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More "Placid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out that they were going upon a trading and shooting expedition in the north of the Transvaal. Benita looked back at the pretty little stead and the wooded kloof behind it over which she had nearly fallen, and the placid lake in front of it where the nesting wildfowl wheeled, and sighed. For to her, now that she was leaving it, the place seemed like home, and it came into her mind that she would never see it ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... up a comfortable place in town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in those of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a placid day on the sea and Kippy and I were returning from a ten-mile swim to a neighboring island whither I had been taken to be shown off to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... face was haggard, and showed a mental struggle; but hers placid and quietly beaming, for the very reason that she had made a great sacrifice. She ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards this peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible grounds. After reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful intervals of repose, the generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at the discovery that all the great disasters which had tried his patience and equanimity in early life, had been caused by his having allowed himself to be deluded into imitating ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... combination,—on temper, foresight, solidity, daring,—on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength of character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described Boethius not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire's anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory that he was of sycophantic nature. "Why," ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... began to darken her sunny fields, she had, in early spring, withdrawn again, leaving her maiden aunt to attend to the affairs of the homestead, or to find more luxurious residence in watering-places or cities, as she chose. For Vivia liked the placid life and freedom of the cottage, and here, too, she had oftenest met those dear friends to whom one winter her father, long since dead, had taken her, and half of all that was pleasant in her life had inwoven itself with the simple surroundings of the place. Here, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... implacable business spirit exhibits itself at every turn. In place of the placid millers and quaint refugees of the last century at their doors, we see the shops, the storehouses of manufacturers' supplies, the hotel and the theatre; and, pervading all, the vast throng of artisans, providing such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to roam o'er hill and dale, In calm or storm or windy gale, I love the valley and the hill, The brooklet and the running rill, I love the broad and placid lake——" ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... [151] Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; — [161] Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... a bit. She too, on her part, observed her friend. Fair and handsome she was; very handsome; with the placid luxuriance of nature which has never known shocks or adverse weather. Dolly felt the contrast which Christina had also felt, but Dolly went deeper into it. She and her friend had drifted apart, not in ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... my usual place before the letter, but it was now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... nice!" said Miss Elizabeth; and Madam Pennington walked forward into the sunshine, holding her hand out to Mrs. Holabird, and smiling all the way from her smooth old forehead down to the "seventh beauty" of her dimple-cleft and placid chin. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... small steam-launch or by rowing boat. As there seemed to be some uncertainty about the departure of the launch, and as I had a good deal of luggage, I preferred the latter way. Eight powerful men rowed with all their might at the prospect of a good backshish; and we sped along at a good pace on the placid waters of the lagoon, in big stretches of open water, now skirting small islands, occasionally through narrow canals, the banks of which were covered with high reeds and heavy, tropical, confused, untidy vegetation. The air was still and stifling—absolutely unmoved, screened as it ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... was but a short parting. Into her placid faith had never fallen fear nor doubt. He was waiting for her. In God's good time they would meet again. What need of sorrow! Without him the days passed slowly: the house must ever be a little dull when the good man's away. But that was all. So my mother would speak of him always—of his dear, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... country lass of humble degree, she had sense and intelligence, and personal charms sufficient not only to win and fix the attentions of the poet, but to sanction the praise which he showered on her in song. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, he thus describes her: "The most placid good nature and sweetness of disposition, a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... have forgot." It occurred to him that even the simple and placid Maggie had her personal prejudices, and that one of them might be against this child. For some reason she did not like the child. She positively could not have forgotten the child's visit with Janet. She had merely not troubled to tell him: a touch of that malice which, though it be as rare as radium, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... after dinner, for I confess he struck me as cruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. "The usual twaddle"—my acute little study! That one's admiration should have had a reserve or two could gall him to that point! I had thought him placid, and he was placid enough; such a surface was the hard polished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled, and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... He went out, placid and smiling, and Margaret sobbed plentifully—until it became necessary to go to her room and remove the traces of her grief. So it may be assumed that her tears were not all occasioned by grief for the contemplated loss of ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... leaving home, and Mrs. Murdoch and Mary departed without anxiety; but they had hardly entered the Edwards's house before they found that many other people were very much less placid. ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... present, she would speak of him as if buried in the ocean, and would sit, with clasped hands, looking upon the ground, the picture of despair. As the agitation of her feelings subsided, and her frame recovered from the shock which it had received, she became more placid and coherent. Eugene kept almost continually near her. He formed the real object round which her scattered ideas once more gathered, and which linked them once more with the realities of life. But her ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... after his arrival the Sheikh Burrachee left, but some weeks afterwards he returned with an escort and an easy-paced hygeen to take Harry away with him. He took the announcement of the journey with the placid indifference which now characterised him, only at the moment of starting he showed reluctance to part from his black nurse, Fatima. But whether the sheikh bought her, or only borrowed her, it was arranged that she should go too, and Harry was perfectly reconciled. The hygeen's motions were wonderfully ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... I have others do to me? Pride, interest, adverse contact, all with specious argument may strive to dissipate the comparison, but the pulsations of a common humanity, keeping time with the verities of God never ceased to trouble, and thus the moral pebble thrown on the bosom of the hitherto placid sea of public opinion, like its physical prototype, creating undulations which go on and on to beat against the rock and make sandy shores, so this our earnest but feeble protest contributed its humble share in the rebuilding ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... ready approbation of his brother, the marquis. And it was arranged that both at Beaufort and at Deerhurst the whole of the baronet's family group should be assembled, including Mr. Somerset and his gentle lady, whose placid graces moved round his ever sparkling vivacity with a ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... more cheerful when Celia was seated there in a pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos with a placid satisfaction, while the conversation passed on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... little shadow had fallen across their placid entertainment. The spirit had left their memories; they seemed to have grown shapeless, dusty, as the fresh and comely faces of dead Etruscan kings crumble into mould at the touch of ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... heralded sunrise shot over the sky and stained the placid waters beneath to crimson. In this sea of blood the wreck lay, her decks ruddy with the stain of ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... reproach," I said hastily. "A nectarine requires time, even though the sunlight paints it so prettily in all its unripe, flawless symmetry. And I have—I have lived all my life in sober company. My father was old, my mother placid and saddened by the loss of all her children save myself. I had few companions—none of my own age except when we went to Albany, where I learned to bear myself in company. At Johnson Hall, at Varick's, at Butlersbury, I was but a shy lad, warned by my parents to formality, for they ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... at his eyes—how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so young a people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you understand, is what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... immediately within the door for Sylvia and Molly to go in again, and they accordingly betook themselves to the place where the deep grave was waiting, wide and hungry, to receive its dead. There, leaning against the headstones all around, were many standing—looking over the broad and placid sea, and turned to the soft salt air which blew on their hot eyes and rigid faces; for no one spoke of all that number. They were thinking of the violent death of him over whom the solemn words were now being said in the gray old church, scarcely out ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... who are just entering upon life and its responsibilities. Years ago I thoughtlessly took a false step, which at the time seemed trivial and of little import, but which has since assumed colossal proportions that threaten to overshadow much of the innocent happiness of my otherwise placid existence. What wonder, then, that I try to avert this danger from young and inexperienced minds who in their gay thoughtlessness rush into the very jaws of the disaster, and before they are well aware find they are entrapped for life, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... him, he found out. He peeped in between the curtains of the alcove, and saw at once what was out in the square. It was the major's "regiment." To other people the square might have seemed to be a very quiet place, full of trees and May sunshine, with a few babies and nurses and placid pedestrians as its only occupants. But Uncle Arthur perceived at once, from the aspect of the major, that it was a place of wild carnage, of desperate assault, of the clash and shock ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... That placid dame, The Moon's Celestial Highness; There's not a trace Upon her face Of diffidence or shyness: She borrows light That, through the night, Mankind may all acclaim her! And, truth to tell, She lights up well, So I, for ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... seized him by his thin garment, and held on, checking further descent and gazing wildly at his messmate, whose rugged features upturned to the red glow of light appeared to be singularly calm and placid. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... or the rocky dale, And shun the orange bower, the myrtle vale, Whose gay luxuriance suits my soul no more. I love the ocean's broad expanse, when dress'd In limpid clearness, or when tempests blow. When the smooth currents on its placid breast Flow calm, as my past moments us'd to flow; Or when its troubled waves refuse to rest, And seem the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... o'er the place, And softens ragged edges; The rising moon's great placid face Looks gravely o'er ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... years old, Dorothy lived a very uneventful life; for one week was much the same as another in the placid existence of the village. On Sunday mornings, when the church-bells began to ring, you would meet her walking over the moor with a springy step. Her shawl was gay, and her dress was of the most pronounced colour ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... the loss of money, of home and my home comforts, is dreadful; that to be driven again to find a resting place away from the friends that I loved, and from where I had fondly hoped I was to end my days. And when I had lavished time, money, and everything to make my descent to the grave placid and pleasant, is indeed a severe lesson; but after all I firmly believe it is for the best, and though my heart may break I will not repine. I regret, beyond expression, that any man should be a loser ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... always sat so exactly in the same place that her white cap was to be seen through the same lower window-pane. "Most people would have moved their chairs about until they wore holes in the floor," he told himself, and then remembered how many times he had gone to look over at his placid friend, in her favorite afternoon post of observation. He was strongly attached to her, and he reminded himself that she was growing old and that he must try to see her oftener. He valued her companionship, more because he knew ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that some issue was being decided upon. He ought to speak, to break his word to Mina and speak—or he ought to go. From day to day he meant to go and cease to accept the hospitality which his silence seemed to abuse. But he did not go. These internal struggles were new in his placid and estimable life; this affair of Harry Tristram's had a way of putting people in strange ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Arabella that night,—as to which it may be said that she also was false. But according to her conscience there were two ways of telling such a secret. As a matter of course she told her husband everything. That idle placid dinner-loving man was in truth consulted about each detail of the house and family; but the secret was told to him with injunctions that he was to say nothing about it to any one for twenty-four hours. After that the Duchess was of opinion that he should speak to Lord ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the White City," some one yelled, and the people rose from their seats and looked at the most favored spot of the earth as long as it could be seen. Houses flew by, stations were passed; the placid lake, flecked with many boats, lapped the shore as with some friendly greeting. The great buildings of Chicago's business center appeared in view, and the end of their journey ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Nevertheless, I advise you, just now, to return to England and wait. I have some knowledge of Captain Salt's movements; and when last your lad was heard of he had parted company with his father and was making for the coast. I have some quickness in reading character; and there is a certain placid obstinacy in that young man which persuades me he will reach Harwich in time. Return, therefore, and wait with what patience you may. Moreover, Captain Barker, I perceive that you are recovering ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The process symbolized itself in the legend of the Fall. Man ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes people wonder why knowledge of any kind—and especially the knowledge of good and evil—should have brought a curse. But the reason is obvious. Into, the placid and harmonious life of the animal and human tribes fulfilling their days in obedience to the slow evolutions and age-long mandates of nature, Self-consciousness broke with its inconvenient and impossible query: "How do these arrangements suit ME? Are they good for me, are they evil for me? I ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... at him with alarm. He was fat and generally placid, but his philosophical good humor was not ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... New York, where she tarried for a few days, seeing no one but Anna, for whom she sent at once. The interview had lasted more than an hour, and Anna's eyes were swollen with passionate weeping when at last it ended, but Lucy's face, though white as snow, was very calm and quiet, wearing a peaceful, placid look, which made it like the face of an angel. Two weeks later and the steamer bore her away across the water, where she hoped to outlive the storm which had beaten so piteously upon her. Thornton Hastings and Anna went with her on board ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... his old straw hat in hand, with that placid expression on his smooth features. A man of medium height, shoulders slightly rounded; rather gaunt in the middle where the suspenders hitched onto ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... a man of calm benignity of face, a placid certainty of his power and place in the world; a rugged man, broad-handed, slow. His pleasure was in the distinction of his wealth, and not in any use that he made of it for his own comfort or the advancement of those under his hand. Even so, he was of a type superior to the ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... across the placid ocean through the tall, clean stems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the flat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt which took away his life, and tried to picture ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wander down to the sands. The tide is low. The long billows of the Bay of Biscay roll smugly in, hypocritical and placid, with nothing to betray the unenviable reputation they sustain in mediis aquis. The broad, smooth beach is not notably different in kind from other beaches; but we instantly see the peculiar charm of its location. The shore sweeps off in a long, lazy crescent, rounding up, a ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... already green, and overarching a yard or more of water. Presently it bent sharply, and we turned with it. Ten yards in front of us the growth of willows ceased abruptly, the low, steep banks shelved downwards to a grassy level, and the stream widened into a clear and placid pool, as blue as the sky above. Crouched upon the grass or standing in the shallow water were some fifteen or twenty deer. We had come upon them without noise; the wind blew from them to us, and the willows hid us from their sight. There was no alarm, and we stood a moment watching them before ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... of course. But Catherine's position is certainly unusual; and the strangest part of it all is—she doesn't seem to feel her situation. She's sitting alone in the library, seemingly placid and happy. What I really wish to consult you about is this: shouldn't the card we're going to send out have a narrow black border? [The DOCTOR is now writing.] Doctor, you don't appear to be interested. You might at least answer ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... distress: Before Decay's effacing fingers, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, And mark'd the mild, angelic air, The rapture of repose that's there; The fix'd, yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... rectory at Great Bradley, Lady Constance Dex arose from a sleepless night to confront her placid brother at the breakfast table. The Reverend Jeremiah Bangley, a stout and easy man, who spent as much of his time in London as in his rectory, was frankly nonplussed by the apparition. He was one of those men, common ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... as though, instead of being thirty-three, you were still very small and very young and ignorant of all the things that really mattered. She was vaguer and greyer, more placid than ever, and ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... he was introduced to the Deputy Magistrate's wife and twin baby boys who were splendid specimens of infantile vigour; and his praise and admiration were the passport to their mother's instant regard. She was a devoted wife and mother, placid and easy-going, and carried the air of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... loves her dearly, that she knows, and she has, in the innocent presumption of her young beauty, not questioned that he would enter the song-tournament for her; and until yesterday she rested in placid contentment upon the intention of crowning this affection which never since her birth has failed her. Her narrow eighteen years have no conception of a devotion so generous and deep it would not dream, however fair the opportunity, of laying upon her youth the burden of his ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... finished her work, and was free to enjoy, as she sank into full repose, sunsets, hoar frosts, spring blossoms, the having me with her, her brother's return—everything was a pleasure. I can hardly call it a time of grief, when she was so placid and happy. All the wishing and scheming was over, and each day that I could look at her in her serenity, was ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the astral body is composed of. Also the etheric double. The ever changing clouds of aura coloring. Placid scenes and furious storms of the Aura. Opalescent effects. The pearly color of the etheric substance. The Aura of mental activity. The Aura of reverie or sleep. The Aura of anger and passion. The Aura of hate. The ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... placid river of an old bachelor as I am, through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger longest among the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... enterprise was diverting Mr. Gwynne's attention from the delinquencies of his debtors, namely: the entrance of the National Machine Company into the remote and placid life of Mapleton and its district. The manager of this company, having spent an afternoon with Mr. Gwynne in his store and having been impressed by his charm and power of persuasive talk, made him a proposition that he should act as agent of ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... pleasant. She had hoped to cut herself off from all the bitterness and sorrow of her past life, but this husband of hers, like an unquiet spirit, came to trouble her and remind her of a time she would willingly have forgotten. She looked calm and quiet enough sitting there with her placid face and smooth brow; but this woman was like a slumbering volcano, and her passions were all the more dangerous from being ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... brain, which an asylum professes to soothe, was steadily undermined by artificial sleeplessness. A man can't sleep in irons till he is used to them and, when Alfred was relieved of these, his sleep was still driven away by biting insects and barking dogs, two opiates provided in many of these placid Retreats, with a view to the permanence rather than the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... prison of a queen, the Royalist refuge—fallen now into such placid dreaminess of age. Into the dark chamber above, desolate, legend-haunted, perchance in some moment of the night there fell through the narrow window-niche a pale moonbeam, touching the floor, the walls of stone; such light in gloom ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... appeared, but the gray sky was parted near the horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap. Even Mynheer von Stoppelnoze, that worthy old Dutchman, was ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... cliffs close together. The river became much narrower and swirled with an oily-looking current around the buttresses of granite that thrust themselves from one side or the other into it. The declivity was not great and the torrent was otherwise placid. After three miles of this ominous docility, just as the dinner hour was near and the threatening black granite had risen to one thousand feet above the water, we heard a deep, sullen roar ahead and from the boats the whole river ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... my suspicions," Niafer replied. "And now she is about to speak I believe she will justify these suspicions, for Madame Gisele is in no placid ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... sportsman's outfit. This boat was kindly loaned by the manufacturer, Mr. Fred W. Rice, formerly of Saranac Lake, N. Y., but now living at Seattle, Wash. His son continues the manufacture of guide-boats at Lake Placid, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... personal pain; it is also the sense of obligation, or that which combines the two, the pain of sin; and again it is love; in short, the moral order. What saves us from the sorceries of Maia is conscience; conscience dissipates the narcotic vapors, the opium-like hallucinations, the placid stupor of contemplative indifference. It drives us into contact with the terrible wheels within wheels of human suffering and human responsibility; it is the bugle-call, the cockcrow, which puts the phantoms to flight; it is the armed archangel who chases man from an artificial ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... population is so desirous to sever. A population with whom peace, humanity, mercy, oaths, contracts, and compacts, pass for nothing—whose promises and engagements are as chaff before the wind—to whom bloodshed, robbery, assassination, and murder, are objects of placid contemplation—whose narrow creed of bigotry supersedes all the obligations, of morality, and all the commands of positive law. With such men what valid compact can be made? The appeal must be to those who think that a deliberate compact is mutually binding on ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and placid; sort of thing you women who live sheltered lives can say. I often wonder if you women realise the strain ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... there was therefore nothing that he could ask her for which she had not an immediate answer ready. Her brow was always unruffled, her black shining hair brushed neatly back and parted down the middle, her large flat face always composed and placid, and her voice never raised above a whisper. The only sign that she ever gave of disturbance was a little clucking noise that she made in her mouth like an aroused hen. Peter's time in the little pink sitting-room was sometimes exceedingly short and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Some wrinkles no doubt were there too; lines deep-marked that spoke of sorrows once known. Those storms had all passed away; the last shadow of a cloud had departed; her evening sun was shining clear and bright towards the setting; and her brow was beautifully placid, not as though it never had been, but as if it never could be ruffled again. Respect no one could help feeling for her; and more than respect one felt would grow with acquaintance. Her dress was very odd, Ellen ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... cannot see to the bottom. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. The higher you climb the further you will see down into the 'sea of glass mingled with fire' that lies placid before God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished; of a building before the scaffolding is pulled down, and it is as hazardous for us to say about any deed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to proceed in the Indian canoes. At his command the warriors lifted their light boats from the water, and bore them on their shoulders over the difficult portage past the rapids, to the smooth stream above. Here, launching them again, the paddles once more broke the placid surface of the stream, and onward they went, still through the primeval forest, which stretched away in an unbroken ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his window and begged the placid sky for information. He looked through the lilacs and the locusts and all the green wilderness where beauty beat and throbbed like a heart in bliss. It was the Sabbath, and he was not sure. But he was sure of a melting tenderness in his heart for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... woe, And hailed the last resort of fruitless love,[14.B.] He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow: And as the stately vessel glided slow[143] Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount, He watched the billows' melancholy flow, And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,[ex] More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... seek to alter her decision, but sent the boat along with rapid strokes, which broke up the placid water into ripples at each ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... alas! and far more terrible meets us, and alarms our thoughtless senses. Laocoon, allotted priest of Neptune, was slaying a great bull at the accustomed altars. And lo! from Tenedos, over the placid depths (I shudder as I recall) two snakes in enormous coils press down the sea and advance together to the shore; their breasts rise through the surge, and their blood-red crests overtop the waves; the rest trails ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... elevated ground, and far away to our left, down in a hollow, flows the broad Elbe; placid indeed from this distance, for not a ripple can we see upon its surface. A few ships are lazily moving on its waters. Stand aside, and make way for this reverend gentleman; he is a prediger, a preacher of the gospel; he is habited in a black gown, black silk stockings and shoes, a small black ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face continued my flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered a rugged climb to the summit of a long ridge. Beyond was a steep declivity to the shore of a placid, inland sea, upon the quiet surface of ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... communicating by sea. The various "staircases" were painful and difficult to climb, they gave no passage to animals, and only light forms of merchandise could be conveyed by them. As soon as the first rude canoe put forth upon the placid waters of the Mediterranean, it must have become evident that the saving in time and labour would be great if the sea were made to supersede the land as the ordinary ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... him who gives the light, And draws the sable curtains of the night, Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind, At morn to wake more heav'nly and refin'd; So shall the labours of the day begin, More pure and guarded from the snares of ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... situated on the western shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than half a mile from the village. The ground had become settled, and the walking was good and dry. Marmaduke, with his daughter, her friend, and young Edwards, continued on the high grassy banks at the outlet of the placid sheet of water, watching the dark object that was moving across the lake, until it entered the shade of the western hills, and was lost to the eye. The distance round by land to the point of destination was a mile, and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... first suck of the rapids. We seemed a conscious arrow hurled through a gray, writhing world, the light of which was noise. And then, suddenly, the quiet, golden morning flashed back; and we were ripping the placid waters ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Florida that all this took place—in shabby, fascinating Jacksonville, where one meets everybody and does nothing in particular except lounge about and be happy. So the Jook and I lounged and were happy with a placid, unexciting sort of happiness, until the day when Kitty Grey descended upon us with the suddenness of a meteor, and very like one in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... closeted for two hours, at the end of which time they came forth together. The countenance of Madame Bauche was serene and comfortable; her hopes of ultimate success ran higher than ever. The face of the capitaine was masked, as are always the faces of great diplomatists; he walked placid and upright, raising his wooden leg with an ease and skill that was absolutely marvellous. But poor Adolphe's brow was clouded. Yes, poor Adolphe! for he was poor in spirit, he had pledged himself to give up Marie, and to ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... of the whole scene seemed almost romantic; and Waverley, who had given his horse to his servant on entering the first gate, walked slowly down the avenue, enjoying the grateful and cooling shade, and so much pleased with the placid ideas of rest and seclusion excited by this confined and quiet scene, that he forgot the misery and dirt of the hamlet he had left behind him. The opening into the paved courtyard corresponded with the rest of the scene. The house, which seemed to consist of two or three high, narrow, and steep-roofed ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... proprieties; cannily profiting by the high war prices, and yearly stowing away a little nest-egg in the bank against calamity; approved of and sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placid sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right-hand man in the parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for the moment only; ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... language—projected through an open port-hole. This in turn ceased. The captain reappeared with a pail and brush, scrubbed feverishly at the offending spot, mopped it dry with that same old red bandana handkerchief, glared about him,—and abruptly became as serene and placid as a noon calm. He took up the direction of the stevedores. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... from it homewards. How can I sum up its wonderful attractions! It is dotted with islands of great beauty, as yet unvisited by man, but which at no remote period will be adorned with villas and the ornaments of civilized life. The winds from the mountain gorges roll its placid waters into a furious sea, and crest its billows with foam. Forests of pine, deep, dark and almost impenetrable, are scattered at random along its banks, and its beautiful margin presents every variety of sand and pebbly beach, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... rivers, Thames and Severn, Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches, Clyde, dying at sunset westward In a sea as red as blood; Rhine and his hills in close procession, Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling, And Isar, son of the Alpine snows, A ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... home where the cataract's foam Is admired by the poor and the rich, as they roam By thy banks, Montmorenci, so placid and fair, Oh! what would I give, could I find ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... French, who kept to themselves. Successful Germans or Hollanders of the more stupid class ran so true to type and were so numerous that they earned the generic name of "Dutch Charley." They have been described as moon-faced, bland, bullet-headed men, with walrus moustaches, and fatuous, placid smiles. Value meant nothing to them. They only knew the difference between having money and having no money. They carried two or three gold watches at the end of long home-made chains of gold nuggets fastened together with links of copper wire. The chains ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Governor's acceptance of them. The prompt and continuous work incident to the enlistment of the men, the bustle of preparation, and all the scenes of that time, come before me now. It turned the calm current of the life of an old and placid country neighborhood, far from any city or centre, and stirred it into a boiling torrent, strong enough, or fierce enough to cut its way and join the general torrent which was bearing down and sweeping everything before it. It seemed but a minute ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and the monk, was unfelt by the two anxious maidens, who remained with their eyes bent, now upon the dim landscape, now on the stars by which it was lighted, as if they could have read there the events which the morrow was to bring forth. It was a placid and melancholy scene. Tree and field, and hill and plain, lay before them in doubtful light, while at greater distance, their eye could with difficulty trace one or two places where the river, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... their character. The Malay may thus be compared to the buffalo and the tiger. In his domestic state he is indolent, stubborn, and voluptuous as the former, and in his adventurous life he is insidious, bloodthirsty, and rapacious as the latter. Thus also the Arab is said to resemble his camel, and the placid ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... noblemen invented to gratify their petty spite. I might have complained to the superior, but I scorned to do so. I buried my sorrow deep in my heart, as I had done years before; and I firmly resolved never to show ought but a smiling, placid face, so as to prove to my enemies that they were powerless to disturb my peace of mind. Study became my refuge and consolation; and I plunged into work with the energy of despair. I should probably still live at Sainte-Marthe now, had it not been for a trivial circumstance. One day I had ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... on the deck admiring the different points as they went by, and delighting in the glorious pace at which they were going; a great contrast to their sluggish progress earlier in the day, when the river was broad, placid, and leisurely, and there was hardly a breath of wind stirring to urge ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... hundred times to give her some choice recipes. In short, domestic affairs are a burden to her, and she entrusts them as far as possible to the housekeeper. Altogether she finds country life very tiresome, but, possessing that placid, philosophical temperament which seems to have some casual connection with corpulence, she submits without murmuring, and tries to lighten a little the unavoidable monotony by paying visits and receiving visitors. The neighbours within a radius ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... morning when the car entered the sleeping city, where darkness and quiet held possession. Here and there a light shone from a window, telling its tale of sickness; now and again they passed a night wanderer or policeman; but Melbourne lay in placid sleep, reinvigorating ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... Dolly stuttered badly, but was gradually getting over it, for no one was allowed to mock him and Mr. Bhaer tried to cure it, by making him talk slowly. Dolly was a good little lad, quite uninteresting and ordinary, but he flourished here, and went through his daily duties and pleasures with placid content and propriety. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Honor, in a provokingly placid way, "don't exert yourself so violently in contradicting your own free, unextracted observations. You can amuse me in a dozen other different ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... only an instant, caught, as it were, in the midst of their play. The attitude of Penelope Boothby, on the other hand, is one of repose, as suits the tranquil nature of the little girl. The background of each picture is likewise perfectly appropriate. Miss Penelope's placid figure is seen against a leafy screen which nearly closes in the picture; but Miss Bowles needs plenty of space for her romps, and has a whole park ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... joy that night; and when she was seated in the boat, and they were rowing over the placid water, she so far forgot her fears as to begin singing. Something in the surroundings had recalled to her mind the time when she used to sing nearly every night her mother's favourite hymn. It all ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... Cutter seventy-five dollars. He went to attend the constable's sale, and found among the effects a dog appraised at ten dollars; rails ten cents each, and a watch worth five dollars valued at twenty dollars, so he left the place in disgust and hurried home, through the woods, in no placid frame of mind. Of four new shoes put on his horse that morning, three had been torn off by the mud, roots, and corduroy ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... illustrious, is becoming understood. It must contain and represent the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic, it must not be Saxon—it must be Irish. The Brehon law and the maxims of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Sasanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman—a literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions and idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies—finally, a native ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the Northern colonies responded to the call "to arms" that rang from the placid waters of Massachusetts Bay to the verdant hills of Berkshire, and from Lake Champlain to the upper waters of the Hudson. Every Northern colony had its Negro troops, not as separate organizations,—save the black ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... me sweetly, Inviting me then to partake Of the fanciful pleasures reflected Far down in the clear, placid lake. O, beautiful scene of reflection! So perfect, so grand, and so pure, In my mind that mirror enchantment To the end ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... being one of those sleepers that nothing short of an earthquake can rouse until their customary time for awaking, had slept soundly through the stirring events of the past night. She came down in the morning in quite a placid state of mind, expecting to enjoy a day of rest, as she had the night before sat up much beyond her usual time, to set matters to rights after the confusion consequent on the dinner party. What was her ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Florent Guillaume. The soft murmur of his petition was answered only by the deep-chested, placid snore of the sleeping priest. The poor scrivener rose from his knees, stepped noiselessly adown the nave, for he was grown so light his footfall could scarce be heard, and, fasting as he was, climbed the tower stairs that had as many steps as ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and great cascades of waves, such as I ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... face, usually as full of placid content as a kitten's, suddenly puckered with anxiety. "Lady, as I passed, it was still a long way down the fiord. I could only see that it was a large and fine trading-vessel. But one of the seamen on the shore told me ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... moods to interfere with business. He had broached the subject of marriage to Pierre, and Pierre had of course fallen in with his views. The fact that Elise evidently loathed him disturbed no whit his placid mind. He was in no hurry. He assumed Elise as his own whenever he chose to say the word. He regarded her in much the same way as a half-hungered epicure a toothsome dinner, holding himself aloof until his craving stomach should give the utmost zest to his viands without curtailing the pleasure ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... together, and I wanted to hear what they said, but that Ugly made such a barking I could not. I woke up, and, sure enough, Ugly was very noisy in the room below, barking regularly and harshly. No one else in the house seemed to be disturbed. There was a placid snoring in the attic, a pattering of rain on the roof, and a splashing of water, as it ran off steadily in a stream to the ground. But in a minute or two, between Ugly's barks I thought I heard something which recalled what I had been dreaming of, the rabbits whispering ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... for there was an indescribable expression of placid triumph, mingled with a modest confusion, lingering between the borders of Mrs Nickleby's nightcap, which ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... at any time, as much taste or use as for a diving-bell; and sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a bank of violets, moved to precocious contemplation by the spire of a village church. There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same calm blue eye, the same placid air. The shining bald head, which looked so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent because it ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... quick eye discovered an opening for irritating Mr. Gladstone and damaging the Government by making what should have been a business night one long turmoil. Mr. Parnell, whilst disclaiming any personal sympathy with Mr. O'Donnell, moved the adjournment of the debate, and poor, placid Sir Stafford Northcote, egged on by the young bloods below the gangway, raised various points of order. Finally, at eight o'clock, the House dividing on Mr. Parnell's amendment, Sir Stafford Northcote voted with the Irish members, leading a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the quarter-deck two shabby individuals stepped forward and in mournful silence offered me business cards which I took from them without a word under his heavy eye. It was a useless and gloomy ceremony. They were the touts of the other ship-chandlers, and he placid at my back, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... waving forests claim their ancient domain, and the rivers, with a more powerful current, roll in their olden channels. The animals whose forms are imaged here, go trooping through the forest or over the fertile bottom lands. The busy scenes of civilization give place to the placid quiet of primeval times, and we seem to see peaceful tribes of Mound Builders paying a rude veneration to their effigy-gods, where now are churches of a more ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... so long from home, my sweet cousin?" Mrs. Keith asked, something in her placid face seeming to tell of longing desire to be near and ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... Duncan's was a very placid, slow sort of mind. He went through his tasks without any excitement or distraction, although occasionally a vague curiosity as to what Elsie could want the atlas for, and what the letter said about them, did wander through his brain. When school was ended he slipped ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... don't say you will do great things. You are facile, and you see things very quickly and accurately, and you have a style. But I don't think you have got the tragic quality or the passionate gift. You are too placid and contented—but you spin along, and I think you see something of the reality of things. You will be led forth beside the waters of comfort—you will lack nothing—your cup will be full. But the great work is done by people with large empty cups that take some filling—the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... around. And but for the sport of chance, the whim of fate, these had all passed from him by this time. It was good to look across the dining-table over venetian glass, to see the pools of light cast by the shaded electric, to note the feathery fall of flowers, and to see that placid, gentle face in its frame of white hair opposite him. Mrs. Steel's simple, unaffected pride in her son was not the least ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... had a great revival in our time of the cult of violence and hostility. Mr Henley and his young men have an infinite number of furious epithets with which to overwhelm any one who differs from them. It is not a placid or untroubled position to be Mr Henley's enemy, though we know that it is certainly safer than to be his friend. And yet, despite all this, these people produce no satire. Political and social satire is a lost art, like pottery and stained glass. It may be worth while to ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... the placid routine of their usual life, of which, in the next letter, Marianne furnishes her brother with ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... daffodils and early garden flowers. For a rejected suitor I felt singularly cheerful; for a blighted being I made a most excellent meal; and for the desperate misogynist I had determined on becoming I surely felt too much placid satisfaction at ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... deceased, and all stood round, weeping with her. King Charles himself leaning forward to wring her hands, and cry, 'My daughter, my good daughter!' As soon as the first tempest had subsided, the King supported Eleanor to the chapel, where, in the midst of rows of huge wax candles, Margaret lay with placid face, and hands clasped over a crucifix, as if on a tomb, the pall that covered all except her face embellished at the sides with the blazonry of France and Scotland. Her husband, with his thin hands clasped, knelt by her head, and requiems were being sung around by relays ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shipmate out of countenance, for he's a bashful man, though a brave one," cried Frank, who fancied that his friend did not like the scrutiny he was undergoing. Frank produced the effect he wished, and Moggy at once resumed the placid manner ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... closer to him, to follow him more cordially and thoroughly;—the genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... truth he was uttering, or how bitterly the idle squib would rankle in the heart of one suffering man. Many and many a night have I in my childhood laid awake thinking of my homeliness, and as the moonlight has streamed in at the window and fell upon the handsome and placid features of my little brother slumbering at my side, Heaven forgive me for the wicked thought, but I have felt an almost unconquerable impulse to forever disfigure and mar that sweet upturned innocent face that smiled and looked so beautiful in sleep, for it was ever reminding ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... was secure in his room, the blind drawn down and the gas flaring, he made vigorous efforts toward sanity. It was not of his free will that he allowed terror to overmaster him, and he desired nothing better than a placid and harmless life, full of work and clear thinking. He knew that he deluded himself with imagination, that he had been walking through London suburbs and not through Pandemonium, and that if he could but unlock ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... about them as it is possible for us to know; but we cannot see to the bottom. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. The higher you climb the further you will see down into the 'sea of glass mingled with fire' that lies placid before God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished; of a building before the scaffolding is pulled down, and it is as hazardous for us to say about any deed or any revealed truth ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the fury which had lately convulsed that sea, now so placid, and sighed at the conviction which was forced upon her—that no such calm was for the mortal breast when storms had once been there! For she pondered on her native land, now, perhaps, far—oh! how far away; ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... up and down the trenches, pausing at the entrances to dugouts to smile and talk with the men. Once, where a grassy ridge hid the trench from the enemy snipers, they were permitted to peep over, but there was no look of war in the grassy, placid meadow full of flowers that men called "No Man's Land." It seemed hard to believe, that sunny, flower-starred morning, that Sin and Hate had the upper hand and Death was abroad ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... it was that met their gaze. First of all there was the green and placid water, alive with fish, rippling gently to a narrow beach of golden sand, and beyond that sand nothing but vegetation, rich, green, and luxuriant. Green! yes, but of a hundred different tints, from the tender hue of the young shoots that was almost yellow, to a deep olive that ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... rules. She would disclose to her placid mother that the lead of a trump to the third hand's go-over of hearts is of doubtful expediency; or that one must "follow suit with the smallest, except when you have only two, neither of them better than the Jack. Then play the higher first, so that when the lower falls your partner may know ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... non-professional public who have attended jury trials will not easily forget the monotonous "I object" of the attorneys, usually followed by, "I except to the ruling of the court," and "The clerk will note the exception." Lincoln generally met the objections by the placid remark, "I reckon that's so." Thus he gave up point after point, apparently giving away his case over and over again, until his associates were brought to the verge of nervous prostration. After giving away six points he would fasten upon the seventh, which was the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the back wall is the sideboard, parallel to the table. The rest of the furniture is mostly dining-room chairs, ranged against the walls, and including a baby rocking-chair on the lady's side of the room. The lady is a placid person. Her husband, Mr Robin Gilbey, not at all placid, bursts violently into the room with a ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... not hitherto even troubled to cover my shaggy sides with a fleece. What could I do? Lucille was so gay, so confiding, in a pretty girlish way which never altered as we came to know each other better. Madame was so placid and easy-going—in her stout black silk dress, with her lace-work. Monsieur de Clericy gave me his confidence so unreservedly—what could I do but lapse into virtue? And I venture to think that many a blacker sheep than ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... hundred and twenty-one distinct languages and dialects spoken in India; that the population has trebled with the British occupation; that for every insane person in India there are thirteen in Europe,—the words "placid East" purveying the explanation. Taking the country by and large it is claimed that only one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can read and write; and it is said ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Chauxville, and before the Frenchman had turned round the expression on Steinmetz's large and placid countenance had changed from the self-consciousness usually preceding an introduction to ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the moonlight. His face presented its habitual Spanish gravity—a gravity that was almost ironical. His small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity—the irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of Miss Mannersley. I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had harmlessly rebounded. As we walked on slowly I continued more ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to notice my entertainers. The man was a strongly built, good-looking, middle-aged Mexican; the wife (as I took her to be) placid-looking, kindly-featured, and of the national middle-aged stoutness. The two children were slender, attractive girls, verging on the early womanhood of their race. I think they were twins. This, I supposed, ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... in the vegetation. The giant yuccas appear almost as a forest to-day; yesterday there was none. Soon the party gains the summit of the range, before which winds the valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... white, though he seemed not above forty-five or fifty years old. His tone of voice was soft and insinuating—his form thin, spare, and bent by an habitual stoop— his pale cheek was expressive of shrewdness and intelligence—his eye was quick though placid, and his whole demeanour mild and conciliatory. He rode an ambling nag, such as were used by ladies, clergymen, or others of peaceful professions—wore a riding habit of black velvet, with a cap and feather of the same hue, fastened up by a golden medal—and ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... sign of impatience; simply sat awhile silent, and began again in the same placid and good-natured voice: 'The court and I were at one in setting aside your evidence. It could not deceive a child. But there was a difference between myself and the other officers, because I KNEW MY MAN and they did not. They saw in you a common soldier, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time already they had heard barking. Bending down toward the trunk of a decayed oak they saw a mastiff sitting in a hollow as in a niche. His disdainful and yet placid glance told them that his mind was disordered. It was the dog of Diogenes, to whom God had accorded solitude in this tub, hollowed out of a very tree itself. With indifference he watched the dogs with the spiked collars pass by. Then to their great astonishment he left his moss-grown kennel for a ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... her boy? Bless Mademoiselle des Touches? how could that be? These questions were as momentous to her simple soul as the fury of revolutions to a statesman. Camille Maupin was Revolution itself in that calm and placid home. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Malone ('ut supra', lxxxix) notes this word as 'eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds's] easy and placid manners.' Boswell (Dedication of 'Life of Johnson') refers to his 'equal and placid temper.' Cf. also Dean Barnard's verses (Northcote's 'Life of Reynolds', 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and Mrs. Piozzi's lines in her 'Autobiography', 2nd ed., 1861, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-coloured hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery—moreover, and, most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it been she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners—now conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the negro woodcutter's chant. He knew that any who answered it must have lived the life he once lived in Louisiana, for he had never heard it since he had left there, nor any there hum it except those who knew the negroes well. Of an evening, in the hot, placid south, he had listened to it come floating over the sugarcane and through the brake and go creeping weirdly under the magnolia trees. He waited, hoping, almost wildly—he knew it was a wild hope—that there would be a reply. ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... mercy. Where is the sweetness of a woman's lips? Hers are calm and beautiful, but they tempt no more than a stain of blood upon the snow. What is there in her face that could melt into a woman's compassion and pity? Her face is not cruel, not unkind, only still, stern, and placid as marble. She is not a woman, you know; ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... A placid, holy place is the church of San Francisco in Monterey. It stands upon a quiet street, the Calle de San Francisco, where little travel or noise of traffic ever comes, and about it always is an atmosphere of sacred rest. On one side of it is the ruin of the old, old church ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... observation of Hobbes's.] It is only when our surroundings remain normal and placid, when what is expected of us by those we meet is consistent, that we live without knowledge of many of our dispositions. When the unexpected occurs, we learn much about ourselves ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... most effective means of art. The poet, in his eyes, was neither the rushing stream a hundred times broken on its course, that it may carry fertility to the surrounding country; nor the brilliant flame, consuming itself in the light it sheds around while ascending to heaven; but rather the placid lake, reflecting alike the tranquil landscape and the thunder-cloud; its own surface the while unruffled even by the lightest breeze. A serene and passive calm with the absolute clearness and distinctness of successive impressions, in each of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Narrows, in the midst of a fleet of some forty sail; most of the latter, however, being coasters. Still, we were a dozen ships and brigs, bound to almost as many different countries. The little air there was, seemed scarcely to touch the surface of the water; and the broad expanse of bay was as placid as an inland lake, of a summer's morning. Yes, yes—there are moments when the haven of New York does present pictures on which the artist would seize with avidity; but, the instant nature attempts any of her grander models, on this, a spot that seems never to rise much above the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... twenty-one, was now agent at twenty-two, and traveling toward a house with servants, off there beyond the turn of the Canal, beyond the curve of the globe. But for all this, Rudolph Hackh felt young, homesick, timid of the future, and already oppressed with the distance, the age, the manifold, placid mystery of China. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... about to cross its placid tide, When, lo! an angel on our vision broke, Clothed in white, upon the further side He stood majestic, and thus sweetly spoke: "Father, return, thy mission now is o'er; God, who did call thee here, now bids thee go, Return in peace ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... up at the sky to escape the miserable sights of the damp angle of the street; the presence of that portrait, full of soul and grandeur despite the workmanship of an amateur painter; the sight of the rich colors, now old and harmonious, in that calm and placid home; the preference of the mother for her eldest child; her opposition to the tastes of the younger; in short, the whole body of facts and circumstances which make the preamble of this history are perhaps the generating causes to which we owe Joseph Bridau, one ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... of the bachelor G.J.'s long intimacy with her, and of their having both been at Lechford House on the night of the raid, and both been at the inquest on the body of Lady Queenie Paulle on that very day. But nobody could have guessed from their placid and self-possessed demeanour that either of them had just emerged from a series of ordeals. They won a deep and full respect. Still, some people ventured to have their own ideas; and an ingenuous few were surprised to find that the legend was only a woman after all, and a rather worn woman, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... shoulder-high on either side, with her fists clenched; her head back and slightly on one side; her lips open in agony—the position of crucifixion. Her eyes looked up, unseeing; then closed tight. She drew a long breath, like a sigh that was too weary for sound, and her plump, placid left hand clutched her panting breast, while her right arm dropped again. All the passion of tragedy seemed to shriek in her hopeless gesture, and her silence was a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... starting, now deliberately drew up his drosky on the corner of a principal street and began a conversation. I repeated the name of the street in which the consulate was located, and dratzall kopeck. The driver gazed in my face with a grave and placid countenance, stroked his long beard, tucked the skirts of his long blue coat under him, and drove on again. After rattling over a series of the most frightful cobble-stone pavements ever designed ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the South African Republic had pursued a strenuous and violent existence, fighting incessantly with the natives and sometimes with each other, with an occasional fling at the little Dutch republic to the south. The semi-tropical sun was waking strange ferments in the placid Friesland blood, and producing a race who added the turbulence and restlessness of the south to the formidable tenacity of the north. Strong vitality and violent ambitions produced feuds and rivalries worthy of medieval Italy, and the story of the factious little communities is like a chapter ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one. "Push over that carriage," and a woman breathing heavily, crowded through the ring with the general, pink and placid, under ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... a lack of rapture in his relations with Flossie, there would henceforth at any rate be calm. Her temperament was, he judged, essentially placid, not to say apathetic. There was a soft smoothness about the plump little lady that would be a security against friction. She was not great at understanding; but, taking it all together, she was now in an infinitely better position for understanding him than she had been two weeks ago. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... know, I would find a theme Sweeter than the placid flow Of the fairest dream: I would sing of love that lives On the errors it forgives; And the world would better grow If I knew what ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Damn them both!" exclaimed I and, in that moment, caught my breath, shocked, amazed, and not a little ashamed at this outburst, an exhibition so extremely foreign to my usually placid nature. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... it. You see how I remember them all. And all carry me back to those innocent days which fleet too soon—days when an angel like you might have weaned me from the wicked pleasures of the town, to the placid delights ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... easy one," said Ida, with emphasis, and then she took up the Bible and began reading to Mr. Eltinge, who from his seat under the pear-tree had been watching them with a pleased and placid interest on his serene old face. Their young life appeared beautiful now, and full of hope and promise, but he did not envy it. The prospect before him was better than the best ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... studio of Crawford, in Rome? I shall never forget that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days." In another letter to Hawthorne he speaks of Concord as "our old home, which is very placid and beautiful in my memory." In his paper on Hawthorne, in the "Homes of American Authors," Curtis gave an interesting account of his acquaintance with that reticent genius ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... calm benignity of face, a placid certainty of his power and place in the world; a rugged man, broad-handed, slow. His pleasure was in the distinction of his wealth, and not in any use that he made of it for his own comfort or the advancement of those under his hand. Even so, he was of a type superior ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... disgust that wrinkled the placid face of the Immaculate as the half-empty flask went back to its place, was pathetic—but I wouldn't have given him a drop ...
— Forty Minutes Late - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... window-sill, outwardly listening with perfect calm to what his enemy had to say; now he was at the latter's throat, pressing with long and slender hands the breath out of the Frenchman's body, his usually placid face distorted ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... drowned in the flood of his brighter beams, these lose all their wonders beside this little Child. To a meditative man it is curious to stand over any cradle where an infant sleeps; and, as we look on the face so calm, and the little arms gently folded on the placid breast, to think of the mighty powers and passions which are slumbering there; to think that this feeble nursling has heaven or hell before it; that an immortal in a mortal form is allied to angels; that the life ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... cuts and bruises were still visible on Philpot's face, they were softened down by the pallor of death, and a placid, peaceful expression pervaded his features. His hands were crossed upon his breast, and as he lay there in the snow-white grave clothes, almost covered in by the white lace frill that bordered the sides of the coffin, he looked like one in ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... mistletoe. And now they seated themselves upon the tender herb; and now all was stilness and solemn silence. Not one whisper floated on the breeze; not a murmur was heard. The tumultuous winds were hushed, and all was placid composure, save where the gentle zephyr fanned the leaves. The tinkling rill babbled at their feet; the feathered choristers warbled in the grove; and the deep lowings of the distant herds died away upon the ear. The solemn prelude began ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... enough to remember how placid was the county, how stay-at-home were the people, what a sensation there was created when anyone went to London, or any stranger appeared in our midst. From afar we heard of railways; then we had a railway opened from London to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... person who remained unmoved. It was de Barral himself. He preserved his serene, gentle expression, I am told (for I have not witnessed those scenes myself), and looked around at the people with an air of placid sufficiency which was the first hint to the world of the man's overweening, unmeasurable conceit, hidden hitherto under a diffident manner. It could be seen too in his dogged assertion that if he had been given enough time and a lot more money everything would have come right. And there were some ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... "Come nearer; much That kind of note I need!" The song kept softening, loudening on, In placid calm unheed. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... the only satisfaction she got out of the incident. She was inclined to remain sulking in the bedroom, but though the spirit was willing the flesh was weak, and the pangs of hunger drove her forth. Dr. Grayle was awaiting her in the corridor, a watchdog, patient and placid. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... swept the Gatun, carrying our friends to the wonderland of that great "ditch" which has become one of the marvels of the world. Occasionally there were storms to interrupt the otherwise placid voyage, but there was only ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... Somewhere under the placid waters, gathering speed in the tidal currents, slowing down and swinging in the eddies, was all that remained of Fannie Davis, food for crabs, eels, dogfish, lobsters, and all the thousand and one scavengers of Atlantic bays, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of Adrian's book; the change of title; the burning of Adrian's last written words on the blotting pad; the vivid pictures that were obviously not Adrian's; the consignment to a printer's Limbo of the original manuscripts; my own placid disassociation from the literary side of the executorship. She had accepted them—not without protest; but she had in fact accepted them. Now she struck a reef of things more incomprehensible still. Jaffery had lied to her outrageously. I, for one, hold her ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... were impiety so utterly to have ceased to weep—so seldom to have remembered!—And then, with a powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the floods we all wept together—at no long interval—on those pale and placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... lake, and I took advantage of it to fix in my mind the topography of the region. I could see the bold outlines of Glenarm House and its red-tile roofs; and the gray tower of the little chapel beyond the wall rose above the wood with a placid dignity. Above the trees everywhere hung the shadowy smoke ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... cookery, everlasting cleanliness, everlasting stitchery—her mother did not with a yearning sigh demand, "Must this sort of thing continue for ever, or will a new era dawn?" Not a bit! Mrs. Lessways went to bed in the placid expectancy of a very similar day on the morrow, and of an interminable succession of such days. The which was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... temper was more placid but who had an enquiring mind, said, 'You do not know my friend Trottman yet, Mr. Trevor. He cares but little who has the most reason, so that he ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... against the lips; no breath issued thence that would have stirred a feather; then he drew very gently the sheet over the dead man's face,—a quiet, steadfast face,—that even in the death-throe had retained its proud, placid calm. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Bruce in 1850, and soon after left the service of Government. Thenceforward he appears to have led a very placid life, happy in his family, seeing much of his large circle of friends, devoted to poetry and book-collecting. "Lyra Elegantiarum" was published in 1867, "Patchwork" in 1879. In 1886 Locker published a catalogue of what he called the "Rowfant Library"—his ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... mild and placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who were waddling ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... embittered by the circumstances of his life, just as that of our Prothonotary speaks of a large and gentle nature, mellowed by natural affections and happy pursuits. We smile, as Lotto does, with kindly mischief at "Marsilio and his Bride;" the broad, placid countenance of the man is so significantly contrasted with the clever mouth and eyes of the bride that it does not need the malicious glance of the cupid, who is fitting on the yoke, to "dot the i's and cross the t's" of their future. Again, the portrait ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... of the mountain, jade green, placid, unwinking, also unfathomable. Whatever goes on under the high and stony brows is guessed at. It is always a favorite local tradition that one or another of the blind lakes is bottomless. Often they lie in such deep cairns of broken boulders ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... and quite off her guard from momentary surprize, involuntarily raised her head to look at Mrs Delvile, in whose countenance she observed the most anxious concern, though her manner of speaking had seemed placid and composed. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the thought that she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer to all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real Lily," and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense of its possibilities—a sense farther enlarged, in the course of the afternoon, by the receipt of a telegram from Selden asking if he might dine ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... great lesson, there were a few instances of triumphant deaths, and a few of the opposite class. One good sister, as she was gliding across the stream, enquired, "Is this Jordan?" She was told it was. "How calm and placid are its waters," she added. "I expected to find the billows running high, but, glory to Jesus! there is not a ripple upon ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... Dundas advised me to go that evening to Brussels, but I need not hurry myself. I asked her if the room below was empty. She assured me it was; and I went down and remained some time beside the body. There was such perfect peace and placid calm sweetness in his countenance, that I envied him not a little. He was released: I was left to suffer. I then thought I should not suffer long. As I bent over him I felt as if violent grief would ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... gorged himself with food, he began to be impatient for some drink, for he had bolted the larger part of an excellent cheese. Not far from the roots of the plane-tree a gentle stream flowed slowly along, like a placid lake, rivaling silver ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as to leaving home, and Mrs. Murdoch and Mary departed without anxiety; but they had hardly entered the Edwards's house before they found that many other people were very much less placid. ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... what Ma is, Esther," she returned. "It's impossible to say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was I don't know what—a steeple in the distance," said Caddy with a sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says 'Oh, Caddy, Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and one after another the devotees of fashion were dropping off, she lingered on, and Thornton Hastings still rode and walked with Anna Ruthven, until there came a night when they wandered farther than usual from the hotel, and sat down together on a height of land which overlooked the placid waters, where the moonlight lay softly sleeping. It was a most lovely night, and for a while they listened in silence to the music of the sea, then talked of the breaking up which came in a few days when the hotel was to be closed, and wondered ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... gay, placid way she proceeded to recount her happiness: "Oh! I am very pleased," she said; "I had retired to Rougemont, my birth-place, and I ended by there marrying a retired naval officer, who has a very comfortable pension, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the cooper's gratification when, on his birthday, Ida presented him with a beautifully-drawn sketch of his wife's placid and benevolent face. ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... welcomed; Christmas would be kept in hearty English fashion; young men from a neighboring estate would ride over through the darkening woods to court, or dance, or play the fiddle, like Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson; and these simple events were all that made a ripple on the placid stream. Much time was given to sports, rough, hearty, manly sports, with a spice of danger, and these, with an occasional adventurous dash into the wilderness, kept them sound and strong and brave, both in body and mind. There was nothing languid or effeminate about the Virginian planter. ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... many years been able to answer for the other, is a rounded old lady with a beaming smile that has accompanied her from childhood. If she lives to be a hundred she will pretend to the census man that she is only ninety-nine. She has no other vice that has not been smoothed out of existence by her placid life, and she has but one complaint against the male Coady, the rather odd one that he has long forgotten his first wife. Our Mrs. Coady never knew the first one but it is she alone who sometimes looks at the portrait of her and preserves in their home certain mementoes of her, ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... yet described Van Graoul. He was a stout man with a placid, good-humoured expression of countenance, and was content, provided he could enjoy his well-loved pipe, and an occasional glass of schiedam, to let the world take its way without complaining. He wore light-blue trousers, with enormous side-pockets, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... peacefulness, he came to the great denials, and without much concerning himself with them turned to his own affirmations of spiritual reality, methods of life and personal results. Serenity was his peculiar trait; amid all the agitation about him he was entirely unmoved, lived calmly and wrote with placid power, concentrating into the slowly wrought sentences of his Essays (1841-1875) the spiritual essence and moral metal of a life lived to God, to himself and to his fellow-men. He, more than any other single writer, reunited American thought with the philosophy of the world; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had seen and heard enough; too much, indeed, for my peace of mind. I crept away through the swamp, the eager calls following me even to my canoe; first a plaint, as if something were lacking to the placid lake and quiet woods and the soft beauty of twilight; and then a faint question, always heard in the kwit of a partridge, as if only I could explain why two eager voices would never again answer to roll call ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... prayed before. It was very well to discuss prayer and treat it lightly and philosophically upon the deck of the Korosko. It was easy to feel strong and self-confident in the comfortable deck-chair, with the slippered Arab handing round the coffee and liqueurs. But they had been swept out of that placid stream of existence, and dashed against the horrible, jagged facts of life. Battered and shaken, they must have something to cling to. A blind, inexorable destiny was too horrible a belief. A chastening ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... just at this time he saw Lanky Wallace heading toward him. Lanky was not in the least a diplomat. Whenever he had anything worrying him, the fact seemed to stick out all over his face, bringing wrinkles to his usually placid brow. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... contact, all with specious argument may strive to dissipate the comparison, but the pulsations of a common humanity, keeping time with the verities of God never ceased to trouble, and thus the moral pebble thrown on the bosom of the hitherto placid sea of public opinion, like its physical prototype, creating undulations which go on and on to beat against the rock and make sandy shores, so this our earnest but feeble protest contributed its humble ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... that he would have given anything to have been able to turn to her when he had exclaimed, "My God, war", and to have caught her hands and looked into her beautiful face. To-morrow he would send the letter. To-morrow? Why, yes, to-day, like all to-days in the removed and placid light of all to-morrows, would be shown needlessly hectic. Ten to one something would have happened in the night to make to-day look foolish. If nothing had happened, if it still was war, it could only be a swiftly over business, a rapid and general recognition of the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... deck, where I was at once riveted by the beautiful scene that was spread before my eyes. The green, sloping lawns, with which the white cottages formed such a cheerful contrast; the trees, clad in their first foliage, and suggesting hope by their smiling blossoms; the placid cows, feeding quietly in the fields; the domestic chickens, just visible in the distance; and the friendly barking of a dog,—all seemed to greet me with a first welcome to the shores of this strange country: while the sun, shining brightly from a slightly clouded sky, ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... spot, had flitted at the approach of winter. Beyond stretched the St. John River, one of the finest sheets of water in the province, or even in Eastern Canada. This morning it appeared like a magic mirror, with not a breath of wind ruffling its placid surface. ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... blasphemy. The breath of angry men smoked into his placid face. A gnarled, grimy fist vibrated at the end of his nose. "We tell thee we want noan o' thee. Get thou back ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you have no one but yourself to blame," her husband replied, with a sweet and placid smile. "Three times I have told you things that were to go no further, and all three of them went twenty miles within three days. I do not complain of it; far less of you. You may have felt it quite as much your duty to spread knowledge as I felt it mine to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... him through a scene of melancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside an immense ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... The stormy period of her own existence was past, and like a silvery rivulet twinkling in the sun at the mountain crest, speeding downward until it roars and foams in an angry cataract, then emerging into the cool, placid stream, lazily flowing past the village cottages and on through the silent woodland, she had reached a stage where ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... should know Most? It came to her in fact as they sat there on the sands that she was distinctly on the road to know Everything. She had not had governesses for nothing: what in the world had she ever done but learn and learn and learn? She looked at the pink sky with a placid foreboding that she soon should have learnt All. They lingered in the flushed air till at last it turned to grey and she seemed fairly to receive new information from every brush of the breeze. By the time they moved homeward ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... hands and mouthed the usual pleasantries, Colonel Lord Sorban watched them with an amusement that didn't show on his placid face. Young Senesin was rather angry that the tete-a-tete had been interrupted, while Heywood seemed ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The sun does not merely enlighten, it colours the objects, and wraps them in a thin vapour, which, without changing the transparency of the air, renders its tints more harmonious, softens the effects of the light, and diffuses over nature a placid calm, which is reflected in our souls. To explain this vivid impression which the aspect of the scenery in the two Indies produces, even on coasts but thinly wooded, it is sufficient to recollect that the beauty of the sky augments from Naples to the equator, almost as much as from Provence ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... deacon, on returning home that evening, that his mind was not in such a condition as it behoved him to keep it in on the Lord's Day, that he was afraid to encounter the placid eye of his devout and single-minded niece. Instead of joining her, and uniting in the services that were customary at that hour, he walked in the adjoining orchard until near nine o'clock. Mammon was uppermost in the place of the Deity, and habit offered too strong ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wood, echoed and answered in close pursuit, lead to a mood of placid, elemental rhythm, with something of "Rheingold," of "Ossian" ballad, of the lapping waves of Cherubini's "Anacreon." In the midst the horns blow a line of sonorous melody, where the cadence has a breath ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... the toils of that mighty will, Miska raised her head; and gradually her expression changed. Fear was smoothed away from her lovely face as by some magic brush. She grew placid; and finally she smiled—the luresome, caressing smile of the East. Nearer and nearer drew the green veil. Then, uttering a sudden fierce exclamation, Fo-Hi ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... bull-baiting, must now content herself with tick-tack. Her fortune, moreover, had been wrecked in the Civil War. Though silver shells still jingled in her pocket, time was she knew the rattle of the yellow boys. But she never lost courage, and died at last of a dropsy, in placid contentment with her lot. Assuredly she was born at a time well suited to her genius. Had she lived to-day, she might have been a 'Pioneer'; she might even have discussed some paltry problem of sex in a ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... structures emerging, a wheel spinning at the top, and ropes travelling into the abyss; heaps of grey debris, interspersed with stunted grass, huge excavations, ugly ravines with a spout of grim stone at the seaward opening, like the burrowings of some huge mole. The placid green slopes of the fort give an impression of secret strength, even grandeur. Otherwise it is but a ragged, splashed aquarelle of grey and green. Over the debris appear at a distance the blunt ominous chimneys of the convict ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in a brook near by. The sun had just dipped below the western mountain peaks, and a cool, bluish twilight, which seemed the essence of atmospheric purity, purged of all accessory effects, filled the broad, placid valley, and made it a luxury to breathe. The torches of the fishermen flitted back and forth between the slender stems of the birches, and now and then sent up a great glare of light among the foliage, which shone ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with a precipitous bank, on which the outlines of three or four terraces can still be traced. On the topmost of these terraces the king took his stand on the eventful day. The view which it commands is a fine one. Across the flat expanse of the rice-fields, with the broad placid river winding through them, the eye ranges eastward to high tablelands, their lower slopes embowered in woods, while afar off looms the great chain of the western Ghauts, and in the furthest distance the Neilgherries ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... watching her graceful motions, as if taking heed for future imitation. If Kit and Tabby really did regard Laura with admiration and complacency, it was more than I can say for Mrs. Jaynes, in whose heart a secret rage was burning, though her aspect and demeanor were as placid and demure as if the butter she held in her hand would not have melted in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... about with astonishment. Willie's hospitality must have burst all bounds if it had lured him, who never deviated from the truth, into uttering a falsehood monstrous as this. One glance, however, at his placid face, his unflinching eye, convinced her that swept away by the interest of the moment the little old man had lost all memory of whether ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... dog was game and wasted no time. With a bound he caught Jack by the throat, tossed him several feet away, and sprang for him again. Jack seemed helpless against such strength and fury, but Chad's face was as placid as though it had been Jack who ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... her father, a girl of poise and self-control. Yet even the schooling of twenty-two years in rigorous New England self-restraint could not hide the very human pallor of her face after the sleepless nights and nervous days since this trouble had broken on her placid existence. Yet there was a mark of strength and determination on her face that was fascinating. The man who would trifle with this girl, I felt, was playing fast and loose with her very life. I thought then, and I said to Kennedy afterward: "If this Dr. Dixon is guilty, you have no right to hide ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... "while there's life there's hope. Never be down-hearted. Besides," added he, opening the shawl in which the infant was wrapped, and throwing the light of the candle full upon its sickly, but placid features, "it's sinful to repine while you've a child like this to comfort you. Lord help him! he's the very image of his father. Like ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... there pages where he ceases from posing, ceases from admiring the placid flood & flow of his own dilution, ceases from being artificial, & is for a time, long or short, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... foot of the hill, by the brink of the sweet and placid river, there are iron mills and factories and furnaces, whose chimneys in the daytime pour out huge columns of black smoke, and from which long tongues of crimson and bluish flame leap forth at night ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... There were historical scenes mingled with allegory. There were most beautiful children whose fat and agile bodies and whose laughing faces make us want to hug them. There were enchanting angels, and there were huge fauns and satyrs. There were placid landscapes where, it may be, the artist's soul, teeming with the life of all time, took its rest and recreation sporting with the nymphs of the woodland streams or with the frisky dryads of ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... and her wide eyes were filled with startled protest; he was placid enough, but his calmness made the thing more grim and threatening when she reflected on the suggestiveness of that word "fix." She was unable to endure his scrutiny. He did not try to restrain her when she turned ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... description; he first staggers, then tumbles, rolls, cries as if whipped, and tears up the ground with his teeth and fore feet: he then lies down senseless and exhausted. On recovering, he gets up, moves his tail, looks placid, comes to a whistle, and appears in every respect much better than before the attack. The eyes, during this paroxysm, look bright, and, unless previously rendered dim by mucus, or opacity of the cornea, seem as if they were starting from their sockets. He becomes ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... frowning, to bend his piercing gaze upon Claus. The clear eyes met his own steadfastly, and the Woodsman gave a sigh of relief as he marked their placid depths and read the youth's brave and innocent heart. Nevertheless, as Ak sat beside the fair Queen, and the golden chalice, filled with rare nectar, passed from lip to lip, the Master Woodsman was strangely silent ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... done. The breakfast was smoking on the board. The eyes of the family group were just turning toward it with glances of placid content, when a knock sounded on the door, and almost before father or son could rise or astonishment dart from eye to eye, the door swung open, and a man stood on the threshold, all mud and water and weapons, touching the side of his cap with the edge of his ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... boy, imbecile, deaf and dumb, was seated there cross-legged, in a sort of wooden box; a pretty child, with a fine colour, but who has been in this state from his infancy. The women seemed very kind to him, and he had a placid, contented expression of face; but took no notice of us when we spoke to him. Strange and unsolvable problem, what ideas pass through the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was asleep. The Privy Councillor thought that this was a subterfuge, and insisted on entering. The door of the cell was softly opened; and there lay Argyle, on the bed, sleeping, in his irons, the placid sleep of infancy. The conscience of the renegade smote him. He turned away sick at heart, ran out of the Castle, and took refuge in the dwelling of a lady of his family who lived hard by. There he flung himself on a couch, and gave himself up to an agony of remorse and shame. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Elizabeth paced up the High Street, in no great hurry; for to herself her position was only that of a poor relation deputed to hunt up a rich one. The front doors of the private houses were mostly left open at this warm autumn time, no thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus unclosed could be seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the back, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, "bloody warriors," snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... evidently a people highly skilled, efficient, caring for their country as a florist cares for his costliest orchids. Under the soft brilliant blue of that clear sky, in the pleasant shade of those endless rows of trees, we walked unharmed, the placid silence broken only by ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... Vogel, before he could arrive. He did not wait for any answer. "Thank the good God!" he exclaimed, at seeing the boy Dean Drake unharmed, standing with a gun. And to their amazement he sped past them, never slacking his horse's lope until he reached the corral. There he tossed the reins to the placid Bolles, and springing out like a surefooted elephant, counted his saddle-horses; for he was a general. Satisfied, he strode back to the crowd by the demijohn. "When dem men get restless," he explained to Drake at once, "always look out. Somebody ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... say that when I looked over the bridge I came to the conclusion that nothing could have been reflected in the water, for it was a rushing foaming torrent, with no single placid spot upon ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... a roomy cave ran back into the hill a dozen feet or more. Its floor was covered with fine white sand, thrown up from the beach during the wind storms, and it was a most perfect shelter,—this hole fifty feet above the placid waters. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... hoped to cut herself off from all the bitterness and sorrow of her past life, but this husband of hers, like an unquiet spirit, came to trouble her and remind her of a time she would willingly have forgotten. She looked calm and quiet enough sitting there with her placid face and smooth brow; but this woman was like a slumbering volcano, and her passions were all the more dangerous from ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... considers that the calm reproving glance of reason, which allays the excesses of the mighty and courageous in our own species, has seldom any other effect than to add to the insolence of the feeble and foolish, who become placid as doves upon the infliction of chastisements, which if attempted to be applied to the former would only serve to render them more terrible, and like gunpowder cast on a flame, cause them in mad desperation ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... light thwartwise—and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the fatal bow—{GREEK}not that—nor even the placid respectable {GREEK}—but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... attain, my final good. My error was my error, and my crime My crime; whatever, for itself condemned, And will alike be punished, whether thou Reign or reign not—though to that gentle brow Willingly I could fly, and hope thy reign, From that placid aspect and meek regard, Rather than aggravate my evil state, Would stand between me and thy Father's ire (Whose ire I dread more than the fire of Hell) 220 A shelter and a kind of shading cool Interposition, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... back the grief they dared not grant indulgence to, by so much as a word or sound. The chronic discussion that they had left behind went on—on—always the same controversy, as it seemed; the same placid assurance of Dolly, the same indignant ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to question her, very obligingly entertained him with a recital of the particulars which she herself knew of that escape, which does so much honour to the humanity, fidelity, and generosity, of the Highlanders. Dr Johnson listened to her with placid attention, and said, 'All this ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... to that lonely hilltop the distant clatter of dishes and the voices of scouts from the camp below. The last patches of vapor were dissolving over the wood embowered lake, and one or two early canoes were already moving aimlessly upon its placid bosom. A shout and a laugh and a sudden splash, sounding faint in the distance, told him that some uninitiated new arrivals were diving from the springboard before breakfast. They would soon be checked in that pastime, ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... large share of these qualities. To my father himself, the influence of such a wife was of inestimable value. He, the most nervous, sensitive of men, could always retire to the serene atmosphere of a home governed by placid common sense and be soothed by the gentlest affection. How necessary was such a solace will soon ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... peaches. She might be fifty-five or sixty; but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn. The snowy lisse crape cap, made after the strait Quaker pattern,—the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid folds across her bosom,—the drab shawl and dress,—showed at once the community to which she belonged. Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age, was ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... charming egoists must not be thwarted. They are very domineering and cannot endure independence in others. Women like Madame Sipiagina excite and disturb people of inexperienced and passionate natures, but are fond of a quiet and peaceful life themselves. Virtue comes easy to them, they are placid of temperament, but a constant desire to command, to attract, and to please gives them mobility and brilliance. They have an iron will, and a good deal of their fascination is due to this will. It is difficult ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... upon myself, but because thou knowest not how to prize the blessing which fortune bestows upon thee. 'Tis plain, indeed, how little thou esteemest it, since thou wilt not budge to defend it for fear of ruffling the finical arrangement of thy pretty attire. Had Achilles been of as placid temper as thou art, Ulysses would certainly have failed in his attempt, for all his show of glittering arms and burnished helmets. Go, play among thy mother's maids; they will help thee to dress thy locks and take care of those dainty hands ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the genius of more than one race. The pure and placid but often cold imagination of the Aryan has been at work on some. In others we trace the more picturesque fancy, the fierceness and sensuality, the greater sense of artistic elegance belonging to races whom the Aryan, in spite of his occasional ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... ponies provided for the girls were next brought out for inspection, and met with unqualified approval from all but Sarah. These slender, restless little steeds seemed not at all related to the fat placid beasts to which she had heretofore trusted herself. Her face betokened ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... leaned back in his chair, and a placid smile overspread his naturally harsh features. He looked about him, and his thoughts somehow ran back to a time when he was ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... mysterious but effective. A brisk breeze broke the fog, and the rays of the noonday sun fell upon a placid sea. The boat containing Alice and Florence was picked up by the Macedonian of a rival line and the rescued made comfortable. For hours the steamer cruised about rescuing hundreds of the Altonia's passengers, but some of the boats were ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... sat intently watching his final wanings from the now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying—the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring—that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... back in an old-fashioned but not badly appointed open carriage, drawn by two very decent horses, and driven by a smart, red-sashed, white-robed negro. We saw him in profile as he passed along the road at some distance, but he was reading a paper with an expression so placid that I felt sure he had not seen us. On the seat beside him was a suitcase with the air of having been made in France; and circumstantial evidence said that Monny's wish was to ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... perfect day. The low mist of the early morning hid the great fleet until it was close to the shore of the peninsula. As the day progressed the mist disappeared, the blue sky presented an unbroken expanse, while no wind disturbed the placid sea. In a setting such as this was enacted one of the greatest ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... positive on this, the son of the widow lady died long after this event, but how long or how short a time I never heard; but the facts of the above story were told me by the sister of this young man. I also knew their mother well. She was of a gentle, placid disposition, by no means excitable or likely to credit any superstitious tales. Her son returned home on that memorable evening looking very white and subdued, and, sinking into a chair, he told her he should never doubt again the truths that she had ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... Crawfurd in 1820 was echoed by Mallat (who was for a time in charge of the principal hospital in Manila), in 1846, when he expressed his belief that the inhabitants of the Philippines enjoyed a freer, happier, and more placid life than was to be found in the colonies of any other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... the countenance of Wallace as he looked upon the joyous group; it was placid, and a soft complacency illumined his eye. How different was the expression in hers, had he marked it! All within her was in tumult, and the characters were but too legibly imprinted on her face. But he did not look on her; for the child, whom the perfume of the flowers overpowered, began to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... family was gathered one evening in the mother's room. It was Mrs. Witherspoon's birthday, and it was a home-like picture, this family group, with the mother sitting in a rocking-chair, fondly looking about and giving the placid heed of love to Henry whenever he spoke. On the walls were hung the portraits of early Puritans, the brave and rugged ancestors of Uncle Louis and Uncle Harvey, and all her mother's ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... her a letter of unwonted bright spirits, contrasting strangely with an inexplicable oppression of her own that led her to imagine her recent placid life the pause before thunder, and to sharp the mood of her solitary friend she flew to Copsley, finding Sir Lukin absent, as usual. They drove out immediately after breakfast, on one of those high mornings of the bared bosom of June when distances are given to our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chair beside him and did not reply. She was a woman of perplexing silences; and her pale and placid face, with its cold correct outline, gave no clue to the thoughts with which she occupied them. She sat without stirring. Durrance was embarrassed. He remembered Mr. Adair as a good-humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evident affection for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... looked thin and older. An anxious wrinkle had deepened between his eyes. It was June, and the days were getting warm. He was anxious about Ida's health also. Ida was not at all anxious. She was perfectly placid. It did not seem to her that an overruling Providence could possibly treat her unkindly. She was rather annoyed at times, but still never anxious, and utterly satisfied with herself to that extent that it precluded any doubt as to the final outcome ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... evening when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins') to desire the possession—as if that were ever possible—of another person. Happily for Swann, beneath the mass of suffering which had invaded his soul like a conquering horde of barbarians, there lay a natural foundation, older, more placid, and silently laborious, like the cells of an injured organ which at once set to work to repair the damaged tissues, or the muscles of a paralysed limb which tend to recover their former movements. These older, these autochthonous in-dwellers in his soul absorbed all Swann's strength, for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... him, was in Lady Mary's dressing-room—the room in which he had first declared his passion for her. Hope and fear alternately seized him—fear prevailed the moment that he beheld Selina. Not that any strong displeasure appeared in her countenance—no, it was mild and placid; but it was changed towards him, and its very serenity was alarming. Whilst she welcomed him to his native country and to his friends, and while she expressed hopes for his future happiness, all hope forsook him, and, in broken sentences, he attempted to stammer ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
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