"Likable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it. Except on the one subject of that cockeyed invention of his, he behaved perfectly normally. Besides he would have hired a lawyer and fought any such move. He had plenty of money. And nobody wanted publicity. McAllen was a pretty likable old boy." ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... likable when you first meet him than George used to be; a handsome man who knows how to say the right thing. Makes friends readily, but somehow he never keeps the best of them. He's one of the people who seem able to get whatever they want without ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... We met up with a nice American chap on our travels. He was so likable that father, who was pretty homesick by that time and would have loved anything American, fell in love with him. I can't quite understand why I didn't lose my head too. I came mighty near it once or twice. But the minute I'd think of that boy here in Green ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... friendships had sprung up between them and certain of their hapless foes, whom they spoke of as "a sort of pets." One of these was very useful in making the mutinous take their medicine; another was liked apparently because he was so likable. At a certain cot the chief surgeon stopped and said, "We did not expect this boy to live through the night." He took the boy's wrist between his thumb and finger, and asked tenderly as he leaned over him, "Poco mejor?" The boy could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... snow was falling in powdery flakes, when a sportsman alighted at the Hotel des Postes, and at the first glance I knew him for a countryman. He was a fine, frank, free-hearted young fellow, one of the most easily likable of youngsters, and we were on friendly terms together before the first evening was over. He knew a number of people in the neighbourhood, had received a dozen invitations to shoot, or thereabouts, and meant to put up ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... was a likable man, frank by nature as well as name and brave, sunny in disposition and ardently devoted to her. When the betrothal had been made at her uncle's urgent insistence that she accept Captain Yeovil's suit, it had been a great match ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... were agitated and much occupied. Katherine went for part of each to read and write and market for the old recluse, and he grew less formidable, but not more likable, as he became more familiar. He was an extraordinary example of a human being converted into a money-making and accumulating machine. He was not especially irritable; indeed his physical powers were weak and dying of every species of starvation; but his coldness was supernatural. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... giving us the stock-jokes of the China Sea and telling stories of his younger days, when he had better commands than the old Kut Sang. He was a bluff but likable old sea-dog, but I saw that he observed Meeker closely as he talked, and I knew that he was none too ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the traction muddle was sufficient to afford a background of plausibility for this highminded renunciation. There was something likable in Charles Holton. His volubility, which had prejudiced her against him in the beginning, seemed now to speak for a frankness that appealed to her. There was no reason for his telling her these things unless he cared for her good opinion; and it was not disagreeable to find that this man, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... trains and in a hammock." That was the verdict as delivered to me by Romeike from 300 reviewers, and it drove me to farces. So, I was especially glad when you liked "Royal Macklin." I tried to make a "hero" who was vain, theatrical, boasting and selfconscious, but, still likable. But, I did not succeed in making him of interest, and it always has hurt me. Also, your liking the "Derelict" and the "Fever Ship" gave me much pleasure. You see what I mean, it was your selecting the things ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... wishes to cultivate. As a matter of course but few persons can have just the surroundings they would like, but it is possible that by pleasant thinking all of us can make the surroundings we have more likable. We can, at least, be thoughtful of the character of the friends and companions we choose to have with us, and it is they who are the most vital ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... rather dreaded the professor. I had pictured to myself a very dignified, bespectacled person, and I mentally stood in awe of his great learning. Imagine my surprise when a boyish, laughing young man introduced himself as Professor Glenholdt. He was so jolly, so unaffected, and so altogether likable, that my fear vanished and I enjoyed the prospect of his company. Mr. Haynes and his friend Mr. Struble on their wagon led the way, then we followed, and after us came Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, and Miss Hull brought up the ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Irving least justly, although I was his associate on the stage for a quarter of a century, and was on the terms of the closest friendship with him for almost as long a time. He had precisely the qualities that I never find likable. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... him the next day, with an insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had thought me—perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had inspired—rational creatures, aren't we?—beg pardon—not we, then, but I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that—for money? Do I want the money badly enough? Would I not even rather be penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest impulse, body and soul—perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power over me? Do you ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... purpose. But the nurse deals with the average of human nature, and she finds their reaction faulty. Very often, if she is observant, she will discover that a patient responds in a very different way to some other nurse, who somehow finds that "trying" sick woman charming or thoughtful, likable or sweet. Of course, it may be because the other nurse weakens discipline and caters to the patient's whims; but it is just as likely to be because she has tempered her care and her strictness with understanding. She has grasped the patient's point of view; ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... looked at him with frank interest. He wondered why he should be of any interest to her. MacRae had never been shy. Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness. Being free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl's sight. Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself. A man cannot live through manifold chances of death, face great perils, do his work under desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... view accorded to me by self-dissipation of the glamour through which they had been wont to appear. I had wandered somehow behind the scenes, and beheld, no footlights of sex intervening, the once so radiant fairies resolved into a raddled humanity, as likable as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... subjects, she was equally convinced on her side that a husband's queer ways while he was a bachelor would be easily laughed out of him when he had married an adroit woman. Mixtus, she felt, was an excellent creature, quite likable, who was getting rich; and Scintilla meant to have all the advantages of a rich man's wife. She was not in the least a wicked woman; she was simply a pretty animal of the ape kind, with an aptitude for certain accomplishments which education ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... was so wealthy and so simple and so likable and important that it seemed nobody would refuse to accept him. But ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Williams would have been. No name itself, it struck us, would be happier for Mr. Williams than Frederic Carroll—if it were not Jesse Lynch Williams. A "colletch" chap alumnus. A typical, clever, exceedingly likable young American husband, fairly well to do: it is thus we behold him. Slender, in an English walking coat, smiling agreeably. One, we thought, you would think of as a popular figure ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... dark, rather smallish man of fifty, trim in his blue and white uniform. I knew him well: we had made several flights together. An American—I fancy of Jewish ancestry. A likable man, and a skillful doctor and surgeon. He and I had ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... could tell from their very names that they would do uncommon things. And as for their more distant relatives, the Hummingbirds and Chimney Swifts, it would take a story apiece as long as this to begin to tell of their strange doings. But it is a nice, likable sort of queerness they all have; so very interesting, too, that we enjoy them the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... So this was the American lad! Of course. He could understand Otto's warm feeling now. They were not unlike, the two children. This boy was more sturdy, not so fine, perhaps, but eminently likable. He was courageous, too. The iodine had not been pleasant, but he had ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when you get lonesome, come on back into the fold. I've an idea that Joy Cross is going to make a place for herself in the school whether you like it or not. Blue Bonnet seems to have got at her in some way lately, and she says she's really quite likable! She says Joy makes her think of the late chrysanthemums in her grandmother's garden. They never get ready to bloom until everything else is gone; but you appreciate them all the more after they've weathered the frost and come out brave and brilliant. Funny ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... inland scavengers is the raven, frequenter of the desert ranges, the same called locally "carrion crow." He is handsomer and has such an air. He is nice in his habits and is said to have likable traits. A tame one in a Shoshone camp was the butt of much sport and enjoyed it. He could all but talk and was another with the children, but an arrant thief. The raven will eat most things that come his way,—eggs and young of ground-nesting birds, seeds even, lizards ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... so far as to admit that she might find him very likable, if only it were not for that affected little moustache and that semi-occasional trick he practised of looking down his nose when ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... extravagant, careless of the future, and her flippant opinion, delivered to Althea, of the Service Bureau and work in general, was all that was needed to convince the shrewd junior of Jean's true position in life. Then, too, Jean was extremely likable, although Althea stood a little in awe of her remarkable poise and a certain imperiousness that occasionally crept into ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... infectious, so contagious that both Will and Boyd grinned in return. They were not only securing for a perilous quest a man who was beyond compare, but they were also giving the most exquisite mental pleasure to a likable human being. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... laugh in Faust? Cunningham is a queer duck. I don't suppose there's a corner on the globe he hasn't had a peek at. He has a vast knowledge of the arts. His real name nobody seems to know. He can make himself very likable to men and attractive to women. The sort of women he seeks do not mind his physical deformity. His face and his intellect draw them, and he is as cruel as a wolf. It never occurred to me until last night that men like me create his kind. But I don't understand him in this ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Bend," they solve a series of mysteries but not until after some lively thrills which will cause other boys to sit on the edge of their chairs. The next story telling of their search for a lost army aviator in "Muskrat Swamp" is just as lively. The boys are all likable and manly—just the sort of fellows that every other wide-awake boy would be ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... behind all his disappointment, even contempt, there yet lurked in his soul an odd liking for the young man. Guy was most strangely likable, however deep he sank. Unstable, unreliable, wholly outside the pale as he was, yet there ever hung about him a nameless, indescribable fascination which redeemed him from utter degradation, a charm ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... the strange man's face again. "I wouldn't worry too much. I believe you could stand a greater chance of happiness if I do the choosing than if you do it yourself as I can see more of the future. If you are mutually likable and willing to understand each other; if you are mentally on the same level, there is little chance of not falling in love. My race mates in this way, and it works out better ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... once or twice, and I like him, but when I mention him Tom smiles. He says it's unfortunate Mr. Vane can see only one thing at a time, and that the one which lies right in front of his eyes. For all that, he once owned that the man is likable." ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... cattlemen of the Old West you will still look into many such eyes, but never among city dwellers will you find them. Blue they are for the most part or gray-blue, level, direct, unfearing; quiet and steady as steel, flinging no flags of flurry, tremendously sure of themselves. They can be very likable eyes, frank and kind, with innumerable little lines of humor radiating from the corners; or they can be stern and chill as the Day ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... announced himself as Milton Keith from Baltimore, proved to have a likable and engaging personality. He was bubbling with interest and enthusiasm; and these qualities, provided they are backed solidly, are always prepossessing. Sherwood, quietly studying him, concluded that such was the case. His jaw and mouth were set in firm lines; his ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... picturesque figure with a great deal of personal magnetism and dash. The halo of romance has been fitted to his head. There is no doubt that he was a good wilderness traveler, a keen lover of adventure, and a likable personality. He was, however, over-ambitious; he advertised himself altogether too well; and he presumed on the undoubtedly great personal influence he possessed. He has been nicknamed the Pathfinder, but a better title would be the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the resolute young fellow; there was something decidedly likable in his frank and handsome countenance, and his blunt, ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Grover & Dickhut regarded him as the most promising young man in New York. They predicted a great future for him, no small part of which was the ultimate alteration of an office shingle, the name of Rossiter going up in gilt, after that of Dickhut. And, above all, Rossiter was a handsome, likable chap. Tall, fair, sunny-hearted, well groomed, he was a fellow that both sexes liked without ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... before they had walked far that Huling was an amiable and likable chap. As the captain of the Salisbury nine, he certainly had no reason to be agreeable to the Morristown "ringer," even though Wayne did happen to be a famous ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... had a hearty laugh. The prison doctor, a likable chap, has just been in to have a yarn with me, incidentally to proffer me his good offices in the matter of dope. Of course I declined his proposition to "shoot me" so full of morphine through the night that to-morrow I would not know, when I marched to the gallows, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... that is neither here nor there. Understand me, I'm no seraph; I pose as no model of rectitude, and, unfortunately for my peace of mind, Miss Montague is a really likable young person. But Buddy has a mother and a sister, and they hold me responsible for him. We three are dining downstairs in an hour; perhaps you could ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of Fruition. (p. 94.) Above the fountain the mother gives the new-born child to its happy father, and the servant brings the first fruits of the harvest. This is less likable than the other groups. The posture of the mother is not a happy one. The two murals picture Summer and Fruition. Bancroft has taken athletic games as the symbol of the season. Summer is crowning the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... restored to her, as it were, some rightful and precious heritage long withheld, an indispensable birthright the lack of which had beggared and stripped her. She had a sense of profound gratitude to this likable and handsome young man, a moved and touching interest in him. He made her feel glad to be alive; through him the world seemed of a sudden a kindlier place, full of charming surprises. And when she accompanied Mrs. MacGregor ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of a courteous, generous, sympathetic, chivalrous people. Treat these simple people right and you win their devoted friendship. Respect their oddities. Do not laugh at them as do untactful soldiers of another nation. Molest no man's property except of military necessity. You will discover likable traits in the character of these Russians. Here, as everywhere in the world, in spite of differences of language and customs, of dress and work and play and eating and housing, strangers among foreign people will find that in the essentials of life ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... Peter's watery stare was abject fright. "Lorelei wouldn't let us suffer," he ventured, tremulously. "I'm sick. I may die any time, so the doctor says." He was indeed a changed man; that easy good humor that had been his most likable trait had ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... thereabouts. There was power—plenty of it—in the wide shoulders and deep chest of him, with arms in proportion. His hands, while smooth on the backs and well cared for, showed when he exposed the palms the callouses of ax handling. And his face was likable, she decided, full of character, intensely masculine. In her heart every woman despises any hint of the effeminate in man. Even though she may decry what she is pleased to term the brute in man, whenever he discards ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... any larger than Paul, although the latter was a year younger. Ernie felt a slightly nervous responsibility for the safety of the "twin babies of the bunch," as some one had already referred to them in the course of the day. Jerry, who, like Paul, was an extremely likable fellow, resented being called the baby of the patrol, a term sometimes applied to him when the Scouts were dealing ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... neither feared nor yet provoked her sharp tongue. While he relished her wit, it had always been with an unspoken deprecation of its cutting edge. He gave her a queer feeling of having allowances made for her—a condescension that in anybody but this big, likable boy she would have requited with sarcasm. But against him the cheveux de frise she successfully presented to the world seemed of no avail. He knew it was not timber but twigs, and that at worst ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... polite for polite society, and, lacking emphasis, was flat as stale wine. In truth, it may well be said that George had set out to mend his ways under adverse conditions. But he had set out to do it, and that in itself was a great deal, for there is a likable sort of virtue in every good intent. He had reached the first of the three great R's in the act of repentance, Recognition; Regret and Recession being the second and third—all necessary to regeneration. I had faith in his good intentions, but ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... am not surprised that his people should still keep on seeking information; for Thomas Glahn was in many ways an uncommon and likable man. I admit this, for fairness' sake, and despite the fact that Glahn is still repellant to my soul, so that the bare memory of him arouses hatred. He was a splendidly handsome man, full of youth, and with an irresistible manner. When he looked ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... do. And I've often wondered what it could be. He certainly's a queer stick. Got to admit that. Always brooding. Good fellow all right, and, for a 'sphinx' as you call him, likable. But I wonder what is ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and, of course, year by year, they got to be more of 'em, and they finally downed him for good; and like other public men so fixed, he didn't live long after that. He had a son, Melville, mighty likable young fellow, studyin' law when his paw died. I was livin' in their town then, and I knowed Mel Bickner pretty well; he ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... likable,—a jolly, unpretentious, shrewd business man, with a hearty American appetite for the bustle of existence. As for the handsome Mrs. Bunker,—"She was from Waterbury, Connecticut, you know," she said, assuming that ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... like to hire him for my manager, if I could only offer him enough money. But I don't see your point of criticism. It seems to me that he's a mighty presentable and likable young fellow, good looking, and a gentleman in the sense in which I like ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... caused the trouble. It was more terrible than frost or famine. Women were all very well, in themselves good to look upon and likable; but along came this thing called love, and they were seared to the bone by it, made so irrational that one could never guess ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London |
