaming through space, filmy ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the house that he had not heard the familiar barking of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his horse's hoofs was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded. He would like to surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious rancor for Basil's sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from the thick growths of the holly, with the icy scintillations of its clustering green leaves and red berries, he drew rein so suddenly that the horse was thrown back on his ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... person, admitted that she felt very well indeed, and seemed cheered at the sight of Wade, who greeted her deferentially but with easy geniality. She liked him for his wholesomeness, and she frequently declared that he was worth all the doctors in the country because of the impression of health and optimism which he bore with him. But she was aware that Dorothy liked him, too, and so presently made ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... her instructors was Lenbach, and she is said by some critics to have appropriated his peculiarities as a colorist and his shortcomings in drawing, without attaining his geniality and power of divination. In 1891 her portrait of Count von Moltke, begun shortly before his death and finished afterward, was sent to the International Exposition at Berlin, but was rejected. The Emperor, however, bought it for his private collection, and at his request it ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... on with complete 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 conversationalist ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... pleasing manners, quick intelligence, and real kindness of heart soon became a favorite in Richmond society. He was neither handsome, nor elegant, nor aristocratic, but he had personal geniality, wit, brilliancy in conversation, irreproachable morals, and was prominent in the debating society,—a school where young men learn the art of public speaking, like Gladstone at Oxford. It is thought probable that Clay's native oratorical ability, which he assiduously cultivated,—the gift ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... years. He found it affected his hearing. Coffee, too, he refused. It affected, so it seemed, his sense of smell. He sat beside us, ill at ease, and anxious, as I could see, to get back to his second daughter and her schoolmistresses. Mr. Sims, who is geniality itself in his heart, but has no great powers in conversation, would ask Tommy if he remembered how he acted as Antigone in the college play, and was "plastered" from the second act on. Mr. Vidal had no recollection of it, but wondered if there was ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... his mind; he did not know how subtle and observant the most innocent girl is in such matters. Zoe blushed, and drew away from him. Just then Ned Severne came in, and Vizard introduced him to Uxmoor with great geniality and pride. The charming young man was in a black surtout, with a blue scarf, the very tint for ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... "take me to Ursula," and after he had kissed his newly-arrived daughter, he sat down in the faded drawing-room with much geniality, and took one child ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... are 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
... 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 ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... man among us who gave his mind to letter-writing; and his letters contain some of his very best work, for he plunged into his subject with that high-spirited abandonment which we see in "Pickwick," and the full geniality of his mind came out delightfully. The letter in which he describes a certain infant schoolboy who lost himself at the Great Exhibition is one of the funniest things in literature, but it is equalled in positive value by some of the more serious letters which ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... after his long and hot ride. All were disposed to treat him, as the stranger, with pressing hospitality; but his own free and gentlemanly bearing, and the openness with which he answered the questions put to him, as well as the hearty geniality of his conversation, made all his new acquaintances delighted with him, and eager to supply his wants as their guest. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at that any half-formed resolutions as to total ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... strain of peace and contentment, of satisfaction with the existing order, for he had looked upon the creation and saw that it was good. There is "neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," but the deliberate recital of the facts warmed and illumined by the geniality of a soul to whom age and experience had brought, not a sour cynicism, but the mellowing influence of a ripened philosophy. He was such an old man as may fondly be imagined walking through the streets of Paranaque in stately benignity amid ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 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
... entered the room. The former raised his brows momentarily at the sight of Piers, but he greeted him with much geniality. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... who for a number of years afterwards was destined to be my chief, and I fully expected to see the editor turn round and receive me with that look of irrepressible humour and in that habitually jocose style which I had so often heard described. I looked in vain for the geniality in the editor's glance, and there was a remarkably complete absence of the jocose in the sharp, irritable words ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... declared for him. Old Macdonald of Boisdale entertained Charles as an honoured guest in his bare but hospitable Highland house. All the people of the district crowded to see him as he sat at dinner. The young Prince delighted all present by his geniality and the interest he showed in everything Highland, and when he insisted on learning enough Gaelic to propose the king's health in their native language, the hearts of the simple and affectionate people ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... if I might escape long enough to be put through to Mrs. Floud on the telephone. Too plainly the situation was rapidly getting out of hand, and yet I hesitated. The Tuttle person under an exterior geniality was rather abrupt. And, moreover, I now recalled having observed a person much like him in manner and attire in a certain cinema drama of the far Wild West. He had been a constable or sheriff in the piece and had subdued a ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the Grand Duke himself, and if his appearance was amazing, as it was to judge by the girl's face, his geniality was sensational. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... character 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 certain pictures, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... 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 look of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... geniality existed in the East fifty years ago. I have been told that it did. It is a very delightful stage of civilization where people's shells are still soft, if they have shells at all. There is an accessibility, ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... world-centre of Baden, and, passing along the terrace, soon encountered little Blanche Evers strolling there under a pink parasol and accompanied by Captain Lovelock. This young lady was always extremely sociable; it was quite in accordance with her habitual geniality that she should stop and say how d' ye do ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brought the port, he struck the table twice sharply with the handle of his knife, and said, with a pleasant mixture of solemnity and geniality: ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... friend, in 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 ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... others, old Mr. Henfrey had been sadly deceived by Charles Benton, and had taken him into his family as a friend. Other men had done the same. His geniality, his handsome, open face, and his plausible manner, proved the open sesame to many doors of the wealthy, and the latter were robbed in various ways, yet never dreaming that Benton was the instigator of it all. He never committed a theft himself. He gave the information—and others ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... devoid of humour and geniality, with a love for the grotesque and the terrible. The reader must himself furnish the counteracting qualities or Poe may become a dangerous comrade. We know along what perilous tracks and into what deadly quagmires his strange mind led him, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his masterly 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 to say whether ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possess enthusiasm, energy, optimism, sympathy, imagination, force, incisiveness, tact, judgment, geniality, social graces, courtesy, ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... while only those did useful work who managed to confer, behind the scenes, with the authorities. To some extent this was done by Pribi[vc]evi['c] and to a greater extent by another Serb, Dr. Du[vs]an Popovi['c], who surpassed him in capacity and geniality. It was he, by the way, who demonstrated in the Buda-Pest Parliament that if the average Croat deputy was ignorant of the Magyar language, there was a greater ignorance of Serbo-Croatian on the part of the Magyars. One day ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... high degree faculties essential to great oratory—a capacious mind, retentive memory, logical acumen, vivid imagination, deep concentration, and wealth of language. He had an extraordinary personal fascination, largely due to his broad sympathy and geniality. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... sir," more stiffly, his geniality vanishing with my rather curt refusal. "Then I shall take all necessary precautions to prevent escape." He stepped aside to the hall door. "You may send two ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... mind on the spur of the moment what to do about Majors and suchlike. Some like a salute, others don't. I have invented a gesture of my own which is entirely non-committal and gives satisfaction to both. Those who don't look for a salute put it down to an excess of geniality; those who do expect one put it down to ignorance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... concealed. The name John 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 ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... his marvellous powers of conversation, I could not divest myself of the conviction that underneath it all there lay something more than a mere desire to be either kindly or entertaining; in fact, that his geniality, though outwardly spontaneous, was really a cloak to hide another side of his nature—a fog into which he retreated—and that some day the ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... turning to take out the Stradivarius when he remembered that he had never even revealed its existence to Mr. Gaskell, and that if he now produced it an explanation must follow. In a moment his mood changed, and with less geniality he excused himself, somewhat awkwardly, from complying with the request, saying that he ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... elsewhere, and lacking which I should, perhaps, have failed by the way. I am not referring to Dickens's swift triumph, to his resounding fame and high prosperity; these things are cheery to read about, especially when shown in a light so human, with the accompaniment of so much geniality and mirth. No; the pages which invigorated me are those where we see Dickens at work, alone at his writing-table, absorbed in the task of the story-teller. Constantly he makes known to Forster how his story is getting on, speaks in detail ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Margaret and her friends wished to converse. Prometheus was made the type of Pure Reason; Jupiter, of Will; Juno, the passive side of the same, or Obstinacy; Minerva, Intellectual Power, Practical Reason; Mercury, Executive Power, Understanding; Apollo was Genius, the Sun; Bacchus was Geniality, the Earth's answer. "Apollo and Bacchus were contrasted," says the reporter. "Margaret unfolded her idea of Bacchus. His whole life was triumph. Born from fire; a divine frenzy; the answer of the earth to the sun,—of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... men—Dryden, Pope, Addison, Johnson, Coleridge, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold—have been critics; and in America we meet with such honored names as Poe, Emerson, Whipple, Lowell, Stedman, and many others. In recent years criticism has greatly gained in breadth and geniality. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... aspect of Greek literary art which they illustrate. But the Hymns, if read even through the pale medium of a translation, speak for themselves. Their beauties and defects as poetry are patent: patent, too, are the charm and geniality of the national character which they express. The glad Ionian gatherings; the archaic humour; the delight in life, and love, and nature; the pious domesticities of the sacred Hearth; the peopling of woods, hills, and streams with exquisite ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... heart it is, and an honest, kindly little heart too, with warm life-blood within. So it looked that night, with every window red with comfortable light, and a long stream of glare pouring across the road from the open door, gilding the fir-tree tops in front: but its geniality only made him shudder. He had been there more than once, and knew the place and the people; and knew, too, that of all people in the world, they were the least like him. He hurried past the doorway, and caught one glimpse of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... 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
... "Geniality," he continued, "is not my strong point, as you may have perceived. And any unnatural effort of the kind fatigues me. My ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... meet these husbands who are seemingly rich in geniality and yet are mysteriously unhappy at home. It is the custom of the acquaintances of these fellows to put all the blame on the wife. But there is a distinct type of mind which always enjoys dining abroad and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... was with him at Calcutta, and afterwards at Hyderabad. He was a curious, solitary sort of mortal; but a gallant soldier enough, for he distinguished himself at Sobraon, and was wounded, if I remember right. He was not popular in his corps—they said he was a pitiless, cold-blooded fellow, with no geniality in him. There was a rumour, too, that he was a devil-worshipper, or something of that sort, and also that he had the evil eye, which, of course, was all nonsense. He had some strange theories, I remember, about the power of the human will and the effects ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he, with all his old geniality, "not often, though they pay us a visit now and then in summer when so inclined. Their coming now through Spithead is a sign that there's going to ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough respecters of themselves and of each other, and, what does not always follow, men who ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... sky, and even the faces of those he looked upon, seemed to be set in the hard, patient endurance of the race. Everywhere on that dismal day, he fancied he could see this energy without restlessness, this earnestness without geniality, all grimly set against the hard environment of ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... old, lives out in the country on Route 3. He still works on the few acres he owns, raising vegetables for himself and a few baskets to sell. He is a gray-haired, medium sized man and his geniality is frequently noticed by white and Negro friends ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... His unforced geniality made Trent ashamed, for he had liked the man. They sat long over a meal, and Mr. Bunner talked. Trent listened to him, now that he was in for it, with genuine pleasure, now and then contributing a question or remark. Besides liking his companion, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... trouble. 'Zounds, Madam,' says he, 'you offer nothing. It cost the gentleman who took it forty pounds for his coach, equipage, and other expenses to Windsor.' His impudence increased with success, and in the geniality of his cups he was wont to boast his amazing rogueries: 'hinting not without vanity at the poor Understandings of the Greatest Part of Mankind, and his own ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... of her popularity before and behind the footlights came heavier calls upon her geniality, and, like a hostess who tries to pay off her debts in one social lump sum, Eileen got "a Sunday out," and Nelly gave a lunch at a riverside hotel to a motley company of popular favourites. It was expensive; for the profession, even in those ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... his humour, and his unfailing sympathy and encouragement, made one feel toward him as to a familiar friend, yet, of his actual life I saw but little, and have few reminiscences to contribute. One can only speak of that singular geniality of his, that temper of goodness and natural tolerance and affection, which, as Scotsmen best know, is not universal among the Scots. Our race does not need to pray, like the mechanic in the story, that Providence ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... be tolerated because a sense of humor is not one of the qualifications of the teacher. But, in the vitalized school, he would be intolerable. If children should go to such a teacher for spiritual refreshment, they would return thirsty. He has nothing to give them, no bubbling water of life, no geniality, no such graces of the spirit as appeal to buoyant childhood. He lacks a sense of humor, and that lack makes arid the exuberant sources of life. He may solve problems in arithmetic, but he cannot compass the solution of the problem of life. The children pity him, and no greater calamity can ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... head a little behind, with a movement that sent his straw hat forward in the direction of his nose. "I don't know as I'd do anything for him that I wouldn't do for you," he responded with an equal geniality. "I guess you'd better open that one"—and he gave a little affectionate kick to ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... of drawn intensity ran over his features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked just in time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of the scrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it; but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Richard's stay was not sad. Dr. Harlowe and Mr. Somerville were with us; and though the events with which he had been associated had somewhat sobered the doctor's mirthful propensities, the geniality of his character was triumphant ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... many little escapes and corner-holes does the sensibility, the fineness, (that of which refinement is but a counterfeit, at best but a reflex,) the geniality of nature appear in this 'son of thunder!' O for a Luther in the present age! Why, Charles! [3] with the very handcuffs of his prejudices he would knock out the brains (nay, that is impossible, but,) he would split the skulls of our 'Cristo-galli', translate ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a severe, rigid attention to the obligations and the punctualities of life. We should not be justified in calling such persons selfish; still less should we call them cold-hearted: their exuberance overflows upon others in the form of heartiness, geniality, joviality, and even lavish generosity. Still, they can seldom be got to look far before them; they do not often assume the painfully circumspect attitude required in the more arduous enterprises. They are not ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... all right, Diggs," said Mr. Bingle, affecting a vast geniality. "What's a mistletoe for if not to—yes, yes, Melissa, it's quite all right. Ahem! Don't you agree ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... of station and authority. A moment afterwards, a gentleman of middle age, or a little beyond, appeared in the doorway, in a dress that seemed clerical, yet not very decidedly so; he had a frank, kindly, yet authoritative bearing, and a face that might almost be said to beam with geniality, when, as now, the benevolence of his nature was aroused and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nothing of emotion in it but a frigid inhumanity. He competed with Guido in the fresco of the Lodovisi Aurora, a substantial work certainly, yet one that lacks the saving qualities of the Rospigliosi ceiling—grace and geniality of fancy. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... The seas spread in great arms over the revelled continents, the plant world rejoices in the increasing warmth and moisture, and the animals increase in number and variety. We pass into the Jurassic period under conditions of great geniality. Warm seas are found as far north and south as our present polar regions, and the low-lying fertile lands are covered again with rich, if less gigantic, forests, in which hordes of stupendous animals find ample nourishment. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... speak so bitterly; generally, even at worst time, overflowing with geniality; ready to take kindest view of circumstances, and hope for the best. But SUMMERS, surveying mankind from China to Peru in search of material for fresh conundrum, too much for mildest-mannered man. OLD MORALITY, goaded to verge of madness, jumps up; hotly declines to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... let me add my own. I 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 ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... yet, deep down in his heart he was conscious of so earnest a desire to be really one of them, this good-natured, good-hearted, gay-spirited little throng, with their delightful intimacies, their keen interest in each other's welfare, their potent, almost mysterious geniality, which seemed to draw the stranger of kindred tastes so closely under its influence. Philip, as he sat at the long table with a dozen or so other men, did his best that night to break through the fetters, tried hard to remember that his place amongst them, after ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 Theodore Martin, his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouveres," or "The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... smiled upon him with something approaching geniality and had answered, "You'll do it, and so shall I. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... talk with each, or bringing two or three together round his chair. In these conversations there was always a good deal of fun, and, speaking generally, there was either a humorous turn in his talk, or a sunny geniality which served instead. Perhaps my recollection of a pervading element of humour is the more vivid, because the best talks were with Mr. Huxley, in whom there is the aptness which is akin to humour, even when humour itself is not there. My father enjoyed Mr. Huxley's humour exceedingly, and would often ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... middle-aged ladies, who, having once been, or been once, on the stage, still affect the skittish manners of a ballet-dancer. He is a man of short speech, but his humour is as broad as his drinks are long. He affects a rowdy geniality and a swaggering gait, by which he seeks to overawe the inoffensive. Though he has but a small stock of intelligence, he passes for a wit amongst his associates by dint of perpetually repeating an inane catch-word. With this, and a stamp of the foot, he will greet a friend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... his life and goods by the sufferance of his fellows. Thereupon he begins to doubt whether it is worth while to court a verdict of so grave possibilities, or to risk offending a judge—whose customary geniality is merely the outcome of a fixed habit of inattention. In doubt whether to speak or keep silence, he takes a middle course, and while purporting to speak for himself, is careful to lay stress only on the points whereon all are agreed, to enlarge eloquently on the doubtfulness of things, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Goldstone rocked she smiled, tilting herself backward off the balls of her feet. The years had cropped out in her suddenly, surprisingly, and with a great deal of geniality. The taffy cast to her hair had backslid to ashes of roses. Uncorseted and in the white wrapper, she was quite frankly widespread, her hips fitting in tight between the chair-arms, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... ears, and that fulness of bodice and skirt which Mr. Gibson has either initiated or imitated. The whisk of those skirts, and the frank incisive voice and pleasant, catching laugh were familiar and welcome sounds on board of the Korosko. Even the rigid Colonel softened into geniality, and the Oxford-bred diplomatist forgot to be unnatural with Miss ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... comrades, and afraid of the sound of their own rustic voices. It was in these early days, I think, that Professor Blackie won the affection of his pupils, putting these uncouth, umbrageous students at their ease with ready human geniality. Thus, at least, we have a healthy democratic atmosphere to breathe in while at work; even when there is no cordiality there is always a juxtaposition of the different classes, and in the competition of study the intellectual power of each is plainly demonstrated ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... John had tried a score of times to catch his eye, and had caught it once or twice, but only to find the man inscrutable. Yet he was by no means taciturn; but seemed, as his warpaint of soot and vermilion wore thinner, to thaw into what (for an Indian) might pass for geniality. After a successful rat-hunt he would even grow loquacious, seating himself on the bank and jabbering while he skinned his spoils, using for the most part a jargon of broken French (in which he was fluent) and native words of which Barboux understood very few and ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Croissant. "Follow the commis-voyageur in France and dine well (and cheaply)" might readily be the motto of all travellers in France. The bountiful fare, the local colour, the hearty greeting, and equally hearty farewell of the patronne, and the geniality of the whole personnel gave us an exceedingly good impression of the contrast between the tourist hotel of Blois and the maison bourgeois of Tours, always to ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... if he were a friend of Marny's, or whether he had only been attracted by that glow of geniality which seems to ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... familiarity of a citizen among citizens. He was a clever, ready, sensible man, equal, as it seemed, to any practical task likely to come in his way, but in reality void of any deep insight, of any far-reaching aspiration, of any profound conviction. His affectation of a straightforward middle-class geniality covered a decided tendency towards intrigue and a strong love of personal power. Later events indeed gave rise to the belief that, while professing the utmost loyalty to Charles X., Louis Philippe had been scheming to oust ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true—it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into "meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?—Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... 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 never a thought ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Ingoldsby Legend; but even a good-natured reader will hardly return to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... "Powder Tower," you may pick up the scent which, I maintain, hangs about there—that of rather spicy wickedness. I do not mean anything offensive in this; in fact, everything is conducted decently and in good order, also with a certain geniality; the suggestion is rather that you might be mildly wicked if you wanted to be. However, though we have to live in this world we need not ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker |
