"Sociable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weakness. I think I shall like Saratoga. The great hotels contain all one wishes for amusement. Then everything about town is so nice, pretty, and sociable. The shops, also, are fine. Too often we have spent our summers in places that were a trifle dreary. Mountains oppress me with a sense of littleness, and their wildness frightens me. The ocean is worse still. The moment I ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... many another sociable dinner, but none with greater success than this at which I turned Burnand's accidentally unhappy speech into ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... great, elderly dog—who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid claim to him—saw fit to render himself the object of public notice. Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog, going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion from anybody else, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... made up my mind to one thing," said the Comte, filling his glass with such energy that a red circle appeared on the cloth. "This life I lead is all wrong. A man is a sociable being. He needs society. Isolation sends ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... many people in the hotel, but he was not feeling sociable. The night before he had dropped a considerable sum at the Casino, but it had not greatly interested him. Regretfully he had come to the conclusion that gambling in that form did not attract him. The greedy crowd that pushed and strove in ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... And he liked my supper, and said so. Ate some of everything and praised it, and was just as—as common and everyday and sociable, not a ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... beautiful fools, but when he sniffed at them I couldn't help taking the opposite line, for I already felt that even should we happen to agree it would always be for reasons that differed. It came home to me that he was admirably British as, without so much as a sociable sneer at my bookbinder, he turned away from the serried rows of my little ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... likes William's floor the best of the bunch, there are so many delightful things to play with. Not that Spunk stays there—dear me, no. He's a sociable little chap, and his usual course is to pounce on a shelf, knock off some object that tickles his fancy, then lug it in his mouth to—well, anywhere that he happens to feel like going. Cyril has found him up-stairs with a small miniature, battered and chewed ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... by twelve months, and see how the law of kindness is working then. Mrs. Parker is certainly happier, less troubled than she was two years ago; Edith is a better and more dutiful child, and the sisters are far more sociable with her than formerly. The dove of peace has taken up its abode in the Parker family. How is it in High Street? Emilie and aunt Agnes are not there, but Miss Webster is still going on with her straw bonnet trade and her lodging letting, and she ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... was still lounging in his chair. He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the house, who might be supposed to have his regular score at the bar, his summer seat at the open window, and his prescriptive corner at the winter's fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to address him with a remark calculated to draw forth his historical reminiscences, if any such were in his mind; and it gratified me to discover, that, between memory and tradition, the old gentleman was really possessed of some very pleasant gossip ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... paintings, than in Chaucer's morning landscapes. . . . His reading was deep and extensive, his judgement sound and discerning. . . In one word, he was a great scholar, a pleasant wit, a candid critic, a sociable companion, a steadfast friend, a grave philosopher, a temperate ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... excommunicate a tongue in which your ladyship has condescended to write;(625) but I only condemn it for verse and pieces of eloquence, of which I thought it alike incapable, till I read Rousseau of Geneva. It is a most sociable language, and charming for narrative and epistles. Yet, write as well as you will in it, you must be liable to express yourself better in the speech natural to you and your own country has a right to understand all your works, and is jealous of their not being ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... call on his friends or perhaps ride into the country and visit his estates. About ten o'clock (which the Athenians called "full market"), he would be pretty sure to find his way to the Agora. The shops at this time were crowded with purchasers, and every sociable citizen of Athens was to be found in them or in the neighboring colonnades which lined ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... these chunky, square-jawed gents, Captain Lennon is, and about as sociable as a traffic cop on duty. His job is runnin' the yacht, and he ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... about saying, I went there last night to spend an hour in a little sociable chat, and was about taking leave——' At this point the speaker was interrupted by several violent raps at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... that ever seemed much like them to me. They've been company for me all my life. I don't think there are any others half as beautiful, and I know there aren't any as sociable. They were always so." He sighed gently, and Miss Sherwood fancied his wife must have found the Indiana skies as lovely as he had, in the days of long ago. "Seems to me they are the softest and bluest ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Burns with open arms, and once he was in their midst to prolong their sittings in his honour. Nor was Burns, if he found them honest and hearty fellows, the man to say them nay. He was eminently a social and sociable being, and in company such as theirs he could unbend himself as he might not do in the houses of punctilious society. The etiquette of that howff of the Crochallan Fencibles in the Anchor Close or of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... night in camp was pleasantly passed. Some sociable officers—favorites with Captain Kingwalt—congregated under the tarpaulin, after supper-hour, and when a long-necked bottle had been emptied and replenished, there were many quaint stories related and curious individualities revealed. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... only solid foundation of all moral virtues and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his hereditary income was little more than a ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... "Impossible, Miss Asher," he said. "He never would have such a woman. I know him well enough to be absolutely sure of that. Of course, he treats her kindly, and perhaps he is sociable with her. It is his nature to be friendly, and he has known her for a long time. But marry her! Never! I am certain, Miss Asher, he ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... edge—would he have held back for a woman he didn't know? And if he did know her, it would be a good, chunky reason why he shouldn't crowd in and take his turn: he'd have to make good or lose whatever little ante he'd been putting up in the sociable game. Now one other little thing: you counted him out the single thousand in small bills first, you said: then ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... ridden in to Llanython. A fair had generally much attraction for him—the merry laughter, the sociable meetings, the sound of music on the air, and the altogether festive character of the day; but on this occasion its pleasures seemed to pall, and quickly dispatching the business which had brought him there, he returned to the inn, and, mounting his horse, rode home early in the afternoon. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Stanhope's guests. It had been a season of relaxation and keen enjoyment to them, to her, and to Dr. King's family, who had joined them in many a pleasant little excursion to points of interest in the vicinity, and several sociable family picnics among the surrounding hills and woods. A warm friendship had already sprung up between the three young girls, and had done much toward reconciling Elsie to the idea of spending the summer there ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... took possession of me, such as I knew not while fretting at Unyanyembe, wearing my life away in inactivity. I talked with my people as to my friends and equals. We argued with each other about our prospects in quite a companionable, sociable vein. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... gentleman was all right. I used to see him with the officers. He was with them every day or two for hours. Then he made himself pleasant and sociable, and used to get me to lunch, or treat to drinks sometimes, and seemed to know everything that was going on. I didn't know anything whatever about Mr. Forrest's affairs except what he told me from time to time, and I believed what he told. Perhaps ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... understand,' says Paisley, 'that I've made up my mind to accrue that widow woman as part and parcel in and to my hereditaments forever, both domestic, sociable, legal, and otherwise, until ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... considerable long journey like our'n, is like sitting up late with the gals, a body knows it's getting on pretty well towards mornin', and yet feels loth to go to bed, for it's just the time folks grow sociable. I got a scheme in my head," said he, "that I think will answer both on us; I got debts due to me in all them 'ere places for clocks sold by the consarn; now suppose you leave your horse on these mashes this fall; he'll get as fat as a fool, he won't be able to see out of his eyes in a ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... we give that plan up. He told us that there was only one way to get an appointment in Washington, and that was through a lady lobbyist. He gave us the address of one he recommended, a Mrs. Avery, who he said was high up in sociable ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... no songsters, but rather mute, making only a little harsh noise when a person approaches their nest. They seem not to be of a sociable turn, never with us congregating with their congeners in the autumn. Undoubtedly they breed a second time, like the house-martin and swallow; and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... of the beds, tidying up the room, and polishing of shoes was attended to after breakfast, of course without undue haste and with plenty of pauses for conversation. The manufacturer found it all much more sociable and pleasant in company than alone; he began to have very friendly feelings toward his housemate, and to congratulate himself on the prospect of a lively and cheerful existence. Even the inevitable work seemed less terrifying than usual, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... racked 'long same ez Mars John's bay pony, en Brer Possum he went in a han'-gallup; en dey got over heap er groun, mon. Brer Possum, he got his belly full er 'simmons, en Brer Coon, he scoop up a 'bunnunce er frogs en tadpoles. Dey amble long, dey did, des ez sociable ez a basket er kittens, twel bimeby dey hear Mr. Dog talkin' ter hisse'f way off ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... operators. It is not true that sensitiveness is confined to those who are diseased, weak of will, neurotic, or hysterical. Those who are susceptible to psychic influence may be impulsive, warm-hearted, spontaneous, sociable, and not by any means, or of necessity, weak-minded or vicious." Dr. Dean Clake says: "The word mediumship, as understood and used by spiritualists, technically speaking, means a susceptibility to the influence, and more or less control, of decarnated spirits. Physiologically, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... "Edwards isn't a bad sort of man. He isn't very sociable. I guess he wouldn't take much impudence, even from that boy of his. They say Jim wouldn't own up, and the old man won't do anything ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... adversary under such circumstances. But Ferragus lay so uncomfortably for the want of a pillow that Orlando took pity upon him, and brought a smooth stone and placed it under his head. When the giant woke up, after a refreshing nap, and perceived what Orlando had done, he seemed quite grateful, became sociable, and talked freely in the usual boastful style of such characters. Among other things he told Orlando that he need not attempt to kill him with a sword, for that every part of his body was invulnerable, except this; and as ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... goad to drive a man to work, and reason sanctions his natural response. This mental activity guides not only individual human conduct but also that of the group. Instinct impels the man to defend his family from hardship or his clan from defeat, and reason confirms the impulse. His sociable disposition urges him to co-operate in industry, and reason sanctions his inclination. The history of society reveals an increasing influence of the intellect in thus directing instinct and feeling. It is a law of social activity that it tends to become more rational with the increase ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... evidently took me for a brother Bruin; I wanted nothing but bulk to make an excellent counterfeit: however, I saw several cubs amongst them not much larger than myself. After they had all smelt me, and the body of their deceased companion, whose skin was now become my protector, we seemed very sociable, and I found I could mimic all their actions tolerably well; but at growling, roaring, and hugging they were quite my masters. I began now to think that I might turn the general confidence which I had created amongst ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be approved by the connoisseur, but they have A taste for art. Can the same be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday paper? So much has Church and State puritanism done for us—so well has it succeeded ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in New York commenced a closer intimacy with the Caines, though not of our seeking. They lived nearer to us than any of our friends and their informal calls became very frequent. In a way we liked them. They were chatty, sociable people, though a little too much inclined to gossip. They were not well mated. Both had tempers and the wife had some money, the husband, little or none; consequently there was friction and they lacked the good taste to confine their differences to the privacy of their own apartments. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... whose leaving was the greatest grief of her life, some questions about these memories. Mrs. Bailey had hugged her and had talked a good deal about Captain Hall's being a changed man since his wife's death. "He used to be so different, jolly and good-natured and sociable; you wouldn't know him now if you seen him then. When your mamma was took it just seemed to wilt him right down. He was awful sick himself for a spell, and when he got better he was like he is today. Seems as if HE died too, as you might say, and ain't really ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "A man who doesn't dance is an enemy of mankind. The dancer, like the bridge-player, cannot exist without a partner, so he can't help being sociable. But you—why, a book is all the company you want. ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... to offend such a character, I gave my companions the wink and we followed him into the bar-room with the full determination of making a friend of him. After all had done the sociable act—of course gentlemen only drink for sociability sake—I took him to one side purposely to draw him into a little private chat, and it was not long before his self-conceit had the better of him. He ordered ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... resolved to land somewhere, they put over to one of the islands which lay west, and went boldly on shore; that they found the people very courteous and friendly to them; and they gave them several roots and some dried fish, and appeared very sociable; and that the women, as well as the men, were very forward to supply them with anything they could get for them to eat, and brought it to them a great way, on their heads. They continued here for four days, and inquired as well ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... if such were necessary, or going personally to the plumber to make sure that that erratic personage would give his attention to any pipes in regard to which Mr. Vincent might have written, Barker should mingle in sociable relations with my tenants, and drive or play tennis with the young lady of the house, then would I immediately have done with him. I would withdraw my business from his hands and place it in those of old Mr. Poindexter. More than that, it ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... children, and sometimes the grown people as well, yelled cheerily after our carriage, "Hellojohn, hellojohn," evidently under the impression that Hello, John, was one word, and a salutation of great respect as well as a sociable greeting. ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... establish a German state, these immigrants did cling to their customs wherever they settled in considerable numbers. Especially did they retain their original social life, their Turnvereine, their musical clubs, their sociable beer gardens, their picnics and excursions, their churches and parochial schools. They still celebrated their Christmas and other church festivals with German cookery and Kuchen, and their weddings and christenings were enlivened but ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... detests drawing lessons, but he has rather a taste for drawing things out of his own head.) He had told her, not too civilly, that he had work enough without doing drawings for girls. He will paint her something to-night as a surprise; he will begin as soon as tea is cleared away; it will be more sociable than reading ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... movements, drew a small table before the hearth, and set out thereon cold meat, bread, and milk, also the inevitable pie of the Americanized workman. The boys helped them, or pretended to, and even Dan grew sociable under the sense of close ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of monarchies requires a certain politeness of behavior. Man, a sociable animal, is formed to please in society; and a person that would break through the rules of decency, so as to shock those he conversed with, would lose the public esteem, and become incapable of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... rules, "Tell the truth"; "Talk not of yourself"; and "Confess ignorance"? Have you all practised them, in moonlight sleigh-ride by the Red River of the North,—in moonlight stroll on the beach by St. Augustine,—in evening party at Pottsville,—and at the parish sociable in Northfield? Then you are sure of the benefits which will crown your lives if you obey these three precepts; and you will, with unfaltering step, move quickly over the kettle-de-benders of this ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... suggestion that it was always an improvement to a boiled round; but with these thrilling exceptions the newcomers were left to their own devices. Conversation even among the older residents was spasmodic and intermittent, and in no sense could the meal be termed sociable or cheerful. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said; "let us sit down and be sociable. I daresay they will be some time in killing their quarry. We will enjoy ourselves till they come back. They shall not hurt you; I will ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the course of conversation, what he was? He replied, "A capitalist,—an Insurer of Ships." I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for he added, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... to be quite alone. There isn't a better fellow going than your uncle. I am sure I ought to say so. But he isn't just what I should call,—sociable." ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... adjourned to the room where the women had, for the time, been just as laboriously and gravely engaged; and a table was soon spread by a person agreed with, with a good substantial dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding; and the good people grew right sociable, chatty, and even merry in their way; while, all the time in the adjoining stable, or, as in one case, in the stable under them, their steeds, often rough, wild creatures, thrust perhaps twenty into a stable without ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... did Major Warfield say at supper in regard to the new inmate of the Hidden House, for he had particular reasons for keeping Cap in ignorance of a neighbor, lest she should insist upon exchanging visits and being "sociable." ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... reserved student, whose manners were thought affected in general society, could and did make himself delightful to those who understood him, or those who looked to him for affection. "According to my remembrance of him," writes M. Scherer, "he was bright, sociable, a charming companion. Others who knew him better and longer than I say the same. The mobility of his disposition counteracted his tendency to exaggerations of feeling. In spite of his fits of melancholy, his natural turn of mind was cheerful; up to the end he was young, a child even, amused ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he did not abuse— Was sociable and gay: He wore large buckles on his shoes, And changed them ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... delightful person. It would be so good, too, for Austin to see something of the gay world instead of always mooning about alone; and then he would be sure to meet other young people at the performance, friends from the neighbouring town, with whom he could talk and be sociable. Austin, on his side, was quite willing to go and be amused, though he felt, perhaps, more interested in what promised to be an entirely new experience than excited at the prospect of a treat. He wanted to see and to study, and then he would be ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... a smiling aspect, the sociable group which surrounded him, little did he suspect that the man who on the morrow was to become his son-in-law—who was to lead to the altar his only child, that pure and gentle girl—little, we say, did he suspect that the Chevalier Duvall was in reality a branded villain of the blackest ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... into them beautiful hants. And then agin, we'd float by an island where there would be lots of white tents, with wimmen and children and men and boys standin' out wavin' their handkerchiefs and shoutin' to us, good natered and sociable. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... chiefly brought from South America and from the Persian Gulf, and have many admirers, but I cannot say I like them as a substitute either for horses or for the gay little ponies. This is such an exceedingly sociable place that I have frequent opportunities of looking at the nice horses of my visitors, and most of the equipages would do credit to any establishment. The favorite style of carriage in use here is very like a victoria, only there is a curious custom of always keeping the hood ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of any ring except the marriage circlet. Her manner attested her a person of consequence in her social circle and one who realized the fact. She had repelled, though without rudeness or discourtesy, the garrulous efforts of the motherly knitter to be sociable. She had promptly inspired the small, candy-crusted explorer with such awe that he had refrained from further visits after his first confiding attempt to poke a sticky finger through the baby's velvety cheek. She had spared little scorn in her rejection of ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Planta, who, already knowing her, from seeing her frequently when in waiting, as she is one of the ladies of the bedchamber, was much more sociable than myself. She afterwards turned to me, and said, "If there is anything you want, Miss Burney, pray speak for it." And she added, "My sisters will attend you presently;—you will excuse me,-I have not a moment from their majesties." And then ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the University to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of back-gammon. My friend, says Sir ROGER, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... all that could be desired; they were congenial spirits, and the day passed most delightfully. But though the young people were very sociable, no one seeming to be under any restraint, neither Chester nor Percy found an opportunity for any private chat with Lucilla. The fact was that the captain had had a bit of private talk with his ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... "Rivers had a visitor. A man, who smoked cigars. He and Rivers were on friendly, or at least sociable, terms. They sat back there by the fire for some time, smoking and drinking. The shades were all drawn. I don't know whether that was standard procedure, or because this conference was something clandestine. Finally, Rivers's visitor ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... not be supposed that the Marshalls in their young married days had lived totally bereft of social diversion. Quite the contrary. They had had tea-parties and card-parties now and then, and more than once they had thrown their house open for a church sociable. But the day came when the church jumped from its old site three blocks away to a new site three miles away. And by that time most of their old neighbors and fellow church-members had gone too—some southward, some northward, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... couldn't sleep, and I was taking a walk along the road when he passed." She said nothing about Mr. Jaggs. "The police at Monaco are very sociable." ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... watched the rising tide, and as he sat up there in the dark he felt himself dreadfully forsaken and desolate, and began to comment on things in general to his dog, by way of inducing a more sociable and cheery state ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... for my part for a summer eve I prefer Mowbray Moor to all the Temples in the world, particularly if it's a sociable party and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... said Bob, at last. "We can't touch other people's property, and we might as well go on home. But if the ladies belonging to this church sociable would show themselves, I'd sit up and beg for a bone of that ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... have noticed.' 'You must be middlin' tired of it,' He'll say: and I shall answer up, 'Lord, if you say so, I don't contradict 'ee; but 'tis no bad billet for a man given to chat with his naybours and talk over the latest news and be sociable, and warning to leave don't come from me.' 'You'd best give me over they oars, all the same,' He'll say; and with that I shall hand 'em over and be rowed across to a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... back, I do not think that there was any sudden mental development, but that the change was mainly a social one. I had been reserved, timid and taciturn; I had disliked the company of strangers. But with my tenth year, I certainly unfolded, so far as to become sociable and talkative, and perhaps I struck those around me as grown 'clever', because I said the things which I had previously only thought. There was a change, no doubt, yet I believe that it was mainly physical, rather than mental. My excessive fragility—or apparent fragility, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... cut large pieces of the joint, or of the fish; another divided it into mouthfuls; and others stood by with cocoa-nuts, and whatever else he might want. I never saw a large company sit down to what we should call a sociable meal, by eating from the same dish. The food, be what it will, is always divided into portions, each to serve a certain number; these portions are again subdivided; so that one seldom sees above two or three persons eating together. The women are not excluded from eating with the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... no!' said the trooper, a young man who saw no reason not to be sociable. 'It's the most surprisin' thing out where he's got to. They've been all round him, reg'lar cordon-like, and he must have disappeared into the earth or gone up in a balloon ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... her other efforts put together, and took her inside furder, for givin' as much as she did they had to invite her to set down on the same charitable boards where these genteel females wuz settin'. And when a passel of wimmen are settin' down on one board they have to be more sociable and agreeable like, than if they wuz settin' round on different ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... was my own fault. It resulted from one of those unhappy moments of expansiveness such as occur, I imagine, to everybody—moments when one appears to be something quite different from what one really is, when one feels oneself a thorough good fellow, sociable, merry, appreciative, and finds the people around one the same. Such moods are known to all of us. Some people say that it is the super-self asserting itself. Others say it is from drinking. But let it pass. That at any rate was the kind of mood that I was ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Jones. It has not the consummate plot of Tom Jones; it has not the breadth, the Shakespearean jollity, the genial humanity of the great "prose Homer"; it has no such beautiful character as Sophia Western. It is not the overflowing of a warm, genial, sociable soul, such as that of Henry Fielding. But Vanity Fair may be put beside Tom Jones for variety of character, intense reality, ingenuity of incident, and profusion of wit, humour, and invention. It is ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... time for me and the conditions of our life were soothing—the feeling of summer and shade and music and leisure in the German gardens and woods, where we strolled and sat and gossiped; to which may be added a vague sociable sense that among people whose challenge to the curiosity was mainly not irresistible we kept quite to ourselves. We were on the footing of old friends who still had in regard to each other discoveries to make. We knew each other's nature but didn't know each other's experience; ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... with whom he shook hands and whom he tried to recognize that afternoon. His weary but peculiarly winning smile had scarcely flickered to rest for a moment in an hour. For the eleven seconds that it was my privilege to be individually sociable with him, he did his best to say what might suit the case. He seemed much like a worn-out precocious boy, of great wisdom and much experience, suddenly prodded into an eminence which ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... observed, "is a powerful spindling man." She made no rejoinder to this, and, after a short pause, he further remarked, "How he gets on sociable I don't see." ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... they might," says the Master. But when we gets outside he slaps his knee and laughs inside hisself, and winks at me most sociable. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... times have they bin round?' Hazel asked the waitress, who poured tea and made conversation in a sociable manner. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the afternoon sun was still hot and dazzling, and all the farmyard creatures were conversing cheerfully together in many keys and voices. A tall white cock had perched himself tiptoe on a gate, crowing in a shrilly triumphant manner, the ducks were quacking in a sociable chorus, and Chummy, the great black sow, lying stretched on her side in the sun, kept up an ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... and even cannibals their Noojona, or Talk-Stone, where they assemble at times to discuss the affairs of the day. Nor is there any government, however despotic, that ventures to deny to the least of its subjects the privilege of a sociable chat. Not the Thirty Tyrants even—the clubbed post-captains of old Athens—could stop the wagging tongues at the street-corners. For chat man must; and by our immortal Bill of Rights, that guarantees to us liberty of speech, chat we Yankees will, whether on board a frigate, or on board our ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... have thought it. She seems a sociable, bright sort of girl. Don't you want to talk to her? I know you do. I see it in your face. You think it will be irksome for me, but, never mind, we need not stay long. I must not be selfish nor indulge in the wish to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... is found for AGATHA'S maid, and the scene is now an animated one; but still our host thinks his girls are not sufficiently sociable. ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... however little, have drawn the world after you. In your churches you would be receiving truest nourishment, yea strength to live—thinking far less of serving God on the Sunday, and far more of serving your neighbour in the week. The sociable vile, the masterful rich, the deceitful trader, the ambitious poor, whom you have attracted to your communities with the offer of a salvation other than deliverance from sin, would not be lording it over them and dragging ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... visited Senegal, in 1754, describes the negroes as sociable, obliging, humane, and hospitable. "Their amiable simplicity," says he, "in this enchanting country, recalled to me the idea of the primitive race of man; I thought I saw the world in its infancy. They are distinguished by tenderness for their parents, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... a house next to mine, Cornelia,—I told you about it. Well, it's as full now as it has been empty, and a little fuller. Dear knows how many it holds! But it's sociable seeing the smoke come out ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... a man, upright in all his transactions, and a strict adherent to the tenets of his religion. He was of a very kind and sociable disposition, which prompted him to keep open house for his friends and visitors, whom he always received with the most generous hospitality. He was first married to Fanny, a daughter of Joseph Diamantschleifer of Amsterdam, by whom he had three children: two sons, Solomon ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... all of which she said was the produce of her farm. I believe we met fifty or sixty sleighs; they fly with great swiftness, and some are so furious that they will turn out of the path for none except a loaded cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, their tables being as free to their neighbors ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... through life with unquestioning confidence; at least she had never been heard to object to any time-honoured axiom. And she did, in fact, accept them all, but only provisionally. She wanted to know. Silent, sociable, sober, and sincere, she had walked over the course of her early education and gone on far beyond it with such ease that those in authority over her never suspected the extent to which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Fergus said. "I think it is very cheery and sociable when everyone smokes, but certainly when only two out of three do, it looks somehow as if the one who does not is left out in the cold. I never smoked until I came out here, two years and a half ago; but there is no doubt that at the end of a ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... very soon became a sociable centre for the whole idle place. Any one who chose came into it in a friendly way, and lounged about, gossiping, and inspecting the works in progress. Women brought their babies, and sat about on the stones suckling them and talking to the men—a proceeding which ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... at all events, he must if possible find a place where he could see a certain amount of society, and where he would be able to obtain the books he expected to need. He was afraid that if he transferred himself at once to the country, he might sink into a morbid seclusion, as he had no strong sociable impulses. His thoughts naturally turned to his own university. He thought that if he could find a small house at Cambridge, suitable to his means, he would be able to have as much or as little society as he desired, while at the same time he would be on the edge of the country. Moreover ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... smiled, by no means ill pleased at his solicitude for her comfort. She halted the broncos, and said cordially: "Tie the saddle hawsses to the back rail, and pile in. We may as well be sociable." ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... in their drinking, bowing or saluting ladies; for a distant imitation of a forward fop, and a resolution to overtop him in his way, are the distinguishing marks of a Dapper. These under-characters of men are parts of the sociable world by no means to be neglected: they are like pegs in a building; they make no figure in it, but hold the structure together, and are as absolutely necessary as the pillars and columns. I am sure we found it so this morning; for Tranquillus and I should, perhaps, have ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... race was not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong.' Mr. Sterne, who stood near to her, was struck with this reply, and turning hastily toward her begged for the honor of her acquaintance. They soon became sociable, and a good deal of pleasant conversation took place between them to the great entertainment of the surrounding company" (Knapp, "Female ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... on, and there was little police duty for Bobby. After a time he sat up on the table-tomb, pensively. With Mr. Brown confined, to the lodge, and Mistress Jeanie in close attendance upon him there, the kirkyard was a lonely place for a sociable little dog; and a soft, spring day given over to brooding beside a beloved grave, was quite too heart-breaking a thing to contemplate. Just for cheerful occupation Bobby had another tussle with the collar. He pulled it so far ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... sociable. Our common sufferings draw our hearts to our fellow-creatures; we should have no duties to mankind if we were not men. Every affection is a sign of insufficiency; if each of us had no need of others, we should hardly think of associating with them. So our ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... scale or defect in education, it is the passion to call men "out of their names," and never feel really acquainted with any one until he is termed Tom or Jack. It is doubtless all very genial and jocose and sociable, but the man who shows a tendency to it should not complain when his betters put him in a lower class ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a plan," old lady Chia added. "We can now dispense with these tables. All we need are two or three, placed side by side; we can then sit in a group, and by bundling together it will be both sociable as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... others quite as brutally rebuffed as he had been, and it was only by turning away that he kept himself from taking a hand in an encounter. Once or twice, when the overseer happened to be a decent and sociable fellow, Harold, edging near, caught his eye and was able to address him on terms of equality; but in each case the talk which followed brought out the fact that men were swarming for every place; indeed ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Jayhawkers. All the provisions they could carry besides their blankets could not last them to exceed 10 days, and I well knew they could hardly get off the desert in that time. Mr. Abbott was a man I loved fondly. He was good company in camp, and happy and sociable. He had shown no despondency at any time until the night of the last meeting and the morning of the parting. His chances seemed to me to be much poorer than my own, but I hardly think he realized it. When in bed I could not keep my thoughts ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... quite such a joyful life as she will lead, and wouldn't have had quite such a sociable sort of husband as she will have,' said Clemency, spreading herself half over the table, and staring retrospectively at the candle, 'if it hadn't been for - not that I went to do it, for it was accidental, I am sure - if it hadn't been for me; ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... ghost," replied Manson, who felt like joking now, "and I succeeded. I not only found ghosts by the dozen, but two skeletons, and one or two skulls scattered around to make things more cheerful. Oh, I've had a real sociable time, I assure you! One of those kind of times when every way you turn a still more hideous object confronts you; a fit of the jims minus the fun that goes before it. The first night I was so scared I didn't sleep a wink, ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the world and its work and pleasure at their ease; understand little and care even less about politics; profess to be neither great readers nor great thinkers; but are, as a rule, free-handed, hospitable, sociable, most amiable, and ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... Gomez, was a nearly pureblood Indian, a native of one of the neighbouring villages, but educated at Maranham, a city on the Atlantic seaboard. I afterwards saw a good deal of him, as he was an agreeable, sociable fellow, fond of reading and hearing about foreign countries, and quite free from the prejudices which might be expected in a man of his profession. I found him, moreover, a thoroughly upright, sincere, and virtuous ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... cold; take an end of my scarf and hurry in. May a kind thought prompt us how to elude the wary Fairlie. Take care you don't seem sociable when she taps. It would be fatal if she should enter for a 'cozy little chat.' She has done ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... notoriety, thinking that a man is to be 'measured by what he does, not by what is said about him.' But he likes to talk about his inventions and show them to visitors at Menlo Park. In disposition he is sociable, affectionate, and generous, giving himself no airs, and treating all alike. His humour is native, and peculiar to himself, so there is some excuse for the newspaper reporters who take his jokes about the capabilities of Nature AU SERIEUX; ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... not, however, so far in advance of them but that the others could hear quite distinctly his offhand introduction of their party on the threshold, and the somewhat lukewarm response of the inmates. "We thought we'd just drop in and be sociable until the coach was ready to start again," he continued, as the other passengers entered. "This yer gentleman is Ned Brice, Adams & Co.'s expressman; this yer is Frank Frenshaw, editor of the 'Mountain Banner;' this yer's ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... had just strength of mind to like the old boy's sociable dinners, though not to imitate them, and an invitation from him was very rarely declined when Lucy was ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... questioningly at the seaman as he touched the lighted end of a match to his cigar. "That is true. We—er—are busy, too busy for our own good. We ought to be more sociable here in Little River. We need something ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... hospitable and sociable College, and guests often appeared at dinner. On this night Mr. Redmayne was in the chair, at the end of a long table; eight or ten dons were present. A gong was struck; an undergraduate came up and scrambled through a Latin Grace from a board which he held in his hand. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... see the persons already in the room—for probably at that sociable hour there would be more than one—and among them a dark lady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out a long thin hand with three rings on it.... He thought she would be sitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... us as sociable as though I were Noah, and Ar-hap's palace mound another Ararat. Hour after hour I sat amongst all these lesser beasts in the hot darkness, waiting for the end. Every now and then the heavy clouds parted, changing ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the women have theirs also. Your fashionable woman generally displays more tact than her husband. She has greater opportunities for display, and makes better use of them. If the ball, or party, or sociable at her residence is a success, the credit is hers exclusively, for the husband does little more than pay the bills. Many of these women are "from the ranks." They have risen with their husbands, and are coarse and vulgar in appearance, and without refinement. But the women of fashion are ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... they associate with other birds, mainly with rooks. Gilbert White thought they did this because the rooks had extra nerves in their beaks, and were able to act as guides to the smaller birds searching for invisible food. Probably it is only due to the sociable instinct. Towards night they nearly always repair in innumerable flocks to some favourite roosting-place, either a reed-bed or a wood of evergreens, where they assemble in thousands. One of these communal sleeping-places is the duck island in St. James's Park. In hard weather ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... society from the disagreeable scenes to which rudeness often subjects it. Here, it seems that a man might pass a life without encountering a single rudeness. In the pleasures of the table they are far before us, because with good taste they unite temperance. They do not terminate the most sociable meals by transforming themselves into brutes. I have never yet seen a man drunk in France, even among the lowest of the people. Were I to proceed to tell you how much I enjoy their architecture, sculpture, painting, music, I should want words. It is in these arts they shine. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... plea for drinking rests upon its sociability. But this is a matter of convention which can readily enough be altered. There is nothing inherently more sociable in the drinking of wine than in the drinking of grape-juice, or coffee, or chocolate, or tea. Indeed, one may well ask why the chief social bond between men should consist in drinking liquids side by side! ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... his death.' CHAP. XX. The Master said, 'What the superior man seeks, is in himself. What the mean man seeks, is in others.' CHAP. XXI. The Master said, 'The superior man is dignified, but does not wrangle. He is sociable, but not a partizan.' CHAP. XXII. The Master said, 'The superior man does not promote a man simply on account of his words, nor does he put aside good ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... a temperament as Murphy's, a life like this was happiness itself. He was sociable, and loved company intensely, though preferably the company of Man. Solitude he abhorred; games were his delight; for killing things, even were it a rat from one of the thousand holes he met with when walking by the river, he never cared, and ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he said, "and I don't wonder after the dreadful weather we've had. Few passes my door without a bite or a sup, specially at tea-time, Mr. Nor'cote, which is sociable time, as I always says. Come in and warm yourself and have a cup of tea. There is nothing as pleases my old woman so much as to get out her best tea-things for a minister; she 'as a great respect for ministers, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... not in a very sociable humor," continued Grayson; "and, to tell you the truth, I am not much that way inclined myself: but I am determined to get to the bottom of this affair before you shall leave the house. I am sure you know all about it; and if you don't, why ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... an effort, or displace himself even, to go in search of a pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sources of this amiable cynicism. He must have a vague conviction that he can only lose by almost any change. Fortune has been kind to him: he lives in a temperate, reasonable, sociable climate, on the banks of a river which, it is true, sometimes floods the country around it, but of which the ravages appear to be so easily repaired that its aggressions may perhaps be regarded (in a region ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... girl!" She walked on after waving a sociable hand at Roberta. "It is interesting to have friends that are ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... the sympathetic motive which is developed in such communal life, and is manifested in the friendly relations with each other which the creatures maintain. A good instance of this is to be found in the crows and their kindred, a group of extremely sociable creatures, which are endlessly engaged in chattering communications with each other. All these forms are highly domesticable, and if for any reason they had proved permanently attractive to men they would doubtless have been brought into ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... fixing the dilapidated stables, he was joined by his nearest neighbour, Thomas Perkins, who was of a very sociable nature, and loved the sound of his ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... am a sociable animal. After being cramped in that miserable coach for hours, it is a relief to loosen one's tongue as well as one's legs. Even this smoky hovel suggests good-fellowship and jollity beyond a dish of tea. Will you ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Peppers. I was wishing I could leave the helm long enough to do it myself, for I wanted to see who the other fellow was that had taken passage with me. Besides, I think it is a good deal more sociable to see a man's face when ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... with this man, who appeared very much inclined to be sociable. He told me that the vessel was named the Transcendant; that she sailed from Virginia to the West Indies, and that sometimes she went to England; that the captain of her was also the owner, but where he came from, or what he was, they did not know, except that he was a Virginian,—they ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Therapia, and the light upon the water lost in glory and gained in magic. Gay parties embarked in caiques. Some people drove in small victorias drawn by spirited, quick-trotting horses; others rode; others strolled up and down slowly by the edge of the sea. A gay brightness of sociable life made Buyukderer intimately merry as evening drew on. Instinctively Dion left the laughter ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... they were installed at the Larches he was expected to be at home each week from Saturday until Monday, and the loss of that long holiday afternoon would interfere seriously with the work on hand. He had seen so little of his people for the last few years, that he would be expected to be sociable during the short time that he was with them, and could hardly shut himself up in his room for hours at a time. Despair then settled down upon both partners, when a letter arrived to say that the Darcy family were coming down even earlier than had been ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... is up here all day. But at night, when you're in bed and sleeping, all the house begins to talk; little creakings of furniture, you know, and the wind in the chimney and sometimes the rain in the gutter, running—it's all talk to me. Mostly it's quite sociable, too; but sometimes, in rainy weather, the tune changes and then it's like some poor soul in bed and sobbing to itself. That's ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thing, because it made them anxious to finish off everything in the best possible manner; and as many of the articles were very useful, it did a great deal of good. Then, it brought thousands of people to see it, and that made Adam's sons and daughters better acquainted, and more sociable, and happier; so, it was a very excellent thing ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... It's an awful job, doctor, watching alone here, all night. One of the men actually went mad, and hanged himself. To be sure he was a poet in his way, which makes it less remarkable. I'm not a poet myself—I'm only a sociable creature. Leave little Jack with me! I'll send him home safe and sound—I feel ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... are thy Mirmidons, thy Guard, thy Rorers, And when thy noble body is in durance, Thus do we clap our musty Murrions on, And trace the streets in terrour: Is it peace Thou Mars of men? Is the King sociable, And bids thee live? Art thou above thy foemen, And free as Phoebus? Speak, if not, this stand Of Royal blood shall be abroach, atilt, and run Even to the lees ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... haze into my consciousness, but probably in my third year. They were Winnebago and Pottawatomi, the river being a common inheritance of both tribes. In the winter of 1839-40, about thirty families of the former tribe camped for several weeks opposite our home and were very sociable and friendly. Diligent hunters and trappers, they accumulated fully a hundred dollars worth of otter, beaver, bear, deer, and other skins. But a trader came up from Watertown in the spring and got the whole ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... that Sergeant Brogden[14] was wounded in the arm, Sergeant Stokes killed, and Corporal Chamley wounded. We saw some horrible sights all the way along. We were joined by more prisoners as we went down. German prisoners have only to be told which way to go and they go. They are quite sociable people too—many of them bright-eyed boys of seventeen and eighteen. They are only too glad to carry our wounded men back; they need no escort. We got on very well indeed with them. I suppose that in a sense we were comrades in distress, or, rather comrades in good ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... Paris, when she and Hugh found in earth and air a world of delights more than they could tell anybody but each other. And at home, what peaceful times they two had,—what endless conversations, discussions, schemes, air-journeys of memory and fancy, backward and forward; what sociable dinners alone, and delightful evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur in the saloon when nobody or only a very few people were there; how pleasantly in those evenings the foundations were laid of a strong and enduring love for the works of art, painted, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... shame, Frederick, that you do not have half a dozen children. They would help to look after these matters," the cousin remarked. "By the way, I wonder where your child is. She does not seem to be very sociable." ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... me, that if I have a dislike for society, it is more their fault than mine. It is a pity the Savoyards are not rich: though, perhaps, it would be a still greater pity if they were so, for altogether they are the best, the most sociable people that I know, and if there is a little city in the world where the pleasures of life are experienced in an agreeable and friendly commerce, it is at Chambery. The gentry of the province who assemble there have only ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the commonly received tenets of his sex respecting the insatiable nature of feminine vanity, that she should weary so soon of adulation which would have rendered a light head dizzy. Mrs. Mason was not ready to leave the halls of mirth. She had met scores of old friends, and was having a "nice, sociable time" in a corner, while Mrs. Cunningham had "not begun to enjoy herself, looking at the queer people and ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... hearth of the drawing-room of the Dower House, in the sociable twilight that had descended on the afternoon tea-table, sat three ladies—for Lady Adela and Miss Morton had just welcomed Mrs. Bury, who, though she had her headquarters in London, generally spent her time in visits to her married ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... charged. I believe she'd have made it a shillin', too, only when I told her she lived in a very pretty house, and asked if she owned it or rented it, she turned very stiff in her manner. Touchy as tinder she was; and if that comes of being a lady, I'm glad my Martha's more sociable." ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... welcome to stop throughout our pleasure, an invitation he reinforced by sitting upon a stump, whittling vigorously meanwhile, and glibly gossiping with the Doctor and me for a half-hour, on crop conditions and the state of the country—"bein' sociable like," he said, "an' hav'n' nuth'n 'gin you folks, as knows what's what, I kin see ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... real sociable and tell me all about yourself, and the others, too," urged Mrs. Adams. "I want to know all about every one of ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... which my narrative opens, the village boasted a sociable, agreeable, careless, half-starved parson, who never failed to introduce himself to any of the anglers who, during the summer months, passed a day or two in the little valley. The Rev. Mr. Caleb Price had been educated at ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the door with you," said Deulin, in the passage. He was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable instincts. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... rule that editors sometimes observe, and occasionally acknowledge; then, with the desire to interest as large a section of the public as may be. Here is a medley of gay, grave, frivolous, homely, religious, sociable, refined, philosophic, and feminine,—something for every mood, and for the proper study of mankind. We do not hope to satisfy all critics, but we do not anticipate that we shall please none. Our difficulty has been that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... who, as Literature was written for them, addressed to them, ought to find in it, all their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never intrusive—to be sought and found, to be ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a great deal, and old people can't be expected to do much in the way of visiting. But I have a notion," she said, after gazing a few moments in a reflective way at the corner of the house, "that it would be well now to be a little more sociable again. My niece has no company here of her own sex, except me, and I think it would do her good to know a young lady like Miss March. Mr Brandon has asked me to let Annie come there, but I think it would ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... proceeded the next day, and got in the evening to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with me while I took some refreshment, and, finding I had read a little, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance continu'd as long as he liv'd. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... having guessed it; literally, he damned his employers for their British reserve, their cool assumption that because he was their clerk he was not interested in their family affairs. "Cuss 'em for snobs," he wound up finally, a deep sense of his personal grievance stirring his sociable Yankee soul. ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... written a good deal in the 'Phytologist.' You ought to encourage him to publish on variation; it is a shame that such facts as those in his letter should remain unpublished. I must get you to introduce me to him; would he be a good and sociable man for Dropmore? (A much enjoyed expedition made from Oxford—when the British Association met there in 1847.) though if he comes, Forbes must not (and I think you talked of inviting Forbes), or we shall have a glorious battle. I should like to see sometime the war correspondence. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Not knowing what else to do to get clear of his enemy, he scrambled up an aloe-tree, that happened to be near. At that very moment the lion made a spring at him, but unsuccessfully, and fell to the ground. There was in the tree a cluster of nests of the bird called the sociable grosbeak; and the Hottentot hid himself among these nests, in hopes that he could get out of the lion's sight, and that the beast would leave him. So he remained silent and motionless for a great while, and then ventured ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... Paul had as often repulsed his advances. Jacker's own parentage lay under a cloud, and he felt angry that Paul, whom he regarded as in a like predicament, should refuse to be friendly with him. One evening, therefore, when Paul seemed less inclined than ever to be sociable, Jacker determined to have it out with him. He was passing through what is called the Church Town, when a number of youths, among whom Jacker was conspicuous, asked him to go into the public house. Paul refused. On being asked ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... windows draped with white curtains, was scrupulously clean for China, and had magnificent hanging scrolls on the whitewashed walls. Tea was soon brewed, and the governor, wishing to be polite and sociable, told me that he had been in Yuen-nan-fu for a few months only, and that he considered himself an extremely fortunate fellow to be in charge of such an excellent prison—one of the finest in the kingdom, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle |
