It was thus and from these beginnings that the casual acquaintance between us ripened into intimacy, and that I gradually came into a knowledge of the reserves behind The Major's buoyant optimism and occasional gasconnade.
Suffice it to say that I had the satisfaction of warning the proud English aristocracy against the sinful optimism of the Liberals then in power.
The Ambassador carried his optimism so far as to look upon Marie Antoinette's marriage as a happy precedent.
Ambition and a buoyant optimism seemed likely to make Douglas more than ever a power in Democratic politics, when a personal bereavement changed the current of his life.
If this be true, his buoyant optimism throughout the canvass is admirable.
A cheerful bit of Western optimism to which the country at large was not yet ready to subscribe.
Another visitor scored a success on behalf of Optimism by reporting that the patient had smoked a cigar in defiance of medical prohibitions.
Toledo spent the afternoon and the early evening hours in the anteroom, always expecting good news, and accepting the bad with an easy optimism which found excuse and justification for everything.
When the ladies consulted him in the Casino or in the Hotel de Paris, he displayed unshakable optimism in the face of the bad news.
Even in the midst of his optimism George could not deny that these facts might reasonably be considered in the nature of obstacles.
Concentrated thought supplied no answer to the question; and it was at this point that the cheery optimism with which he had begun the day left George and gave place to a grey gloom.
The disposition to moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the Captain's.
Unreflecting optimism about Popular Government is sickening, but calculated pessimism is not much better.
With less impetuosity and a more weightily reasoned argument the Pope confronts the long perplexity and entanglement of circumstances with the fatuous optimism which insists that somehow justice and virtue do rule in the world.
This optimismor complacency in Wordsworth will be understood if we compare his spirit and treatment with that of the illustrious French painter whose subjects and whose life were in some ways akin to his own.
Such assertions, coming from lordly lips, have a suspicious optimism about them; yet the faithful slave, such as the nurse we find in the tragedies, may sometimes have corresponded to that description.
It is sentimental, its ritual is meagre and unctuous, it expects no miracles, it thinks optimism akin to piety, and regards profitable enterprise and practical ambition as a sort of moral vocation.
Thus Hebrew optimism could be moral because, although it asserted in a sense the morality of the universe, it asserted this only by virtue of a belief that the universe supported human ideals.
This submerged optimism exists in Christianity, being a heritage from the Jews; and those Protestant communities that have rejected the pagan and Platonic elements that overlaid it have little difficulty in restoring it to prominence.
Animal optimism is a great renovator and disinfectant in the world.
Why is that sensuous optimism we may call Greek, or that industrial optimism we may call American, such a thin disguise for despair?
Absolute pessimism and absolute optimism are opposite sentiments attached to a doctrine identically the same.
Indeed, this pantheistic subordination of conscience to what happens to exist, this optimismannulling every human ideal, betrays its immoral tendency very clearly so soon as it descends from theological seminaries into the lay world.
It was quite clear that he meant it, for this was a man who had a full share of the optimismwhich characterizes most of the inhabitants of the Pacific Slope.
She was not one to flinch from the truth and with false optimism disbelieve it.
All the optimism of youth and the spirit of the angels could not deny this fact.
This collection of articles enables us at the same time to follow the gradual transition from the pessimism of his youth to the optimism of his maturity.
The Flora of the Human Body, published in 1901, is a study in which Metchnikoff's optimism assumes a definite form, for he speaks of the efficacy of certain means of struggling with our lack of harmony.
In that paper itself and from that moment onwards, the trend of his ideas towards optimism becomes visible.
Indeed, the tenor of Struve's argument is a fervent belief in the unlimited capacity for expansion of capitalist production, but the economic foundation of this optimism is rather weak.
Since then, optimism had only been possible in the camp of the rising working class and its theorists.
This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism and pessimism--the "resignation" of Matthew Arnold.
The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world.
Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrationaloptimism that leads to reform.
Granted the primary dogma of the war between divine and diabolic, the revolt and ruin of the world, their optimism and pessimism, as pure poetry, could be loosened like cataracts.
But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world.
Let us reiterate for an instant that the only right optimism is a sort of universal patriotism.
Similarly, optimismand pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.
Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism.
This ugly side of mere external optimismhad also shown itself in the ancient world.
Mere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination.
She was pale and faint with exhaustion from the strain which had ended with that final tax on her strength, as she put all she had into the message of optimism which she had written on Phil's arm.
The Iranian optimism has been replaced here by a strong pessimism.
In one class of passages there is everywhere manifest a vigorous optimism as to Israel's ultimate well-being on earth, and the blessedness of the chosen people in the Messianic kingdom is sketched in glowing and sensuous colours (xxix.
He speaks of "the brilliant bitterness of Dublin and the stagnant optimism of Belfast.
Until the other day we all thought we were threatened with national bankruptcy, and a great many people think so still, despite the recent rapid conversion to optimism of the Government and the House of Commons.
The transition from optimism to pessimism is very much like that from democracy to imperialism.
How some folk keep their cheap and easy optimism about humanity's use of its new energies is a mystery.
Such sentimental optimism has ceased even to be comforting, so utterly untenable has it become to every well-instructed mind.
If you read nothing else, try at least "Rabbi ben Ezra," and after the reading reflect that the optimism of this poem colors everything that the author wrote.
Arnold of Rugby, made famous by Tom Brown's Schooldays) is in strong contrast to that of the Brownings, to the robust optimism of the one and to the emotionalism of the other.
In The Lady with the Dog we get one of those notes of optimism which are so characteristic of Tchehov just where the normal writer would be pessimistic.
He lashes out in no uncertain tones: "It is sentimental, its ritual is meagre and unctuous, it expects no miracles, it thinks optimism akin to piety and regards profitable enterprise and practical ambition as a sort of moral vocation.
This is the role of that superficial optimism so inherently repugnant to the aesthetic sense.
Does this hypothesis reduce the tragedy of life to a negligible quantity, or afford a basis upon which any easy optimism could be reared?
For man's aesthetic sense seems in some strange way to be in league with a certain inveterate tragedy in things, which no facile optimism can ever cajole or melt.
He could not share the optimism of Smolenskin and his school.
Browning's optimism lays hold sometimes of the present, sometimes of the future, for the fulfilment of its hope.
It is a teaching that neither the poet's optimism nor his acumen has justified in the minds of men.
All theoptimism of mother-love, all the brave predictions that a woman associates with her first-born boy helped to drive the black mood back.
The somewhat melancholy chanting of the moor birds had quickened his pulse; had stirred up memories of youth and youth’s ambitions; and he had discussed the future with Jagger in a spirit of breezy optimism that had fired the younger man.
But even yet the garment lacked the trimmings that beautified the older man’s and made it conspicuous—cheerfulness and breezy optimismwere missing.
