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More "Sociability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... essence of the struggle for existence, have answered. For his successful progress, throughout the savage state, man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger; his exceptional physical organization; his cunning, his sociability, his curiosity, and his imitativeness; his ruthless and [52] ferocious destructiveness when his anger is ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... thoroughly clean, that each day's lessons should be carefully planned, that, in short, every little duty should be well performed, they putter away at such tasks until there is no time left for much larger duties, such as physical exercise, sociability, and general reading. As a result they become habitually tired, unsympathetic, and narrow, and therefore schoolish. It is a strange commentary on education when conscientiousness means particular care for little things, as it very often does among teachers. It is desirable that ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... heavy boots are suitable for farm-work; a juvenile style of dress is not suitable for an old lady. In conduct much the same rules apply. The dignity and gravity of a patriarch would not be becoming to a child; at a funeral lively, cheery sociability would not be decorous, while noisy hilarity would not be decent; sumptuous display would not be suitable for a poor person. Fit is a compendious term for whatever fits the person, time, place, occasion, etc.; as, a fit person; a fit abode; a fit place. Fitting, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... sullenness of his manner. As for Mrs. Plaskwith, poor woman! she positively detested the taciturn and moody boy, who never mingled in the jokes of the circle, nor played with the children, nor complimented her, nor added, in short, anything to the sociability of the house. Mr. Plimmins, who had at first sought to condescend, next sought to bully; but the gaunt frame and savage eye of Philip awed the smirk youth, in spite of himself; and he confessed to Mrs. Plaskwith that he should not like to meet "the gipsy," ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... proved after all but a desultory affair. For with Fanny making but a sorry equestrian debut and Hosmer creeping along at her side; Therese unable to hold Beauregard within conventional limits, and Melicent and Gregoire vanishing utterly from the scene, sociability was a feature entirely lacking to ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... to sociability—the stronger sort of man rarely is. On board the Croonah he was usually considered morose and self absorbed. He did his duty, and in this was second to no man on board; but he was content to get the passengers to their destination, looking upon the Croonah ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... which Mr. Colt adequately catered— revel in professing their faith, and will parade for its holiest sacrament with an unabashed and hail-fellow sociability; and doubtless for these 'brass-band communicants' (as Brother Copas called them) a great deal may be said. But Brother Bonaday was one of those others who, walking among mysteries, must hush the voice and bow the head; to whom the Elements are awful, and ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... given the Senator a sartorial address of repute, and presently the hansom drew up before it, in Piccadilly. We went about as a family in one hansom for sociability. ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... since haven't yet exhausted. This forms a clear intellectual atmosphere into which you may turn aside from the modern world and fill your lungs as with the breath of a forgotten creed. The memorials of the past here address us moreover with a friendliness, win us by we scarcely know what sociability, what equal amenity, that we scarce find matched in other great esthetically endowed communities and periods. Venice, with her old palaces cracking under the weight of their treasures, is, in her ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Moriaz took his man by the arm, and led him in by force. He presented him to his daughter, saying: "Antoinette, let me present to you M. le Comte Larinski, a most excellent man, but little inclined to sociability. I was compelled to use violence in ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... the size of the mound before his door. The fact that he regularly pursues the same paths in his nightly excursions enables him to become familiar, like the fox, with each sight and scent and sound of the woods, so that anything strange is at once noticed, and danger avoided. His sociability is a distinct gain, because he receives therefrom co-operation in his sapping and mining while he aims to secure the impregnability of his fortress; and his tolerance of cunning and timid neighbours gains for him this advantage: ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... studies. He was already inclined to consider games as childish. He looked down upon his companions and the school life generally as silly and frivolous. The boys resented his contempt of their ways; and his want of sociability and rather heavy exterior at the time made him a natural butt for schoolboy wit. He was, he says, bullied and tormented till, towards the end of his time, he plucked up spirit to resist. Of the bullying there can be no doubt; nor (sooner or later) of the resistance. Mr. Coleridge ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the place of the Gascon in France—is present with his babble and his laugh, his fine opinion of himself, and his faculty for making a sacrifice of his own dignity at that over-rated altar—the shrine of sociability. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... at that moment, Dinah retailed their little plan for his benefit. Cedric was delighted, and voted Betty a brick. Any form of sociability was welcome to him—an impromptu garden-party in Malcolm's honour met with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and calculating, their obstinacy is remarkable; yet, as we often find the African, they are at the same time irresolute in the extreme. Their virtues are vivacity, mental activity, acute observation, sociability, politeness, and hospitality: the fact that a white man can wander single-handed through the country shows a kindly nature. The brightest spot in their character is an abnormal development of adhesiveness, popularly called affection; it is ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... there was the usual stir of sociability, and when I emerged into the glare of the church steps, I saw Jonathan driving slowly around from the rear. Griz walked meekly, her head sagged, her ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... have a cigar in the garden?" said Musard. He wished to know more of the man of whom he had heard so much by repute, and he believed that tobacco promoted sociability. He also desired to find out whether Colwyn's presence at the moat-house meant that Phil had succeeded in impressing him with his own belief in ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... reclaim him, but with no effect. He was insensible to caresses, and never appeared to distinguish Sir John from any other person. The dog would never follow him, even from one room to another; nor would he come when called, unless tempted by the offer of food. Wolves and foxes have shown much more sociability than he did. He appeared to be in good spirits, but always kept aloof from the other dogs. He was what would be called tame for an animal in a menagerie; that is, he was not shy, but would allow strangers to handle him, and never attempted to bite. If he were led near sheep or poultry, he became ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... threw the lawyers much into one another's company. There were long evenings to be spent in the country taverns, when sociability was above par. Lincoln's inexhaustible fund of wit and humor, and his matchless array of stories, made him the life of the company. In this number there were many lawyers of real ability. The judge was David Davis, whose culture and legal ability ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... over-gratified to receive Holy Orders in any form. She was not unwilling, however, to show, as between Ensign and man, reasonable satisfaction; presently, in fact, she went so far as to say, still vaguely remarking upon his appearance there, that she often thought there ought to be more sociability between the different religious bodies; it would be better for the cause. There was nothing narrow, she said, about her, nor yet about Captain Sand. And then, with the distinct intimation that that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... air; it was one of summer's choice days, when she escapes from the sun's fierce watch and sits down to rest herself. But Elizabeth's eyes, if they wavered at all, were called off by some burst of the noisy sociability of the party, in which she deigned not to share. Her cousin, Mr. Herder, Rufus, Asahel, and Winifred, were in full cry after pleasure; and a cheery hunt ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... don't drink very much, and you know it. I don't hardly touch a drop, except maybe just for sociability. God! this temperance wave gets my goat! Lot of hot-air females telling me what I can do and what I can't do—fella that knows when to drink and when to stop. Drink? Why, you ought to see some of the boys! There's Burke McCullough. Say, I bet he puts away forty drinks a day, if he ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... illustration of the superior courage of women. His wife could bear her solitary second floor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by various small reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations markedly professional—not letting them slide into sociability. She wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be kept in his place, she never thought me quite good enough ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Harrington's aunt and housekeeper, was deaf and crabbed, and very few visitors ever came to the house. This suited Harrington. He was a good citizen and did his duty by the community, but his bump of sociability was undeveloped. He was also a contented man, looking after his farm, improving his stock, and experimenting with new bulbs in undisturbed serenity. This, however, was all too good to last. A man is bound to have some troubles in this life, and Harrington's ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... social restraints of the old social order are somewhat removed. A freedom is allowed to individuals of the Christian community, in social life, in conversation between men and women, in the holding of private opinions, which the non-Christian order of society did not permit. Sociability between the sexes was not allowed. The new freedom naturally results in greater vivacity and a far freer play of facial expression than the older order could produce. The vivacity and sociability of the geisha (dancing and singing girls), whose business it is to have social relations ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... wind freshened and blew dead foul, decimating the horses with sea-sickness, prostrating three-fourths of the men, and shaking the two regiments down into a sociability which outlasted their sufferings. To be sure my comrades of the 52nd (as, with a fearful joy, I named them to myself in secret), being veterans for the most part, recovered or recovering from wounds taken in the land to which they were returning with common ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the main function of food is to repair the tissues of the body. Other effects are present, such as pleasure and sociability, but its chief benefit is reparative, so we may well regard the subject from a strictly utilitarian standpoint and inquire how we may produce the highest efficiency from our eating. Some of the important questions ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... reminder of the things of God in the town save a Catholic chapel. To many of the people this faith was most repugnant. There was no Sabbath, though for some the day's toil was not quite so arduous. The saloon, with its warmth and brightness, lured the tired men with the promise of sociability at ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... do, Miss Luce? My friend, Mr. Buckley. Now what we've come for—but first, suppose we have a little something by way of sociability. A little fizzy stuff, say, and some good ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... was too much for me. So I willingly agreed, and one evening late in November I was introduced to the society so extolled by Groenbeck, which called itself neither "literary" nor "scientific," had no other object than sociability, and met at Ehlers' College, in the rooms of a ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... inquiry was for one "Redskin," a particular horse; the second for its proprietor. Happily both were in. The proprietor asked no question of a customer of Clarence's condition. The horse, half Spanish, powerful and irascible, was quickly saddled. As Clarence mounted, the man in an impulse of sociability said,— ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Monthly in 1859, she describes a quilting supposed to have been given about the year 1800. Here we can view at close range a real old-fashioned quilting, and gain some insight into its various incidents of sociability and gossip, typical of an early New England seafaring village, as set forth in Mrs. ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... unavoidable everywhere, I observe great intellectual power, much goodness, cultivated minds, gracious and sincere generosity. Whoever comes to Rome will be morally well off as regards intelligence. He will be so, likewise, on account of the sociability of the inhabitants. The Romans are a jovial people. But even their joviality is as admirably subject to good order as it is graceful, and does not impair the natural goodness of their disposition. But perhaps I am wrong; and it were better I should assume a frowning aspect, and behold only ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... be, by frequent confronting with the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate religious sense in the possession of which Aurelius differed from the people around him, it was the ground of many a sociability with their simpler souls, and for himself, certainly, a consolation, whenever the wings of his own soul flagged in the trying atmosphere of purely intellectual vision. A host of companions, guides, helpers, about him from of old time, "the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... retired to the ark, he selected two of a kind from all the animal kingdom for the sake of sociability as well as for more practical purposes. Showmen should be equally considerate. To think of those Albino sisters with never an Albino beau, of the Circassian beauty with never a Circassian sweetheart, of the living skeleton with never another skeleton ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... 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 grub—as all meals were called in the West in those days—for four, stating he was in need of a bite himself. Before the ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... Events' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in rows on either ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... projecting the plan of a settlement at the pond, in reference to mill and factory privileges, bargained for the Croswell place, and early in the spring this family took up a residence there. Three months had passed away, and they were still strangers. This was not from any want of sociability upon the part of their neighbors,—or from studied indifference upon their own part, but from the time of their first coming they had seemed fully occupied with company. Gay parties upon horse-back had frequently issued from the large gate, where in years gone by ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... that it is necessary to drink in order to impress your sociability upon companions who also drink, is utterly erroneous. One day a dinner was given by one of the great lawyers of this country in honor of another lawyer of distinction, and among those present was a young man of promise who at that time was considerably ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... "nigger." This offensive word, by the way, is almost as common with them as at the North, and far more common than with well-bred slave-holders. They have meekly accepted it. "Want to go out to de nigger-houses, Sah," is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger," is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Wincot Abbey bore a sad character for want of sociability in our county. They never went to other people's houses, and, excepting my father, and a lady and her daughter living near them, never received anybody under ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... bad, maties," cried Israel, "to serve an old topmate this way. Come, come, you are foolish. Give us a quid." And, once more, with the utmost sociability, he addressed the sailor ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... man after?' said Mr. Sheepshanks to himself, when he heard of his successor's affability, and sociability, and amiability, and a variety of other agreeable 'ilities,' from the friends whom the old steward still ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Gilbert was surprised, and was on the point of asking some explanation; but the stern and almost threatening look of the Count deterred him. "Your instructions, sir," answered he, "are superfluous. To finish my own portrait, I am not very expansive, and I have but little sociability in my character. To speak frankly, solitude is my element; it is inexpressibly sweet to me. Do you wish to try me? If so, shut me up under lock and key in this room, and provided you have a little food ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's 'salon' was hospitably open whenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, and the conservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, preserved it from the heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreign sociability so often assumes. Very interesting, even important names lent their prestige to her circle; and those of Don Carlos and his family, of Prince and Princess Iturbide, of Prince and Princess Metternich, and of Princess Montenegro, were ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... portend an ultimate failure. But this troubled inertness was the soil of his inspiration; his conceptions took slow and stately shape. He never suffered from the haste, which as Dante says "mars all decency of act." After that time he enjoyed a great domestic happiness, and practised considerable sociability. His terrifying demeanour, his amazing personal dignity and majesty, the certainty that he would say whatever came into his head, whether it was profound and solemn, or testy and discourteous, gave him a personal ascendancy that never disappointed ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fashion, and the narrow circles of rank in the metropolis. The titles of rank, birth, and fortune, are received at a watering-place without any very strict investigation, as adequate to the purpose for which they are preferred; and as the situation infers a certain degree of intimacy and sociability for the time, so to whatever heights it may have been carried, it is not understood to imply any duration beyond the length of the season. No intimacy can be supposed more close for the time, and more transitory in its endurance, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and music seem to me far better occupations for home evenings than games. There is too much hard work in chess and whist and too little sociability to make them in any way desirable. Euchre and backgammon seem invented to pass away time, which is so precious to most of us that we should like to feel we had something at the end of an hour by which our lives were richer than ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... girls," he would say, "Music is a conglomeration of pleasing sounds, or a succession or combernation of simultaneous sounds modulated in accordance with harmony. Harmony is the sociability of two or more musical strains. Melody denotes the pleasing combustion of musical and measured sounds, as they succeed each other in transit. The elements of vocal music consist of seven original tones which constitute the diatonic scale, together with its steps and half ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... become addicted to the use of strong drink, not an occasional tippler, but a confirmed and habitual drunkard. His natural disposition was gay and social, and he began by taking an occasional glass with his friends—more for sociability than for any love of the beverage. His wife often admonished him of the danger of tampering with the deadly vice of intemperance, but he only laughed at what he termed her idle fears. Well had it been for them both had the fears of his wife ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... singing old and modern songs, the reading aloud by one member of the circle, the cracking of nuts and the popping of corn, the picnic supper on the lawn, the tennis court or croquet ground, the home parties, the guests ever-welcome at meals, these are but items in a possible scorecard of the sociability of the home. We are giving much thought to all sorts of group activities, but how much attention have we given to systematically encouraging the social unit which has the largest possibilities, the family? Last summer my friend, Professor E. C. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... "I knew Sam Meynell as well as I knew my own brother, and I knew old Christian Meynell almost as well as I knew my own father. There was more sociability in those days, you see, sir. The world seems to have grown too full to leave any room for friendship. It's all push and struggle, and struggle and push, as you may say; and a man will make you a frame ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... sociality, sociability, sociableness &c. adj.; social intercourse; consociation[obs3]; intercourse, intercommunity[obs3]; consortship[obs3], companionship, comradeship; clubbism[obs3]; esprit de corps. conviviality; good fellowship, good company; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Country. Isolation. Sociability. Life in Factories.—The social relations of man exert a great influence on sexual life. Hermits and those who live on isolated farms are interesting in this respect. Solitude generally leads man to chronic melancholia and to abnormal peculiarities, unless he has a library ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is there for successful resistance? On the opposing side can be rallied only such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings—for the zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... do you know the Irish gentleman & the Irish lady, the Scotch gentleman & the Scotch lady? These are darlings, every one. Night before last it was all Irish—24. One would have to travel far to match their ease & sociability & animation & sparkle & absence of shyness & self-consciousness. It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord Roberts ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Byron, instead of being a dark and gloomy hero of romance, was a man full of amiability, goodness, grace, sociability, and liveliness. Of the impression produced upon all those who knew him in these combined qualities, I shall have ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... person who came to the house, whether that person loved Jesus Christ; and if I could not give a positive answer in the affirmative, he stood aloof, always most courteous, but perfectly cold, and even dignified in repelling any advance to sociability beyond common politeness. He did not know the meaning of a single bad word, and God kept him so that the wicked one touched him not. I used every means, of course, to this end. I watched him most narrowly, and always interposed if he was required to do any thing, or to go to any place, in which ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... been on round-up," remarked Gowan, with an insistent sociability oddly at variance with his usual taciturn reserve. "According to Miss Chuckie, you're some rider, and according to Mr. Knowles, you can shoot. I wouldn't mind hearing from you direct about ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare. His extant work attests his 'copious' and continuous industry, {278b} and with his literary power and sociability there clearly went the shrewd capacity of a man of business. Pope had just warrant for ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... about a son of Belial, but he wished to use these men, and not offend them. So, turning to the groom, with grim sociability, he asked: "Can you speak the language of the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of living.] There is nothing like the same amount of sociability amongst the foreigners in Binondo as prevails in English and Dutch colonies; and scarcely any intercourse at all with the Spaniards, who envy the strangers and almost seem to look upon the gains the latter make in the country as so many robberies committed ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... should at times have nourished some secret sadness. Whatever the hidden wound might be, none, not even his most intimate friends, knew what it was. He never made any complaint. Halevy's nature was rich, open and communicative. He was well organized, accessible to the sweets of sociability and family joys. In fine, he had, as one may say, too many strings to his bow to be very unhappy for any length of time. To define him practically, I would say he was a bee that had not lodged himself completely in his hive, but was seeking ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of dangling and merely nominal court-functionaries, picturesque hereditary triflers entitled to the petites entrees but quite external to the State, which began and ended with the Nursery, they could only retire, in quickened sociability, to what was left them of the Palace, there to digest their gilded insignificance and cultivate, in regard to the true Executive, such snuff-taking ironies as might belong to rococo ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... terriers and spaniels greeted the carriage, leaping and rolling and yelping in an exuberance of sociability, as though horses and coachman and groom were comrades who had been absent for long months instead of half an hour. An indiscriminately affectionate puppy lay flat and whimpering at Yeovil's feet, sending up little ...
— When William Came • Saki
... singers and the best known mountebanks of the moment. Mrs. Trevor Harrison, the woman whom he had selected as chaperon for Virginia, more than once displayed some curiosity, when talking to her charge, as to this sudden change in the habits of a man whose lack of sociability had become ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enlisted by the admirable description of an interior or a character in one of their novels, to find the plot which embodies them an absurd melodrama! Evanescence is the law of Parisian felicities,—selfishness the background of French politeness,—sociability flourishes in an inverse ratio to attachment; we become skeptical almost in proportion as we are attracted. If we ask the way, we are graciously directed; but if we demand the least sacrifice, we must accept volubility for service. Thus the perpetual flowering in manners, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ball, and call it hard; it is not the iron that is hard, but cohesive force that packs the particles of metal into intense sociability. Let the force abate, and the same metal becomes like mush; let it disappear, and the ball is a heap of powder which your breath scatters in the air. If the cohesive energy in Nature should get tired and unclench its grasp of matter, our earth would instantly become "a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... qualities an essential requirement. Even "fast fellows," if there be such, are eager to group themselves together into a secret society. A few of these societies are of a literary character, but the object of the majority is to promote sociability. It is claimed that their influence in some colleges is positively injurious, while in others they are beneficial and helpful in cultivating social qualities and in establishing warm intimate friendships among ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... was one of the most showy and luxurious in the city. He kept his carriages and horses, his cellar of costly wines, and entertained on a scale of great extravagance and sumptuousness. He was, in fact, the centre of fashion, frivolity, sociability, and even of the fashionable dissipations of the day. His person, which even in extreme old age was remarkable for dignity, erectness, and courtliness, at the period we write of, was conspicuous for all the graces ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... children to their studies and their sports. Among the higher classes, it should be made the part of female education, to counterbalance, in the family, the effects of the ever increasing division of labor among the male portion, by the development of that which is universally human—art, sociability, house-keeping etc. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... ladies ever got out of the sugar-house, history does not relate; nor what they did. It was not a time for sociability, either personal or epistolary. At one offensive word your letter, and you, very likely, examined; and Ship Island for a hotel, with soldiers for hostesses! Madame Des Islets died very soon after the accident—of rage, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... found the right stopping point up to which tobacco hurts less perhaps than coffee or tea, candy or lobster, overeating or undersleeping. Therefore the physician, the bishop, the school superintendent, candidly run the necessary risk for the sake of nerve soothing and sociability. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... for there were two tracks leading from this doorway. I followed them to a third humble entrance, not far off, where the tracks were so numerous that I lost the trail. It was pleasing to see the evidence of their morning sociability written there upon the ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... thrown you together fairly frequently—and one of us has a beautiful house and the other an excellent cook—these people press upon my spirit like a strait-waistcoat. I gabble the conventional small-talk of polite sociability, and I thank God when they are gone! They are called "friends," but we have absolutely nothing in common—not ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... chimney-piece, and a place for the children to play, with plenty of room to get about. Apples and nuts always taste so good in such a place! Instead, we have a stuffy little kitchen and a cheerless dining-room, that no one wants to sit in, and every member of the family goes to his or her room, and sociability is at an end. Then we must go to theatres, lectures, and concerts, just to catch a glimpse of the members of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... to consider it genetically among the oldest of the emotions, synonymous almost with the will to live, and to make it scarcely less fundamental than fear or anger. In fact, jealousy readily passes into anger, and is itself a brand of fear.... In sociability and mutual aid we see the other side of the shield; but jealousy, however anti-social it may be, retains a function in zooelogical economy: viz., to conserve the individual as against the group. It is Nature's great corrective for the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... oath, and witnesses will get around the truth, and the result is demoralization. Take wine and malt liquors out of the world and we shall lose a vast deal of good fellowship; the world would lose more than it would gain. There is a certain sociability about wine that I should hate to have taken from the earth. Strong liquors the folks had better let alone. If prohibition succeeds, and wines and malt liquors go, the next thing will be to take tobacco away, and the next thing all other pleasures, until prayer ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... with other people, which I take to be the experience we all need. In the old dreary books of my childhood, the elders were always hounding the young people into doing something useful—useful reading, useful sewing, and so forth. But I am inclined to believe that sociability and talk are more useful than reading, and that solitary musing and dreaming and looking about are useful too. All activity is useful, all interchange, all perception. What isn't useful is anything ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was pleased to find that he had not, as he feared, been prosing; but would rather not be considered in the formal light of a preacher; he preferred being still received in that of the equal and genial companion. To which end, throwing still more of sociability into his manner, he again reverted to the unfortunate man. Take the very worst view of that case; admit that his Goneril was, indeed, a Goneril; how fortunate to be at last rid of this Goneril, both by nature and by law? If he were acquainted with the unfortunate ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... his castle, and in it he developed his intense individualism; but in the first half of the eighteenth century some three thousand public coffeehouses and a large number of private clubs appeared in London alone; and the sociability of which these clubs were an expression was typical of all English cities. Meanwhile country life was in sore ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... legislature; who, on his appearance, entered into a friendly altercation to determine with which of them O'Leary should, on the next day, share the splendid hospitality which reigned in the metropolis during the sessions of parliament. It was at length decided that the prize of his unrivalled wit and sociability should be determined by lot. O'Leary was an amused and silent spectator of the contest. The fortunate winner was congratulated on his success; and the rivals separated ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... who were sitting at home and keeping Christmas all alone. They didn't know themselves, there were so many of them! Hanne and her mother were invited too, but they had gone to bed early—they were not inclined for sociability. One after another they were pulled into the room, and they came with cheerful faces. Marie turned the lamp out and went in to light up ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... face approximates to a sheet of bookbacks, the more of that society he will enjoy. And so it is that three great advantages come hand in hand, and, as will be seen, reach their maximum together: the sociability of books, minimum of cost in providing for them, and ease of access ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... his thorough knowledge of the persons and things that he discusses. In his sledge-hammer blows against humbug and wickedness, intellectual affectation, and moral baseness, he is the Blacksmith all over. In his geniality, his sociability, his genuine love of fun, his frank readiness to amuse or be amused, the epithet "harmonious" is abundantly justified. He cultivates to some extent the airs and tone of the eighteenth century, in which his studies have chiefly lain. He says what he means, and calls a spade a spade, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of a lull after the storm of sociability and hospitality which reached its temporary height yesterday. Let me give the diary. Before we had finished breakfast—and we have eaten every morning at eight until to-day—people began to call. Then two gentlemen took us to the University in their car and we called ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... Another day, towards twilight, I saw him resting on the lily pads, looking very full, with a suspicious-looking object curling out over his under lip. I wiggled my finger in the water, and he came from pure sociability, for he was beyond eating any more. The suspicious-looking object proved to be a bird's foot, and beside it was a pointed wing tip. That was too much for my curiosity. I opened his mouth and pulled out the bird with some difficulty, for Chigwooltz had been engaged some time in the ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... point in favour of the automobile is its sociability. Once one was content to potter about with a solitary companion in a buggy, with a comfortable old horse who knew his route well by reason of many journeys. To-day the automobile has driven thoughts of solitude to the winds. Two in the tonneau, and another ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... kindness soon baffled distrust. And Mrs. Colwood was beginning to talk freely, when suddenly the Vicar and Miss Mallory in front came to a stop. The way to the Vicarage lay along a side road. The Roughsedges also, who had walked so far for sociability's sake, must return to the village and early dinner. The party broke up. Miss Mallory, as she made her good-byes, appeared a little flushed and discomposed. But the unconscious fire in her glance, and the vigor of her carriage, did but add to her good looks. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a noble mind, the ornament and pride of man, the sweetest charm of woman, the scorn of rascals and the rarest virtue of sociability.—Bentsel-Sternau. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... about the development of all the capacities of man, is the antagonism of those capacities to social organization, so far as the latter does in the long run necessitate their definite correlation. By antagonism, I here mean the unsocial sociability of mankind—that is, the combination in them of an impulse to enter into society, with a thorough spirit of opposition which constantly threatens to break up this society. The ground of this lies in human nature. Man has an inclination to enter into society, because in that state he feels ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known all over the world as 'Kenyon the Magnificent.'" There is something thoroughly worthy of Browning at his best in this feeling, not merely of the use of sociability, or of the charm of sociability, but of the magnificence, the heroic largeness of real sociability. Being himself a warm champion of the pleasures of society, he saw in Kenyon a kind of poetic genius for the thing, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... the degradation of their fellow-creatures and those who sought to save mankind from perdition. That the millions of people who enjoyed drinking, to whom it was a cherished source of refreshment, recuperation, and sociability, had any stake in the matter, the agitators never for a moment acknowledged; if a man stood out against Prohibition he was not the champion of the millions who enjoyed drink, but the servant of the interests who sold drink. This preposterous fiction was allowed to pass current with but little ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... precarious; and in man it requires society to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society that is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... But when the factory system was substituted for the handicraft system and workers with common interests were thrown together in the towns, they had every impulsion towards organization. They not only felt the need of sociability after long hours spent in spiritless toil but they were impelled by a new consciousness—the realization that an inevitable and profound change had come over their condition. They had ceased to be journeymen controlling in some measure their activities; they were now merely wage-earners. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... their stoops. It was the fashion then. Some of the ladies were knitting lace on two little needles that had sealing wax on one end, so the stitches could not drop off. There was much pleasant chatting. The country ways of sociability had not all ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... England, in Western New York, and all over the West, even to the far side of Arkansas, which impress the visitor at once as being homelike and full of sociability and kindliness; which delight him, and lead him almost to wish that his own lot had been cast within their shades. These are chiefly villages where the evidences of public and private care predominate, or are at least ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... beneficial to the species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides. "We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind, in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and from loving our families." But there was to him so much suffering in the world that it was a strong argument against the existence of an intelligent First Cause. ("Life and Letters" Vol. I. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... that I may be told how it is possible to make appeal to the principles of sociability, fraternity, and solidarity, when society itself rejects every solidary and fraternal transaction? At the beginning of each industry, at the first gleam of a discovery, the man who invents is isolated; society ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the day is passed without the slightest constraint, trouble, or annoyance to anybody; each person is at liberty to employ himself or herself as best pleases them, though very little is done in common, and in this respect Windsor is totally unlike any other place. There is none of the sociability which makes the agreeableness of an English country house; there is no room in which the guests assemble, sit, lounge, and talk as they please and when they please; there is a billiard table, but in such a remote corner of the Castle that it might as well be in ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... not go out again that day, but sat all afternoon silent in her chair. Towards evening she became talkative and stayed up later than had been her wont since she recovered her freedom. She seemed to be trying to make up to her aunt for a want of sociability ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... subscription. It kept him in touch with civilisation, in touch with Home. He loved to know that when, at length, he found himself once again in the city of his birth he would have a firm foothold on sociability. The friends of his youth might die, or might forget him. But, as member of a club, he would find substitutes for them in less than no time. Herding bullocks, all day long, on the arid plains of Central Australia, he used to keep up his spirits by thinking of that first whisky-and-soda ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... other hand, regarded his sister's marriage as an event, at which it might be proper to show, that neither hauteur nor want of sociability, had precluded their friendly intercourse with the neighbouring magnates; and consequently, most of the principal families ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... prepossessions in favour of Ballston confirmed; she assured me that the society here, though exceedingly small by comparison, was infinitely more pleasant; that there was less of dress or ceremony, and consequently more real comfort and sociability. I left this place with a strong inclination to remain for a few days at least: but my time of relache was short; and my misery was that I had much to see, and many points to visit lying far asunder, therefore ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... interests with lawful amusements, civic needs, and social relations. The great danger is that when adults take a hand in these matters they fix their attention upon the civic and moral virtues and overlook the instincts of activity and sociability which call the gang into being, and the club degenerates into a preachy Sunday- ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... criticising them. All good fellows, no doubt, but mostly of the trading class, and not very attractive, physically or mentally. There were two women in the number, the wife and daughter of a clothier resident in Iceland; but among the entire party we did not find any one likely to add to the sociability of the voyage, so, English-like, we kept to ourselves as much ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... with glib readiness. This is the home of Jollity and Good-fellowship; this is the place from which Care is banished; this is the happy corner where the social glass is dispensed. Alas for the jollity and the sociability and all the rest of it! Force yourself to study the vile spectacle, and you will soon harbour a brood of aching reflections. The whole of that chattering, swilling mob are employing their muddled minds ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... zodiac partially over him, and tried to button his alapaca duster a little closer, but his sleep was troubled by the sociability of the coyotes and the midnight twitter of the mountain lion. He ate moss agates rare and spruce gum for breakfast. When he got to the camp he looked like a forty-day ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... with gentlemen, much caution should be observed. Always maintain a dignity of character, and never condescend to trifle. In your conversation, however, upon general subjects, you may exercise the same sociability and freedom which you would with ladies; not seeming to be sensible of any difference of sex. Indignantly repel any improper liberties; but never decline attentions which are considered as belonging to the rules of common politeness, unless there should ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... the table heaved and quivered with primeval mirth. Even Flossie Walker was moved to a faint smile. For Mr. Soper, though outwardly taciturn and morose, was possessed inwardly by a perfect fury of sociability, an immortal and insatiable craving to converse. It was an instinct which, if gratified, would have undermined the whole fabric of the Dinner, being essentially egoistic, destructive and malign. Mr. Soper resented the rapidity with which Rickman had ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and I did my best, I can tell you, for my own sake as well as for the men. I'm as shy with strangers as an owl by daylight, and I'll never get a thank ye out of my throat, unless we've the chance of a bit of sociability. However, at last he called to that nice fellow—third mate, isn't he?—and gave orders for the rum. 'Two-water grog, Mr. Johnson,' says he. 'Ah, captain,' I said, 'don't be throwing cold water on the entertainment; they got their share ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... unsocial, and made them consider as outcasts all those who had not the same ideas and form of worship as their own. This is the way religion succeeded in closing the heart, and in banishing from it that affection which man ought to have for his fellow-being. Sociability, tolerance, humanity, these first virtues of all morality are totally in ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... ahead of Providence—to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now—the cars won't start yet awhile—I'll just tell you ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... citizens because they have never felt the force of temptation. What power could tempt them? The tree may be parched and blistered in the heat of noonday, but the parasitical fungus draining its sap remains cool—and poisonous. So in the glow of sociability the Pharisee remains cold and clammy; the fever of love leaves his blood at zero. How can such anomalies understand a man of Burns's wild and passionate nature, or, indeed, human nature at all? The broad fact remains, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... not say George was right in this. Sociability is, to a certain extent, a duty, and one that ought not without the soundest reason to be shirked. George may have carried his reserve rather too far, but at any rate you will allow he erred on the right side, if he erred at all, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... the days of her triumph at the Tuileries. Possibly Beaufort, who was her match in daring, would have succeeded in bringing about a fusion; but his grand house and silk-stockinged footmen were an obstacle to informal sociability. Moreover, he was as illiterate as old Mrs. Mingott, and considered "fellows who wrote" as the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures; and no one rich enough to influence his opinion ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... rugs are spread on the front steps of the houses, and the occupants take possession of these, the men to enjoy their after-dinner cigars, the women to talk and scan the passers-by. The general effect is very genial and picturesque, and decidedly suggestive of democratic sociability. The same American indifference to the exaggerated British love of privacy which leads John Bull to enclose his fifty-foot-square garden by a ten-foot wall is shown in the way in which the gardens of city houses are left ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... cracking of nuts and the popping of corn, the picnic supper on the lawn, the tennis court or croquet ground, the home parties, the guests ever-welcome at meals, these are but items in a possible scorecard of the sociability of the home. We are giving much thought to all sorts of group activities, but how much attention have we given to systematically encouraging the social unit which has the largest possibilities, the family? Last summer my friend, Professor E. C. Lindeman, of the North Carolina College for Women, ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... city. As the peddler had views of his own, he rather avoided falling in with any of these patrols, than sought their protection. But, after traveling a few miles on the immediate banks of the river, during which, notwithstanding the repeated efforts of the Skinner to establish something like sociability, he maintained a most determined silence, keeping a firm hold of the gun, and always maintaining a jealous watchfulness of his associate, the peddler suddenly struck into the highway, with an intention of crossing the hills towards Harlem. At the moment he gained ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... making roads and excavations, railways, skyscrapers, and houses. If he has a liking for trade he trundles a pushcart filled with fruit or chocolates; or he may turn a jolly hurdy-gurdy or grind scissors. In spite of his native sociability, the south Italian is very slow to take to American ways. As a rule, he comes here intending to go back when he has made enough money. He has the air of a sojourner. He is picturesque, volatile, and incapable of effective ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... given us so many proofs of intelligence, kindly disposition, and sociability that she has been promoted, by common consent, to the dignity of a person, for it is plain that a higher order of reason than instinct guides her actions. This dignity entails the right of eating at ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... decorated floor it glides through the light dance of life, innocent, and concerned only to follow the rhythm of sociability and friendship, and not to disturb the harmony of love. And during it all an eternal song, of which it catches now and then a few words ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... most part, by the wives of miners and other artisans, as a means of adding to the family income. Beer is very cheap, costing only two sous a litre. Wine and spirits are more costly, though a great deal of gin is made, and inexpensively made, in the country. There is much sociability among the people, and great practical liberality as to the conduct of young girls, the ancient practice known as 'bundling' in New England being still in vogue among these worthy Flemings. M. Baudrillart, who evidently inclines to a favourable judgment of these Northern ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "There is no sociability in that. And you seem very lonesome here—stuck for two more hours at least. Come, Captain, fetch your bottle and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... only in some single and very limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence. All these things I did not perceive till long afterwards; but I even then felt, though without stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode of existence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it is true, the bad as well as the good points, both of individual and of national character, come ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... conspicuously forward in the school studies. He was already inclined to consider games as childish. He looked down upon his companions and the school life generally as silly and frivolous. The boys resented his contempt of their ways; and his want of sociability and rather heavy exterior at the time made him a natural butt for schoolboy wit. He was, he says, bullied and tormented till, towards the end of his time, he plucked up spirit to resist. Of the bullying there can be no doubt; nor (sooner or later) of the resistance. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now, in some degree, be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road. Ichabod, who had no relish for this 5 strange midnight companion, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind. The other did the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... flow of country youth cityward was the lack of social activities and amusements in the rural districts, and the consequent desire to migrate to localities where a denser population brought wide opportunities for social diversions. Curiously enough, the dance as a means of promoting sociability among the farm population was not discussed, possibly because of an old-fashioned prejudice against dancing that still prevails in many rural regions. Why certain good people should object to the dance, innocent, joyous and beneficial as ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... acquiring a refinement of speech and manners; and as conversation developed and became a power, the great lords began to respect men of letters and to cultivate their society. Anyone who possessed good manners, vivacity, and wit was admitted to the salon, where a new and more elevating sociability ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... believes that the state has a right to insist. There is a purely civil profession of faith, whose articles the sovereign may fix, not exactly as dogmas of religion, but as principles of sociability. These must be few, simple and clear, and announced without explanation or commentary. The existence of a deity, powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foreseeing, and providing; the life to come, with the happiness of the good ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... grave shape as hatred of slavery and tenderness to the poor. His sense of kinship with other men was, indeed, a serious conviction held on serious grounds. But it was also the expression of his natural good nature, and overflowed into {130} the obvious channels of kindly sociability which come to every man unsought, as well as into these deeper ones of sympathy which are only found by those who seek them. Those who know him only through Boswell are in danger of over-accentuating the graver side of his character. In Boswell's ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... little boy; all those who were sitting at home and keeping Christmas all alone. They didn't know themselves, there were so many of them! Hanne and her mother were invited too, but they had gone to bed early—they were not inclined for sociability. One after another they were pulled into the room, and they came with cheerful faces. Marie turned the lamp out and went in to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... day is passed without the slightest constraint, trouble, or annoyance to anybody; each person is at liberty to employ himself or herself as best pleases them, though very little is done in common, and in this respect Windsor is totally unlike any other place. There is none of the sociability which makes the agreeableness of an English country house; there is no room in which the guests assemble, sit, lounge, and talk as they please and when they please; there is a billiard table, but in such a remote corner of the Castle that it might as ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a social animal. The very follies for which he was doing penance had been bred of his excessive sociability. And here, in the fourth year of his exile, he found himself in company—which were to travesty the word—with a morose and speechless creature in whose sombre eyes smouldered a hatred as bitter as it was unwarranted. And Bonner, to whom speech and fellowship were as the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... my mother's boarders were from New Hampshire and Vermont, and there was a fresh, breezy sociability about them which made them seem almost like a different race of beings from any we children ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... houses in Deerham that night, not quite so full of sociability as was Lady Verner's. For one, may be instanced that of the Misses West. They sat at the table in the general sitting-room, hard at work, a lamp between them, for the gas-burners above were high for sewing, and their eyes were no longer so keen as they had been. Miss Deborah was "turning" a table-cloth; ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... course, put up here. I have two or three spare rooms, and the accommodation at the inns is wretched. I am always very glad when an officer rides through, because we hear little enough about what is passing, and as there is no sort of sociability among the Spaniards, life is very dull here, and one is very glad ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... and there. For we all have friends whom we are content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover, such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... clouds seemed the dome, and the city the many-colored pavement of some vast building, so grandly spacious that the sauntering, leisurely crowds thronging the thoroughfares seemed no crowds at all, but only denoted a delightful sociability. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... they were covered with mud from top to toe, and as damp as a couple of Malvern hydropaths. Their plight was every whit as pitiable as mine; and although the rain had not abated its flow or the wind its strength, yet I almost felt as though it had grown fine again. Corroborative proof of the sociability ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of the hammer was peculiarly consonant with his present view of the new Valentine, for, despite the latter's gaiety, ease, and self-possession, his smiling sociability and expansiveness, the doctor was perpetually conscious of a lurking violence, an incessant and forcible exigence in him. It might be a fancy, but the doctor was not, as a rule, the prey of fancies. Yet Valentine gave no outward ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... several communities in the same section, overlapping, alien, and perhaps hostile? How would it affect the recreational situation if the churches took a constructive rather than a prohibitive attitude toward amusements, and if they promoted the sociability of the community rather than that of ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... did not seem much disposed to sociability; for not only were the windows hermetically sealed, as the time of year demanded, but the curtains behind them were so closely drawn, that there was not the smallest opening through which he could look. More favored than that ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... inclined to sociability—the stronger sort of man rarely is. On board the Croonah he was usually considered morose and self absorbed. He did his duty, and in this was second to no man on board; but he was content to get the passengers to their destination, looking upon the Croonah as a mere conveyance ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... half-and-halves, the people who claim friendship because circumstances happened to have thrown you together fairly frequently—and one of us has a beautiful house and the other an excellent cook—these people press upon my spirit like a strait-waistcoat. I gabble the conventional small-talk of polite sociability, and I thank God when they are gone! They are called "friends," but we have absolutely nothing in ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... on every divergence of manners or ideas from the present British standard in a nation speaking the same tongue, as a barbarism, if not as a personal insult to himself. Worse then all, he has perhaps less than anybody of that quality, we might almost say faculty, which Mirabeau called "political sociability," and accordingly can form no conception of a democracy which levels upward,—of any democracy, indeed, except one expressly invented to endanger the stability of English institutions, certainly the most comfortable in the world for any one who belongs to the class which has only to enjoy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... far abandon its sphere as to engage in this enterprise? The need on which it is founded, the essential principle of religious sociability, points to no such purpose. Individuals unite with one another and compose a Whole; the Whole rests in itself, and needs not to strive for anything beyond. Hence, whatever is accomplished in this way for religion is the private affair of the individual for himself, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... likely, by the fact that the greatest effort is always required to overcome original inertness, and that two efforts, like two horses starting a carriage instead of one, combined give more than double the value of each taken separately. The fact of this aesthetic sociability is so obvious that we need not discuss it any further, but merely hold it over to add, at last, to the result of the two other reasons, negative and positive, which tend to make aesthetic enjoyment the type of unselfish, nay, even of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... customary, to become a member of the "Junior League," a secret club or society organized and sustained by the junior class. Its object was twofold. First: improvement, to keep themselves informed of and in touch with current events and literature; and, second: sociability. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... lives as happy and as independent as possible: and for this purpose it is necessary that they should live in one place and intermarry with each other: hence in ail cities there are family-meetings, clubs, sacrifices, and public entertainments to promote friendship; for a love of sociability is friendship itself; so that the end then for which a city is established is, that the inhabitants of it may live happy, and these things are conducive to that end: for it is a community of families and villages for the sake of a perfect independent ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... which betray, perhaps, a trifling foible, it may be said that everything is pleasing which is known concerning him. His devotion, wellnigh heroic, to scholarly aims; his quiet studiousness; his filial virtue; his genial sociability, graced by, and gracing, the self-supporting habit of his soul; his intrepidity of intellect, matched by a beautiful boldness and openness in speech; the absence, too, from works so incisive, of a single trace of truculence: all this will now be remembered; and those are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... brook swollen with melting snow, and found the old man I came to see, sitting silent and alone before his blackened small old house. I did my errand, and then not to offend against our country standards of sociability, sat for ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... notions in some degree from being admitted occasionally to a precarious sociability with some of the small country gentry, who were sometimes in want of company to help while away the time. With these Andrew would now and then play at cards and dice, and he never lacked "siller in pouch" to stake on a game, which ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... they think. We always have a vague desire to meet pleasant people, to make agreeable acquaintances, perhaps to meet with a love adventure. In this life of elbowings, unknown strangers assume an extreme importance. Curiosity is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is the order ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... that society; and conversely, the more that face approximates to a sheet of bookbacks, the more of that society he will enjoy. And so it is that three great advantages come hand in hand, and, as will be seen, reach their maximum together: the sociability of books, minimum of cost in providing for them, and ease of access ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... sitting-room with blinds drawn, with round tables, on every table a match stand. It was one of those places where streetwalkers rest their weary legs between strolls, and sit for company on rainy or snowy nights, and take shy men for sociability-breeding drinks and for the preliminary bargaining. The air of the room was strong with stale liquor and tobacco, the lingering aroma of the night's vanished revels. In the far corner sat the girl she had followed; a glass of raw whiskey and another of water stood on the table before her. Susan ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... god of wine, which is calculated to promote sociability, he rarely appears alone, but is usually accompanied by ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... offer you one of these plutocratic perfectos. Only the elect get these, I can tell you. In that drawer there I keep a brand made out of car waste and hemp rope, that does very well for ordinary commercial sociability. Got a match? All right; smoke up and tell me what you're doing to make the world a better place to live in, as old Prexy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... said Mr. Sheepshanks to himself, when he heard of his successor's affability, and sociability, and amiability, and a variety of other agreeable 'ilities,' from the friends whom the old steward still retained ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... master with an oppressive air of respect. "Cobbler" Horn would have preferred a more familiar bearing on the part of his gorgeously-attired servant; but Bounder was obdurate, for he knew his place. His only recognition of the somewhat unusual sociability of his master, was to touch his hat with a more impressive action, and to impart a still deeper note of respect to the tones of his voice. His bearing implied a solemn rebuke. It was as though he said, "If you, sir, don't know ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... sigh the girl turned away, despairing of drawing him into sociability. Piang, the playfellow, had vanished, and Piang, the charm boy, was so superior, so awe-inspiring. Out of the corner of his eye Piang watched her. He longed to frolic and play, as of old, but the weight of the tribe was on his young shoulders, and he must put aside childish things. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... to find that he had not, as he feared, been prosing; but would rather not be considered in the formal light of a preacher; he preferred being still received in that of the equal and genial companion. To which end, throwing still more of sociability into his manner, he again reverted to the unfortunate man. Take the very worst view of that case; admit that his Goneril was, indeed, a Goneril; how fortunate to be at last rid of this Goneril, both by nature and by law? If he were ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... prepare the offender for the duties of society, the system of solitary confinement will not effectually accomplish this task. On this point let me refer to the words of M. Prins, the eminent Director General of Belgian prisons: "Can we teach a man sociability," he says, "by giving him a cell only, that is to say, the opposite of social life, by taking away from him the very appearance of moral discipline; by regulating from morning till night the smallest details of his day, all his movements and all his thoughts? Is not this to place him outside ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... He would have made a perfect poet-laureate, for he seemed to rise to every occasion and have on his lips the right word to express the feeling of the moment, whether of patriotism or sympathy or sociability. In such happy poems as "The Boys," "Bill and Jo," "All Here" and nearly forty others written for his class reunions he reflects the spirit of college men who gather annually to live the "good old days" over again. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... that I have mentioned as the one in which Constance usually fixed her retreat, when neither sociability nor state summoned her to the more public apartments. I should have said that Godolphin slept in the house; for, coming from a distance and through country roads, Lady Erpingham had proffered him that hospitality, and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of sociability and companionship begin to grow in such gatherings of men, then kingship has truck root; and the notions of goodness, justice, and their opposites ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pleasure of this noble exercise was thus enjoyed by both of them to the fullest extent. There was an exhilaration in it which each felt equally. The excitement of the rapid gallop or the full run, the quiet sociability of the slow walk, the perfect freedom of movement in almost any direction, were all appreciated by one as much as by the other. Then, too, the country itself was of that character which was best adapted to give pleasure. There were broad public roads, hard, smooth, and shadowed by overarching ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... stare!) And to talk to any one, male or female, who looked or acted as if he or she wanted to talk to you. Only even a short experience has taught that that abandon leads to more trouble than it is worth. What a pity mere sociability need suffer so much repression! We hate to make that concession ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Relations.—A study of society starts with the obvious fact that human beings live together. The hermit is abnormal. However far back we go in the process of human evolution we find the existence of social relations, and sociability seems a quality ingrained in human nature. Every individual has his own personality that belongs to him apart from every other individual, but the perpetuation and development of that personality is dependent on relations with other personalities and with the physical ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... bore a sad character for want of sociability in our county. They never went to other people's houses, and, excepting my father, and a lady and her daughter living near them, never received anybody under their ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... N. sociality, sociability, sociableness &c. adj.; social intercourse; consociation[obs3]; intercourse, intercommunity[obs3]; consortship[obs3], companionship, comradeship; clubbism[obs3]; esprit de corps. conviviality; good fellowship, good company; joviality, jollity, savoir ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in large parties in the house; and the unostentatious hospitality which exists in this and some other of the old families, is a pleasing remnant of Spanish manners and habits, now falling into disuse, and succeeded by more pretension to refinement, and less of either real wealth or sociability. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... had during his long life been a collector of pictures, bronzes, books, manuscripts, and curious relics. His house in the Place Saint-Georges was a museum of these treasures, but a museum so arranged that it contributed to sociability and the enjoyment of his visitors. He had acquired this taste for collecting in his early days at Aix. During the Commune his house was razed to the ground, not one ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... silver and dusting and polishing, and the next day clearing up. Everything out of the routine made so much extra work. Among the few English-speaking people in India there had been a sort of free and easy sociability. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... iron ball, and call it hard; it is not the iron that is hard, but cohesive force that packs the particles of metal into intense sociability. Let the force abate, and the same metal becomes like mush; let it disappear, and the ball is a heap of powder which your breath scatters in the air. If the cohesive energy in Nature should get tired and unclench its grasp of matter, our earth would instantly become "a great slump"; so that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... some explanation; but the stern and almost threatening look of the Count deterred him. "Your instructions, sir," answered he, "are superfluous. To finish my own portrait, I am not very expansive, and I have but little sociability in my character. To speak frankly, solitude is my element; it is inexpressibly sweet to me. Do you wish to try me? If so, shut me up under lock and key in this room, and provided you have a little food passed ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the persons and things that he discusses. In his sledge-hammer blows against humbug and wickedness, intellectual affectation, and moral baseness, he is the Blacksmith all over. In his geniality, his sociability, his genuine love of fun, his frank readiness to amuse or be amused, the epithet "harmonious" is abundantly justified. He cultivates to some extent the airs and tone of the eighteenth century, in which his studies have chiefly ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... guests led the lives of cloistered nuns, so far as such pleasures were concerned; occasionally a transient had rooms for a week or two, and was continually going, and receiving visits. She became the object of a certain unenvious curiosity with the other ladies, who had not much sociability among themselves; they waited a good while before paying visits at one another's rooms, and then were very punctilious not to go again until their calls had been returned. They were all doctoring themselves; they did not ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... matter?" he asked, laughing. "You all look as if you saw a ghost!" To Bela he said: "Don't disturb yourself. I've had my supper. I just walked up for a bit of sociability before turning in, if ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... be cautious, hence the instinct of fear. We need to be investigative, hence the instinct of curiosity. Much self-directed activity is necessary for our development, hence the play instinct. It is best that we should come to know and serve others, so the instincts of sociability and sympathy arise. We need to select a mate and care for offspring, hence the instinct of love for the other sex, and the parental instinct. This is far from a complete list of our instincts, and I have not tried to follow the order of their development, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when they meet as strangers. We all know more or less about each other by hearsay, or about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure to have some common acquaintances. The smallness of England makes for sociability ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... His sociability was most to be dreaded in the second dog-watch, because he was one of those men who grow lively towards the evening, and the officer on duty was unable then to find excuses for leaving the poop. Captain Johns would pop ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... in New England, in Western New York, and all over the West, even to the far side of Arkansas, which impress the visitor at once as being homelike and full of sociability and kindliness; which delight him, and lead him almost to wish that his own lot had been cast within their shades. These are chiefly villages where the evidences of public and private care predominate, or are at least conspicuous. A critical examination would, in almost ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... temperament, linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare. His extant work attests his 'copious' and continuous industry, {278b} and with his literary power and sociability there clearly went the shrewd capacity of a man of business. Pope had just warrant for the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... made them regard with an evil eye all persons who had not the same mode of worship and the same ideas as they had. Thus it is, that Religion has shut up the heart and for ever banished from it the affection that man ought to have for his fellow-creature. Sociability, indulgence, humanity, those first virtues of all morality, are totally incompatible ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Yokohama, I found a whole bevy of friends at the hotel awaiting the departure of the next steamer for San Francisco. We had all met at different places, once, twice, or thrice, and thus pleasant reminiscences and sociability now prevailed. Three were to leave on the Korea, scheduled to sail on June 29th, which augured well for ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the religious life—the sense of communion with the environment, or with the generic life process—as well as the impulse of charity or of sociability, act in a pervasive way to shape men's habits of thought for the economic purpose. But the action of all this class of proclivities is somewhat vague, and their effects are difficult to trace in detail. So much seems clear, however, as that the action of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... his way into an eating-house not far from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in rows on either ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... were shouted rapidly by the congregation, and elaborately sung by the Chazan. The minister was Vox et praeterea nihil. He was the only musical instrument permitted, and on him devolved the whole onus of making the service attractive. He succeeded. He was helped by the sociability of the gathering—for the Synagogue was virtually a Jewish Club, the focus of the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a vigorous common sense and close observation. When he asserts (contrary to the old metaphysics) the existence of such instincts as fear, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play (or, properly, playfulness), curiosity, sociability, shyness, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, coyness or personal isolation, jealousy, parental love, etc., he shows the spirit of science. But is it not self-evident, Mr. James, to a man of your fine intelligence, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... forth with him, for there were two tracks leading from this doorway. I followed them to a third humble entrance, not far off, where the tracks were so numerous that I lost the trail. It was pleasing to see the evidence of their morning sociability written ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... entered seven houses, as distinct as any other seven houses, except in being connected by the corridors and being under one roof, each house containing two suites. Thus could privacy be maintained and sociability increased. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... despotism, a prodigality of vigorous punishments, the exploitation of the subject, servile habits, insecurity of property, impoverished production, female slavery, and the customs of the harem. If the sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of discipline, sociability, and honor, you find, as in France, a complete military organization, a superb administrative hierarchy, a weak public spirit with outbursts of patriotism, the unhesitating docility of the subject ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... complex original tendencies such as sucking, chewing, sitting up, and gurgling. Among the more general unlearned responses of children are fear, anger, pugnacity, envy, jealousy, curiosity, constructiveness, love of festivities, ceremonies and ordeals, sociability and shyness, secretiveness, etc. Thorndike, who quotes this list at length, has sought to give definiteness to its descriptions by clearly defining and distinguishing the character of the situation to which the behavior cited is a response. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... virtuous and sober citizens because they have never felt the force of temptation. What power could tempt them? The tree may be parched and blistered in the heat of noonday, but the parasitical fungus draining its sap remains cool—and poisonous. So in the glow of sociability the Pharisee remains cold and clammy; the fever of love leaves his blood at zero. How can such anomalies understand a man of Burns's wild and passionate nature, or, indeed, human nature at all? The broad fact remains, however much we may ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... thought, you will not be so much interested in the question of food as regards gustatory pleasure. You will understand that eating is a necessity, but you will not be thinking about it; you will not be desiring to please the sense of taste; you will see that there are higher forms of sociability than mere eating with friends, and you will not be so interested in late suppers, and in various forms of sense gratification because you enjoy more thoroughly the higher pleasures. You will serve your friends with delicate ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... mischievous pranks. He also declared that he was no longer minded to tolerate the tyranny of the school, and that he had not the slightest desire to enter the university. He was a wilful, obstinate boy with a marked tendency to sociability. He paid a great deal of attention to his clothes, and was proud of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the legal profession to the ministry. By a second marriage, December 6, 1615, to Thomasine Clopton, of a good family in the neighborhood, he had the promise of renewed joy in a condition which his warm-hearted sociability and his intense fondness for domestic relations made essential to his happiness, if not to his virtue. But one single year and one added day saw her and her infant child committed to the tomb, and made him again desolate. His biographer, not without misgivings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... and housekeeper, was deaf and crabbed, and very few visitors ever came to the house. This suited Harrington. He was a good citizen and did his duty by the community, but his bump of sociability was undeveloped. He was also a contented man, looking after his farm, improving his stock, and experimenting with new bulbs in undisturbed serenity. This, however, was all too good to last. A man is bound to have some troubles in this life, and Harrington's ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was a fool to contradict a fine story like that. That she should have said nothing and used the rumor to her social advantage. Jessie says that story alone would have brought that uppish Mrs. Brownlee that's moved into that stylish new bungalow next to Will Turner's to time and sociability. Though the daughter isn't uppish a bit, so Nanny and Dell says, and visits right over the fence and just loves the children. But she don't know anything seemingly—the daughter don't. Wears fancy caps and high-heeled shoes to work in mornings and was caught planting onion sets root up and doing ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... day is Saturday. I feel a fresh excitement at going back to my job; the factory draws me toward it magnetically. I long to be in the hum and whir of the busy workroom. Two days of leisure without resources or amusement make clear to me how the sociability of factory life, the freedom from personal demands, the escape from self can prove a distraction to those who have no mental occupation, no money to spend on diversion. It is easier to submit to factory government which commands ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Cedric came in at that moment, Dinah retailed their little plan for his benefit. Cedric was delighted, and voted Betty a brick. Any form of sociability was welcome to him—an impromptu garden-party in Malcolm's honour ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Sam Meynell as well as I knew my own brother, and I knew old Christian Meynell almost as well as I knew my own father. There was more sociability in those days, you see, sir. The world seems to have grown too full to leave any room for friendship. It's all push and struggle, and struggle and push, as you may say; and a man will make you a frame for five-and-twenty shillings that ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... provocative of sociability did the staircase prove, that when Mrs. Van Reypen came down, in all the glory of her black velvet and old lace, she nearly tumbled over two chatting young people, who seemed to be ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... in greater perplexity than ever. Soon came Pinkus with a slight supper for the stranger, to whom he manifested a remarkable degree of sociability. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... evidently interested the ambassador highly. The serious character of a first meeting did not prevent the utterance of witty jests, for in that respect M. de Bernis was a true Frenchman. I have travelled much, I have deeply studied men, individually and in a body, but I have never met with true sociability except in Frenchmen; they alone know how to jest, and it is rare, delicate, refined jesting, which animates conversation ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... most farmers thought the best place for the pig-pen was immediately in front of the house. There is nothing like sociability. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability, that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment from a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up philosophically ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... never written. Hundreds of the stylographic pages were filled, and the duplicates sent home for the entertainment of Olivia Clemens, but the notes were not completed, and the actual writing was never begun. There was too much sociability in London for one thing, and then he found that he could not write entertainingly of England without introducing too many personalities, and running the risk of offending those who had taken him into their hearts and homes. In a word, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had been selected. The towering walls of rock were rugged with ledges, spurs, and indentations, where sea-birds in myriads gave life to the scene, and awakened millions of echoes to their plaintive cries. There was a pleasant appearance of sociability about the birds which was powerfully attractive. Even Nehow, accustomed as he was to such scenes, appeared to be impressed. The middy and the botanist were excited. As for Sally, she was in ecstasies, and the baby seemed lost in the profoundest fit of wonder he had ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... material for comic writing from time immemorial. But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... An atmosphere of great sociability pervaded the quaint room that the Spectacle Man called his study, when on Friday evening, two weeks after the candy pulling, his expected ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... the subjects of which will be given out as long in advance as possible, in order that all may be thoroughly prepared for a full and open discussion; and then, after these meetings, in order to promote sociability amongst the members, and to show how thoroughly practical we are, we propose to have something to eat. We also hope later to establish schools, not only for young men, but particularly for draughtsmen, where they can be taught, not only the art of drawing, but also the many practical ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... these genial stimulants—Burns never offered any others, and one man who knew it had declined to come—the sociability grew more positive. Chester relaxed his legs under the table, feeling that at last Red's guests could take care of themselves. Grayson proved an accomplished story-teller; Buller had lately had some remarkable adventures; even Ronald Grant, ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual—remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct—that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... found collected around the same table, all the modifications of society which extreme sociability has introduced among us: love, friendship, business, speculation, power, ambition, and intrigue, all enhance conviviality. Thus it is that it produces fruits ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... bad road, in a tropical climate. Here we were to stay the night, and our first object was to prepare dinner and then to eat it; all seemed disposed to assist in the last part of this operation, and where every one was anxious to please, and determined to be pleased, sociability could not be absent. After this we whiled away our time with books and conversation, till one by one dropping asleep, all became quiet, except a wretched child belonging to our hostess, who, from one corner of the hut, every now and then set up its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... farming. Are you interested in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now—the cars won't start yet awhile—I'll just tell you ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... least pride. Perhaps as it is in earth so it may be in heaven. God send us all safe there together! For my part, I think that within these few weeks I am a different kind of a creature. But what can a poor carpenter do? He must not speak to gentlefolk, unless in the way of his work: so he can have no sociability, but with his poor neighbours. And though some of them to be sure be as good-meaning people as any on earth, they are no better learned than himself: so they can teach him nothing. But I have happened on good luck, so I have no right to complain. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... course of action which is most beneficial to the species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides. "We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind, in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and from loving our families." But there was to him so much suffering in the world that it was a strong argument against the existence of an intelligent First Cause. ("Life and ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... families. Everyone was eager to hear from his own lips the story of his adventures, and invitations to dinners and routs and card parties poured upon him. He accepted one or two and politely excused himself from the rest, not from any want of sociability, but from motives of prudence. His kind host had already given him a friendly warning; some of the writers and younger servants of the Company were wild spirits, and spent more time than was good for them ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... lament on the death of sociability and back yards with many a smile, and a sigh also, for to one born in the pool, every ripple that stirs it must be of importance, and it is impossible for outsiders to urge her to step out of the eddies altogether and begin anew, for New Yorkitis seems to be not only a rarely ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of the table heaved and quivered with primeval mirth. Even Flossie Walker was moved to a faint smile. For Mr. Soper, though outwardly taciturn and morose, was possessed inwardly by a perfect fury of sociability, an immortal and insatiable craving to converse. It was an instinct which, if gratified, would have undermined the whole fabric of the Dinner, being essentially egoistic, destructive and malign. Mr. Soper resented ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... so contracted an aperture I never could squeeze myself into it—the last I always hated—there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that made me fly solitude; add to these incentives to social life, my reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought, something ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... selfishness in a man's being, however far down it may be buried ordinarily, will come surging to the surface—when he is courting a girl against strong opposition; when he is playing a gentleman's game of poker, purely for sociability; and when he is camping out and it rains. Before a man makes up his mind that he will take a girl to be his wife he should induce her to go in surf bathing and see how she looks when she comes out; and before he makes up his mind that he will take a man to be his ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... thus, and Hazel blessed the rain that drove them to this sociability. He had prepared the bladder of a young seal which had drifted ashore dead. This membrane, dried in the sun, formed a piece of excellent parchment, and he desired to draw upon it a map of the island. To accomplish this, the first thing was to obtain a good red ink from the cochineal, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a common mill ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... being directed) as to connect their interests with lawful amusements, civic needs, and social relations. The great danger is that when adults take a hand in these matters they fix their attention upon the civic and moral virtues and overlook the instincts of activity and sociability which call the gang into being, and the club degenerates into ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... had lived much by himself; his home was his castle, and in it he developed his intense individualism; but in the first half of the eighteenth century some three thousand public coffeehouses and a large number of private clubs appeared in London alone; and the sociability of which these clubs were an expression was typical of all English cities. Meanwhile country life was in sore ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... swinging round the encompassing plaza. Professor Kelton explained that the monument filled a space once called Circle Park, where the Governor's Mansion had stood in old times. In her hurried glimpses Sylvia was unable to account for the lack of sociability among the distinguished gentlemen posed in bronze around the circular thoroughfare; and she thought it odd that William Henry Harrison wore so much better clothes than George Rogers Clark, who was immortalized for her especial pleasure ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... women. His wife could bear her solitary second floor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by various small reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations markedly professional—not letting them slide into sociability. She wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be kept in his place, she never thought me quite ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... he made no further effort toward sociability. Neither did he go away. To the dismayed eyes, watching through the cover of some long grass, he was clearly a person devoid of all fine feeling. Or perhaps he had never been taught not to stay where he wasn't wanted. Mebby he didn't even know that ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... unwilling, however, to show, as between Ensign and man, reasonable satisfaction; presently, in fact, she went so far as to say, still vaguely remarking upon his appearance there, that she often thought there ought to be more sociability between the different religious bodies; it would be better for the cause. There was nothing narrow, she said, about her, nor yet about Captain Sand. And then, with the distinct intimation that that would do, that she had gone far enough, she crossed her hands in her lap and waited. It became ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... affectionately; and in the present war there are hundreds of stories already in circulation of acts of grace and tenderness between enemies, as well as the quaintest quips and jokes and demonstrations of sociability between men in opposing trenches who "ought" to have been slaying each other. In the Russo-Japanese War during the winter, when military movement was not easy, and the enemy lines in some cases were very ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... in the garden?" said Musard. He wished to know more of the man of whom he had heard so much by repute, and he believed that tobacco promoted sociability. He also desired to find out whether Colwyn's presence at the moat-house meant that Phil had succeeded in impressing him with his own belief in ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Goethe and Schiller. They would be ungrateful if they did not cherish the memory of a man who during his life-time was wont to prefer them, with all their imperfections upon their heads, to the keener and more enterprising North Germans, and who on many occasions sang the praises of their sociability, their wholesome naturalness, and their sound instinct. But even from the point of view of the critical North German or of the non-German foreigner, Grillparzer abundantly deserves his local fame—and more than local fame; for a dozen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... The mice tracks are very pretty, and look like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats; they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be traveling about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides. That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and winding galleries under the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... made are so inexpensive that even the farmer whose income is moderate in size can afford to supply them. A clergyman who had worked both in city and in country parishes once told me that he attributed the marked increase in ease and grace of manner—and, consequently, in "sociability"—among country people to-day, as compared with country people of his boyhood, very largely to the invention of ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... to the bustle of arrivals, and the stir of unpacking going on all over the house. The cordial greetings called back and forth from the various rooms and the laughter in the halls made her long to have a part in the general sociability. She wished that it were necessary for her to borrow a hammer or to ask information about the trunk-room and the porter, as the other new girls were doing. That would give her an excuse for going into some ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... who are doing things—real things—seldom are. But we aren't the society kind ourselves, you know—not the capital S kind. We like sociability, which is vastly different from liking Society. Oh, we have friends, to be sure, who dote on 'pink teas and purple pageants,' as Cyril calls them; and we even go ourselves sometimes. But if you had been here yesterday, Mr. Arkwright, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... thing, she cannot comprehend why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie, and Hausse. M. Heger is wonderously influenced by Madame, and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal bienveillance, and, perceiving that I don't improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone—left to the error of her ways; and consequently he has in a great measure ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... favorite stories any stiffness is sure to melt rapidly away. Jack, hearing mention of "The Talisman," joined in and the others drew up their chairs, so that when Miss Betty rustled back from an excursion to the dining room she found the ice broken and sociability prevailing. But she startled ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... effect of these combined sorrows had not seemed to be immediate (one month had seen both); though a half-year had elapsed before all sociability was lost in extreme self- absorption, and a full one before he took down the picket-fence which had hitherto been considered a sufficient protection to his simple grounds, and put up these boards which had so completely isolated him from the rest of the ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... run my store. Find out what the people want and give it to 'em, is my motto. Now, people ain't comin' to church unless there's somethin' to draw 'em. We've tried preachin', and it won't draw. They say they want sociability, so let's give it to 'em strong. They want attention paid to 'em. You turn my friend here loose in the community, and he'll make each and every man, woman and child think they're it in less'n a month. If anybody gets disgruntled, you sic John Henry here on 'em, and you'll have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... struggle—and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes himself to man's curiosity—a certain rigidity of body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... There she sat, and there I sat in plain sight of each other, being in the same seat for the sake of sociability, though her section was the one in front of mine. She seemed rather quiet and formal—not so much stiff as limp, so to speak. Still there was no cordiality about it. Just as I felt I could not stand starvation another minute, she rose and said she believed she would go into the ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... games," which, unless they descend to vulgar romping, are the dreariest attempts at conviviality possible to conceive; none of those dreadful and much-to- be-avoided exactions and remissions of "forfeits," that plunge everybody into embarrassing situations, and destroy, instead of creating, sociability; none of those stock—so-called—"drawing-room entertainments;" in fact, which always result in hopeless boredom. But, we had a little music and part-singing: a little lively, general chit- chat, in which all could join and each take a ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cried Israel, "to serve an old topmate this way. Come, come, you are foolish. Give us a quid." And, once more, with the utmost sociability, he addressed the sailor next ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... clean, that each day's lessons should be carefully planned, that, in short, every little duty should be well performed, they putter away at such tasks until there is no time left for much larger duties, such as physical exercise, sociability, and general reading. As a result they become habitually tired, unsympathetic, and narrow, and therefore schoolish. It is a strange commentary on education when conscientiousness means particular care for little things, as it very often does among teachers. It ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Byron, Scott, Moore, all those famous men of old, whose portraits still adorn the walls. Murray told me he well remembered Byron and his ways; could still in fancy see him and Scott, and also hear them, as they stamped heavily (lame as both were) down the somewhat narrow stairs. Sociability may well come to the relief of people who cannot amuse themselves at home, for the weather, mild, and too mild, is gray, sunless and spiritless, altogether. To-day ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... "St. Benet's was made for sociability as well as study, and I have no patience with the students who don't try to combine the two. By the way," she added, turning round and speaking in a rather impertinent voice to Priscilla, "I sent you a message ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Owens (Obedog), E. Meredith (tenor) and J.R. Jones (bass) were the prominent persons connected with the society. March 1st was the day for celebrating the yearly singing tryout. The Welsh miners and their families came yearly from Mt. Diablo mines for a holiday of sociability and song. The day was called St. David's Day. My first engagement with this society occurred on the 2d day of March, 1874, the first having come on Sunday. We were obliged to sing the Welsh airs. This was a new departure for me, but, nothing daunted, I began the study of the Welsh music, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... faculty of divorcing himself wholly from business during those hours which he has dedicated to sociability. He declines to discuss monetary matters outside his room at the bank. I recall how, upon several occasions when I have approached him upon the delicate subject of negotiating a trifling temporary loan, he has dismissed the matter by ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... bore the palm, in virtue of their kindliness, sociability, and good-fellowship. Aesop the Phrygian was there, and held the office of jester. Diogenes of Sinope was much changed; he had married Lais the courtesan, and often in his cups would oblige the company with a dance, or ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... doing his best as a social being. Take the so-called sleepy market-town; it is bubbling with all manner of associated activities, and these of the quite voluntary kind, forms of zealously united effort such as are never dreamt of in the countries supposed to be eminently "social." Sociability does not consist in a readiness to talk at large with the first comer. It is not dependent upon natural grace and suavity; it is compatible, indeed, with thoroughly awkward and all but brutal manners. The English have never (at all events, for some two centuries past) inclined to the purely ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... ripple on the water, — a little fleckiness in the cloud, — a quiet air; it was one of summer's choice days, when she escapes from the sun's fierce watch and sits down to rest herself. But Elizabeth's eyes, if they wavered at all, were called off by some burst of the noisy sociability of the party, in which she deigned not to share. Her cousin, Mr. Herder, Rufus, Asahel, and Winifred, were in full cry after pleasure; and a cheery hunt ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... worse occupations certainly," Flint began; but he saw that Winifred's attention had been diverted by the keeper, who had already begun to mount the stairs, talking, as he moved, with a fluency which denoted a long restrained flow of sociability. Winifred was glad to be saved the trouble of replying, for the unceasing climbing put her out of breath, and she felt that she might have been dizzy, but for the railing ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... This sociability and inclination to talk the matter out, and, I may say, a certain amount of innocence and lack of worldly wisdom into the bargain, betrayed her occasionally into small improprieties of conduct that were not to be excused, and would possibly ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... household of a learned foreigner, as Robert Sidney did with Sturm, or Henry Wotton with Hugo Blotz, was of course especially desirable. For there were still, in the Elizabethans, remnants of that ardent sociability among humanists which made Englishmen traverse dire distances of sea and land to talk with some scholar on the Rhine—that fraternizing spirit which made Cranmer fill Lambeth Palace with Martin Bucers; and Bishop Gardiner, meanwhile, complain from the Tower not only of "want of books ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... especially, the connection of brother with sister, and parent with child, were very common. For husbands to interchange wives, and for wives to interchange husbands, was a common act of friendship, and persons who would not do this were not considered on good terms of sociability. For a man or woman to refuse a solicitation was considered an act of meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... open whenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, and the conservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, preserved it from the heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreign sociability so often assumes. Very interesting, even important names lent their prestige to her circle; and those of Don Carlos and his family, of Prince and Princess Iturbide, of Prince and Princess Metternich, and of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... o'clock the team assembled again for lunch, with books in hand, and at break-neck speed devoured the somewhat elaborate repast, each man rushing in, eating, and rushing out, with no attempt at sociability or heed to ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Horace, from whom I rented my place, was not infrequently a visitor. He has since said that I looked at him as though he were a "statute." I was "citified," Horace said; and "citified" with us here in the country is nearly the limit of invective, though not violent enough to discourage such a gift of sociability as his. The Scotch Preacher, the rarest, kindest man I know, called once or twice, wearing the air of formality which so ill becomes him. I saw nothing in him: it was my fault, not his, that I missed so many weeks of his friendship. Once in that time the Professor ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... conceptions took slow and stately shape. He never suffered from the haste, which as Dante says "mars all decency of act." After that time he enjoyed a great domestic happiness, and practised considerable sociability. His terrifying demeanour, his amazing personal dignity and majesty, the certainty that he would say whatever came into his head, whether it was profound and solemn, or testy and discourteous, gave him a personal ascendancy that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
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