"Sedate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bonny little sun goddess. Lily Pearl, after a great deal of fuss and fidgeting had elected to go as Titania, and Helen essayed Oberon. Juno, who was very musical, made quite a stately Sappho. Little, sedate Marjorie was an Alaskan-Indian Princess, and Rosalie rigged up a Puck costume which made her irresistible. Isabel chose to be Portia, though that erudite lady seemed somewhat out of place among the mythological characters. But Stella was a startling ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... warfare against antiquated institutions and opinions, and gave a thrust here and a thrust there in behalf of socialists, communists, and all sorts of irregular characters. Since that time his radical, revolutionary sympathies have had time to cool, and in each succeeding volume he has appeared more sedate, conservative, bourgeois.[25] In a later volume of poems this transformation is half symbolically indicated in the title, "Tempered Melodies." Nor is it to be denied that his melodies have gained in beauty by this process of tempering. There ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the van der Luydens—they've sent their man over from Skuytercliff to meet us," Archer exclaimed, as a sedate person out of livery approached them and relieved ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of a Boston publisher, sedate and fairly elderly, who came to the Scribner house to transact business with several of its departments. One of his errands concerning itself with advertising, he was introduced to Bok, who was then twenty-four. Looking the youth over, he transacted ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... His life extinguished like a taper's flame. John Ericsson is lying in his fame. Behold how massive is the lofty shaft; How fine the product of the sculptor's craft; The gold how lavishly applied; the great Man's statue how impressive and sedate! Think what the cost-was! It would ill become Our modesty to specify the sum; Suffice it that a fair per cent, we're giving Of what we robbed him of when he ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... quiet the house seemed! Nothing broke the silence but the solemn "tick-tack" of the big clock in the hall, which had been ticking in the same sedate manner since the days when Elsie's grandmother had been a little girl. Feeling her way down the length of the hall, not without an occasional bump against chairs and other such obstacles, Elsie came ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... sitting alone in the front drawing-room of her father's house, in Belgravia, on the afternoon of a summer's day in this same year. Two years and more have passed over her head since we first met her, and she may be a thought more sedate and better dressed, but there is no other change ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... rosy, chubby face so full of colour that even round her eyes one could not detect a spot of pallor—just such a beauty, in fact, as the world is apt to make much of. They contrasted prettily enough—blonde and brunette, blue eyes and black; he so bold, vigorous, and sedate, she so overflowing with tenderness and feeling; yet who can tell what is written ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... this creature of "a million moods" to the staid and sedate girl of other types. So the Thoracic girl seldom lacks for attention. She does not have as many intimate friends as the fat girl, for she is less comforting, and comfort is one of the first requisites of friendship. But she has a longer line of beaux dancing attendance upon her, sending her ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... was with Una Meredith and both were rather silent because such was their nature. Shirley was a lad of sixteen, sedate, sensible, thoughtful, full of a quiet humour. He was Susan's "little brown boy" yet, with his brown hair, brown eyes, and clear brown skin. He liked to walk with Una Meredith because she never tried to make him talk or badgered him with chatter. Una was as sweet and shy as she ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exclaimed Rachel, in dread of hysterics, and she plunged her hand into Alick's pocket for a scent-bottle, which he had put there by way of precaution for her, and, while applying it, said, in her full, sedate voice, keeping it as steady as she could, "Shall I drive you home? Alick can walk home with his ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to whom they were going were unable to receive them, and Sir Reginald requested them to stay on as long as they found it convenient," remarked Lady Bygrave. Mr Lennard was disappointed at finding no one else at the house, with the exception of a young lady rather older than Mary, of grave and sedate manners. As she was dressed in black, Mr Lennard concluded that she was in mourning for a parent or some other near relative, which accounted for the gravity of one so young. She, however, smiled very sweetly when Mary was introduced to her, and said in a gentle voice, "I know that we shall ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... only ten days to half-term? Oh, do, for goodness' sake, look less like a statue of melancholy! Do you know, child, that you're getting permanent wrinkles along that forehead of yours, and it makes you more like fifty than fifteen. You're too sedate. That's what's the matter with you, Lorna Carson! It's a fault that ought to be overcome. Copy Delia and me. We know how to enjoy ourselves. There—my lecture is over and now ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... that their features could not be discerned. Often there was a large assemblage of persons at Dona Isabel's house thus collected, though the spies of the Inquisition had not observed them assembling. Though sedate and generally serious in their manner, they were neither sad nor cast down; indeed, a cheerfulness prevailed among the company not often seen in a Spanish assembly. Dona Leonor was there with her mother. Don Antonio Herezuelo set out from his lodgings ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... from his spirit chas'd each anxious dread, While on his brow he bound the poplar crown; In rich libation pour'd the generous wine, Then bath'd his temples in the juice divine; And thus, with gladden'd eye, and air sedate, Address'd the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... uncertainty upon the handsome countenance of Mr. Randall Clayton as he stepped out of the elevator of a sedate Fourteenth Street business building and approvingly sniffed ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... may see on any sunny window-ledge at home;—the rounded back and neatly ordered tail, the immaculate fore-paws peering sedately below the snowy chest, the squeezed-up eyes which so resolutely shut off a bleak and (so to say) unenlightened world. That is pensiveness, sedate chastened melancholy; but it is soothing, it speaks a philosophy, and a certain balancing of pleasures and pains. In San Lorenzo cloister, when I looked in one hot noon seeking a refuge from the glare and white dust of the city, I was conscious of a something ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... things stood in precise straight rows,—every beet, and carrot, and cucumber with his hands in his own pocket, so to speak; none of that reaching about and intruding on neighboring premises which most vegetables indulge in; but every one at home, with a sedate air, and minding his own business. Not a single squash-vine could be detected tickling another squash-vine; each watermelon lay in the middle of his hill with a solemn expression on his large face; the tomatoes looked ashamed of being red; and only a ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... two lie in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood at her heels, is eying curiously, and with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that lies curled up, and dozing, upon the floor of ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... more surprised by the sight of Sir Tancred. She had given the matter little thought, but had supposed that she would find Tinker's father a sedate man of some fifty summers. When she found him a young man of thirty, and exceedingly handsome and distinguished at that, she was invaded by no slight doubt as to the wisdom of indulging the spirit of whim which had led her to take the post of ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... together Burns regarded Amy Mathewson, his long-time associate, with renewed wonder, and presently found himself addressing her from an entirely new point of view. This fair girl with the graceful head and the glowing blue eyes could not possibly be the sedate young woman who was accustomed to hand him instruments and sutures, ligate arteries, and attend to various minor matters from the other side of his operating-table. He wondered why he had never before noticed how much real individuality she possessed, nor how really attractive she was of face and ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... that other balustrade, where Watteau, remembering this one, painted for us the 'Plaisirs du Bal,' how often they have lain in ambush, knowing that were one of them to show but the tip of his wings those sedate and migniard masqueraders would faint for very shame; yet ever hoping that they might, by their unseen presence, turn that punctilio of flirtation into love. And always they have flown back from Dulwich unrequited for all the pains they had taken, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... pipe above his head, points and balances it in various directions (for what reason and with what end in view is best known to himself), and replaces it again on the forks. The company meanwhile observe his proceedings with sedate interest, evidently imbued with the idea that they are deriving from the ceremony a vast amount of edification—an idea which is helped out, doubtless, by the appearance of the women and children, who surround ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... absent ones, were naturally sympathetic, and frequently sought each other's company. The lively Anglo-French woman, whose vivacity was not altogether subdued even by the dark cloud that hung over her husband's fate, took special pleasure in the sedate, earnest temperament of her native missionary friend, whose difficulty in understanding a joke, coupled with her inability to control her laughter when, after painful explanation, she did manage to comprehend one, was a source ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... excitedly, and run about like people bereft of their senses. The uncivilization crops out of these obscure Harood villagers far plainer than it does in the tents of the wandering tribes. They are noisier and more boisterous than the nomads, who, as a matter of fact, are sober-sided and sedate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Agenor de Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the exact opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness, correctness personified. As a sedate man, he was quite incapable of being guilty, even in his dreams, of anything resembling a practical joke, however remotely. I know nobody to whom he could be compared, unless it be the present president ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... half inclined to waltz round the room, but she was afraid of disturbing the occupant of the office below. Gradually she sobered down, and by the time Jack Cameron returned she was quite sedate. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... gone long when a large sailing-canoe arrived, in which was a person named Poulaho, and whom the natives on board affirmed to be the real King of Tongataboo and of all the neighbouring islands. He was a sensible, sedate man, enormously fat, and about forty years of age. He was, of course, invited into the cabin, but his attendants observed that that could not be. On this the captain sent Omai to say that he would give directions ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... them, as they started, with an old shoe in her hand, which she delivered with such good (or bad) effect that it hit the horse on the ear, and made it shy. Happily, it was a sedate old quadruped, not given to giddy ways, and quickly ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... far from being inordinate or criminal, never exceeded the bounds of that decent jollity which an extraordinary pot, on extraordinary occasions, may be supposed to have produced in a club of sedate book-keepers, whose imaginations were neither very warm nor luxuriant. Little subject to refined sensations, he was scarce ever disturbed with violent emotions of any kind. The passion of love never interrupted his tranquility; and if, as Mr. Creech ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Avenue should hold it up again a victim to the evening rush, turned from first one to another of the pile of papers beside him. His strong, clean-shaven face was grave; and there was a sober light in the dark, steady eyes. In the St. James Club, which he had just left, perhaps the most sedate, certainly the most exclusive club in New York, it had been the one topic of conversation. Elderly gentlemen, not usually given to excitability, had joined with the younger members in a hectic denunciation of the police as criminally inefficient, and had made dire and absurdly ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... not intended these for his closing words; but just there, straight away before his sight and almost at the farthest door, a man rose slowly from his seat and regarded him steadily with a kind, bronzed, sedate face, and the sermon, as if by a sign of command, was ended. While the Credo was being chanted he was still there; but when, a moment after its close, the eye of Pere Jerome returned in that ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... muddy lakes, the whole, crowded, cockneyfied place." In that way jaundiced happiness lies. But the soul of Central Park is not for you. Once upon a time there was a Central Park. The approaches to it were along sedate avenues or by restful side streets. When the Park was reached there were donkeys to ride, and donkey-boys, highly amusing in their cynicism and worldly knowledge, in attendance. The "rock-work" caverns were in fancy of an ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... sulphitic; Amelia Sedley bromidic. So we might follow the line of cleavage between the two groups in Art, Religion and Politics. Compare, for instance, President Roosevelt with his predecessor in office—the Unexpected versus the sedate Thermometer of Public Opinion. Compare Bernard Shaw with Marie Corelli—one would swear that their very brains were differently colored! Their epigrams and platitudes are merely the symptoms of different methods of thought. One need not consult ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... rumination to the banks of the river. And a quiet, steady, calm, respectable kind of river the Usk is—not of the high aristocratic appearance of the Wye, with wild outbursts of youthful petulance softened immediately into grace and elegance—but a sedate individual, like a retired citizen, well to do in the world, and glad to jog on as uninterruptedly as he can. The grounds of Oakfield slope down to the water—and beautiful grounds they are—a line of rich meadows, shaded with stately trees, and divided ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... properly for a number of years cut his passenger's throat for a groschen. It was impossible that such occurrences, related, not without embellishments, should not inspire a sort of involuntary horror amongst the sedate inhabitants of Kolomna. No one entertained any doubt as to the presence of an evil power in the usurer. They said that he imposed conditions which made the hair rise on one's head, and which the miserable wretch never afterward ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in turmoil, where hitherto had been no more than a sedate daily system. Routine, become custom, gave way to restless movement, excited argument. Of all these hundreds now encamped on the sandy sagebrush plain in the high desert there was not an individual who was not ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... twenty-four years old, who, in the present repose of her features, looked comely, sedate, and womanly, but not the remarkable person she really was. Her forehead high and white, but a little broader than sculptors affect; her long hair, coiled tight, in a great many smooth snakes, upon her snowy nape, was almost flaxen, yet her eyebrows and long lashes ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and I have reached your venerable age you may expect to find us as sedate and industrious as you are now," remarked Harold, proceeding to hang upon the tree various ornaments, as Herbert ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... he was one of the merriest fellows under the sun, and among the lightest of heart though not of head. Frank's return brought life and spirit into the house; for Charles, though highly esteemed, was grave and somewhat reserved; Anna was sedate and quiet; and William, since his return home, had been very troublesome, and was looked upon generally as an arrant pickle; while the Doctor and Mrs Morgan were so much occupied that they were ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... profoundly shaken. Sedate Boston gave more generously than ever before to militant finances. And when the "Prison Special" arrived a few days later a Boston theatre was filled to overflowing with a crowd eager to hear more about their local ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... beings know but little of the fierceness with which the vortices of passion rage in the more purely animal natures. This beginning he knew well would end in a wild paroxysm of rearing and plunging. He had more than once tried the exorcism of patience, sitting sedate upon her back until she chose to move; but on these occasions the tempest that followed had been of the very worst description; so that he had concluded it better to bring on the crisis, thereby sure at least to save time; and after he had adopted this mode with her, attacks of the sort, if no ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... speech, for the Battle of Trafalgar had not yet taken place, and the dread of a sudden landing of the French 'tyrant' was never long out of the thoughts of any Briton. When the cheering had ceased, Rossignol opened the cages one after another, and each bird hopped out in a sedate way, and placed itself on the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... was burning in the fo'c'sle of the schooner Greyhound, by the light of which a middle-aged seaman of sedate appearance sat crocheting an antimacassar. Two other men were snoring with deep content in their bunks, while a small, bright-eyed boy sat up in his, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... left the last house which belonged to the village, she saw a young man coming out of the woods at a little distance before her. She recognized him, immediately, as a young man whom she called Albert, who had often been employed by Mrs. Bell, at work about the farm and garden. Albert was a very sedate and industrious young man, of frank and open and manly countenance, and of an erect and athletic form. Mary Erskine liked Albert very well, and yet the first impulse was, when she saw him coming, to cross over to the other side of the ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... different. She is visiting a former schoolmate, a young girl of her own age. Bessie is now a pupil of Vassar College, and enthusiastic over her studies: consequently the amusements of the two girls are of a very sedate nature: in Gabrielle's words, "A hermit in his cell, my dear Cecilia, never had a more quiet life ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Queenie, a small, sedate maiden of five, a miniature of Theo in face, stood silent in the doorway for a few seconds, wistfully piecing out the possible meaning of her tall sister's bewildered grief. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... perhaps, mingled with pity. She did not assume an air of superiority over him, but endeavored to encourage him, to lead him forward, to inspire him with confidence and hope, and to make him feel his own strength and value. She was herself of a sedate and thoughtful character, and with all her intellectual superiority, she was characterized by that feminine gentleness of spirit, that disposition to follow and to yield rather than to govern, that desire to be led and to be loved rather than to lead and be admired, which ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... learns — just as we did, They gallantly go to their fate, Unheeded all warnings, unheeded The maxims of elders sedate. As the husbandman, patiently toiling, Draws a harvest each year from the soil, So the fools grow afresh for the spoiling, And a new crop of ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... see the volcano tower above you at that word 'tremendous neighbourhood.' Something of the same double reference to the original and acquired meanings of a word is to be found in such a phrase as 'sedate electrician,' for one who in a back office wields all the lights of a city; or in that description of one drawing near to death, who is spoken of as groping already with his hands 'on the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... animal which both girls pronounced "a darling." But Jess was no less pleased with her little animal, a bright bay with a white star on its forehead. For the boys similar animals had been provided, while Miss Prescott's mount was a rather raw-boned gray of sedate appearance. In her youth Miss Prescott had done a good deal of horseback riding, and the manner in which she sat her mount showed that she had not forgotten her horsemanship. Mr. Bell and his brother bestrode rather heavier animals than ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... sleighs drove briskly past the window. First came Stone's old swan-head behind his sedate team of bays, but from a perfect nest of robes and furs a gay party waved their hands in laughing salutation. Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Flight on the back seat, Messrs. Darling and Tommy Dot opposite them in the body of the sleigh. Captain Pollock in the driver's perch with ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the numbers of the Syrians?" inquired Simon, whose quiet, sedate manner formed a strong contrast to that of the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... "most all cut to pieces," as Ruth said, when Doris stepped from the hall doorway and, glancing about, finally discovered Pete in the far corner of the veranda—deeply absorbed in searching for the hind leg of a noble horse to which little Ruth had insisted upon attaching the sedate and ignoble hind quarters of a maternal cow. So intent were they upon their game that neither of them saw Doris as she moved toward them, nodding brightly to many convalescents seated ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... same time she seemed more sedate than usual. Perhaps that was because a great pleasure spoils laughing. At all events, after this, the passion of her life was to get into the water, and she was always the better behaved and the more beautiful the more she had of it. Summer and winter it was quite ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... said a voice, as the door opened, "for here stands Ralph Bridgenorth." As he spoke, he entered the apartment with slow and sedate step, and eyed alternately his daughter and Julian Peveril with a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... still fond of Cupido, though not very intimate with him. In all the sedate, conservative world around him, the barber seemed the only person really worth while talking with. Cupido was almost an artist. In winter he would go to Valencia to hear the operas praised by the newspapers, and ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... when she might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up. However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her fascinatingly, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... kept up by the performers. In one direction, a conjurer is seen exhibiting his feats of manual dexterity, surrounded by a motley gaping crowd;—in another, a story-teller exercises the risible faculties of the sedate Turk, as well as of the merry laughter-loving Greek. A string of Armenian women approach, walking two and two with slow solemn steps, and followed by a slave carrying a basket of refreshments. Behind these come a party of gaily dressed Greeks of Pera, laughing and joking, the very personification ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... lumbering and shabby, drawn by a pair of sleek sorrel horses, whose teeth would have given evidence of advanced age had a possible purchaser submitted them to the indignity of examining them. Their progress was slow and sedate, although the driver handled the reins as though it were with difficulty that he restrained them from prancing and cavorting ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... laughing girl, who rallied Lucy on her sedate behaviour, and the profound curtseys she made to her partner, instead of the pirouette which she performed with Humphrey, his arm round her waist, and her little feet twinkling under the short skirt of her stiff brocade, like birds on ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... have one last fling at the old free buccaneering life before settling down to the more sedate and respectable calling of an officer in the French King's navy, de Grammont sailed off with a party of 180 desperadoes, but was never ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... and heart in his work. It was the last luxury he would ever have dreamed of allowing himself, a woman friend; but since life had brought it in the oddest way the boon should be met with no grudging of gratitude. A kind of sedate cheerfulness crept into his manner which was new to him; he went about his duties with the look of a man to whom life had dictated its terms and who found them acceptable. His blood might have received some mysterious chemical complement, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet and sedate statesman of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is born to Bentinck, "he will live, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that evening. Next morning when the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It would have been ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... some usually placid stream, after being swollen and agitated for a while by a sudden storm of wind and rain, subsides once more into its customary channel. The marquis, indeed, might seem somewhat more sedate and more taciturn than was his wont, and the marchioness possibly suffered herself to be looked upon by her female friends as very much to be pitied for some mysterious cause of anxiety she could not divulge for all the world. Madame de Valricour, however, betrayed ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... by Bellini, in the possession of Sir Charles Eastlake, which has always appeared to me a very perfect specimen of this class of pictures. It is also the earliest I know of. The Virgin, pensive, sedate, and sweet, like all Bellini's Virgins, is seated in the centre, and seen in front. The Child, on her knee, blesses with his right hand, and the Virgin places hers on the head of a votary, who just appears above the edge of the picture, with hands joined ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... we shall do, We bucks whose comedy is through! Who'd be sedate? And yet I hate To pose persistently to-day As one just trying flights, you know, When I did try ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and over, until finally he reached the conclusion that this was a mode of welcome among the white men, and that the politeness of the other kept him silent, in order that the visitor should first take up the word, in which opinion he was confirmed by the sedate and unmoved expression of the face. With such a notion occupying his mind, he rose from his seat, and throwing the beaver robe a little off the right shoulder to allow opportunity for gesticulation, he stood before the picture, and after a moment of ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... and ingratitude! Is there a vice more black? Oh, I have excuses thousands for my faults; fire in my temper, passions in my soul, apt to ev'ry provocation, oppressed at once with love, and with despair. But a sedate, a thinking villain, whose black blood runs temperately bad, what excuse ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... To the stereotyped conventional standard of fashionable life she had never yielded allegiance; and now stood a social free-thinker. For a season she allowed herself to be whirled on by the current of dinners, parties, and picnics; but soon her sedate, contemplative temperament revolted from the irksome round, and gradually she outlined and pursued a different course, giving to her gay companions just what courtesy ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... certain tone, was not very reassuring, and gave food for reflection. Still, I accepted his proposition, and he chose as my companion the guide Edward Ravanel, a very sedate and devoted fellow, who perfectly ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... that Ernest was not the chosen friend of the more sedate and well-conducted youths then studying at Roughborough. Some of the less desirable boys used to go to public-houses and drink more beer than was good for them; Ernest's inner self can hardly have told him to ally himself ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the Exchange amid the bustle and talk of the sedate people who were making deals amounting to thousands of roubles; the respect with which the less well-to-do tradesmen greeted and spoke to him—to Foma, the son of the millionaire—flattered him greatly. He felt happy and proud whenever he successfully ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... glancing at her countenance that one thought to look at her a second time with close attention. She was not handsome, or even pretty, although not by any means homely; but her face was almost transfigured by its expression of earnest piety and goodness, remarkable in one so young. Quiet and sedate as was her habit, she was ever ready to enter freely into the fun and play of the other children; but even in the most absorbing frolic, if any one became hurt from too much roughness, she was the first to be on the spot to comfort the suffering one and to ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... than the saints. She was fond of doing small generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that in some sedate and mysterious ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... attempts at regularity were set forth with all the cruel, uncompromising clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main Street with its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this foreground was Cissy's world—her life, her sole girlish experience. She did not, however, bother her pretty head with the view just then, but moved ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious, whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the young king. One of the first acts of Anne of Austria was to assemble the leading bodies of the realm to take the oath of allegiance to her son. The little fellow, four and a half years old, arrayed in imperial robes, was seated upon the throne. The Count de Guiche, a very sedate, thoughtful, precocious child, was placed upon the steps, that his undoubted propriety of behavior might be a pattern to the infant king. Both of the children ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... where he sat up at table cracking nuts, "evidently under the impression," as Jack observed, "that he is one of us." Quirk had soon struck up a friendship with the bear, who was a very tame beast, and could play almost as many antics as he could, only in a more sedate way. Wherever Quirk went, Bruin would endeavour to follow; and one day, while the midshipmen were at dinner, the latter, led by the monkey, was seen approaching the berth. Nuts and biscuits were held out. They were easily tempted in. Room was made ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... short time in the wine trade, in partnership with his brother, Mr. Peter Garrick; they hired vaults in Durham Yard, for the purpose of carrying on the business. The union between the brothers was of no long date. Peter was calm, sedate, and methodical; David was gay, volatile, impetuous, and perhaps not so confined to regularity as his partner could have wished. To prevent the continuance of fruitless and daily altercation, by the interposition of friends the partnership was amicably dissolved. And now Garrick ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... with wet and his face was wind-blown. Tom Cameron's face, too, looked much older than it had—well, say a year before. He, like Ruth herself, had been through much in the war zone calculated to make him more sedate and serious than a college undergraduate is supposed ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... truth, somewhat profligate gentleman; and had, according to the report of his patron, the habit of seducing light and giddy young ladies of his own race into the garden of Queen's Square Place; but tired at last, like Solomon, of pleasures and vanities, he became sedate and thoughtful—took to the church, laid down his knightly title, and was installed as the Reverend John Langborn. He gradually obtained a great reputation for sanctity and learning, and a doctor's degree was conferred upon him. When ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... A sedate-looking gentleman, about forty-five years of age, stepped into the boat, and in a few seconds I was in the stream, shooting the bridge with ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... all hooks and eyes and fasteners and doing all the remaining handwork on the dresses, turned them over to the two pressers, sedate, assured Italians, who ironed all day long and looked prosperous and ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... bent, crouch'd there on the sand? Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! O wild and dismal night storm, with wind—O belching and desperate! O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace, But away at night as you fly, none looking—O then the unloosen'd ocean, Of tears! ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... declared that it was time to go back again; and, wheeling round their steeds, they returned as fast as they had come. On nearing the town, they made signs to the young officers to fall into the rear, while they advanced at a more sedate pace, when they scattered in various directions to their different homes. This was only one of their ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Domini, God's jongleurs, no doubt often did the same.[10] They did even better, for not willing to be a charge to anyone, they passed a part of the day in aiding the peasants in their field work.[11] The inhabitants of these districts are for the most part kindly and sedate; the friars soon gained their confidence by relating to them first their history and then their hopes. They worked and ate together; field-hands and friars often slept in the same barn, and when with the morrow's dawn the friars went on their way, the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... of that primitive day. The sedate Rivington, for so many years the Tory organ, was in no humor, we may suppose, to chronicle the minor events of the occasion, even if he had not considered them beneath the dignity of his vocation. He says nothing of the valiant matron in Chatham ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... monotonous procession of blue skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods. Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of the firs "did her chest good," for certainly her slight cough was less frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... to beg a little, or to pursue some other worldly matter: and then kneeling down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music; and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff, arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at another dog: and whose yelps and howls resounded through the church, as his master quietly relapsed into ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... doubt that if you goes clost to Injuns an' studies their little game you finds some of 'em good an' some bad, some gaudy an' some sedate, some cu'rous an' some indifferent, same as you finds among shore-enough folks. It's so with mules an' broncos; wherefore, then, may not these differences exist among Injuns? Come squar' to the turn, you-all finds white folks separated ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... described to him as a young man of great simplicity and candour of disposition, sedate in his affections, and deeply impressed with the sanctity of principle; scrupulous in forming private friendships; but, when he had taken any attachment, not easily swayed from it, without being convinced of the necessity and ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... sedate way across a great plain of grass, stretching without a break from the avenue up to a belt of palms, before which they stopped, swayed a moment, grunting disapprovingly in chorus, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... all creatures with an even eye, O lord of men, do thou let thy kinsmen. O thou advancer of thy kindred, subsist on thy bounty.' When, O Kunti's son, the far-sighted Vidura said this, fool that I was I followed the wicked Duryodhana. Having turned a deaf ear to the sweet speech of that sedate one, I have obtained this mighty sorrow as a consequence, and have been plunged in an ocean of woe. Behold thy old father and mother, O king, plunged in misery. But, O master of men, I find no occasion for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is not to imagine that Railsford's house contained nobody but the four prefects of the Sixth-form and the sedate tenants of the study immediately over the master's head, who belonged to the Shell. On the contrary, the fifty boys who made up the little community were fully representative of all grades and classes of Grandcourt ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... a sedate company of cows entering the pasture single file through an aperture made by letting down the bars. Behind them walked a boy of about his own size, flourishing a stout hickory stick. The cows went directly to the spring from which Paul had already drunk. The young driver looked at our hero with ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... girl, too. Her getting the full blast of it was a quite fortuitous affair, and Joy always felt, looking back afterwards on her explosion, that it had been hard on the lady—who was frightened by it to the point of silence. It must have been very much as if the sedate full-length of Mr. Shakspere, over in the corner and not autographed, had opened its mouth ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... foresail. The girl turned her canoe out of the main river into one of the many narrow channels amongst the wooded islets, and paddled vigorously over the black and sleepy backwaters towards Sambir. Her canoe brushed the water-palms, skirted the short spaces of muddy bank where sedate alligators looked at her with lazy unconcern, and, just as darkness was setting in, shot out into the broad junction of the two main branches of the river, where the brig was already at anchor with sails furled, yards squared, and decks seemingly untenanted by any ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... all this splendour sat the bride, sedate and happy, arrayed in a bright blue poplin dress and the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... cavalier was easily distinguished from the sedate Puritan. The latter gazed solemnly on the instrument of torture as a thing essential to the performance of a duty, while the cavaliers seemed to have come more for the enjoyment of some rare sport, than to witness an execution ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... morning because he spoke out of his narrowness, and not out of his height; and Mary was better justified in feeling bored than even when George Turnbull plagued her with his vulgar attentions. When she got out at last, sedate as she was, she could hardly help skipping along the street by her father's side. Far better than chapel was their nice little cold dinner together, in their only sitting-room, redolent of the multifarious goods piled around it on all the rest ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... trade to American enterprise, and British merchantmen sought their gains in other waters. The Navigation Laws still protected their commerce in the Far East and they were content to jog at a more sedate gait than these weltering packets whose skippers were striving for passages of a fortnight, with the forecastle doors nailed fast and the crew compelled to stay on deck from Sandy Hook ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... stood facing each other, one glowing with youthful indignation, the other enveloped in a cloud of sullen resistance. Just then there came a soft knock at the door, and Sarah peeped in with a coquettish air, which at no other time in her existence had been visible in the sedate demeanour of Mrs Hadwin's favourite handmaid. The stranger lodger was "a gentleman," notwithstanding his shabbiness, and he was a very civil-spoken gentleman, without a bit of pride; and Sarah was still a woman, though she ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... inmates noticed in what a serious and sedate manner she narrated her story, and none ventured to pass any further remarks, but waited anxiously for her to go on, when they became aware that she coldly and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... His garments were of sober black, without ornament or decoration, and no ring shone on his fingers. His sandy hair was cut rather shorter than was wont, and there was no mark of helmet wear along the brow or temples. His frame was neither active nor powerful, and his walk was sedate, almost to preciseness. His countenance was peculiar, for in it there was both cunning and frankness: cunning in the eyes, frankness in the mouth and chin; a face, withal, that would bear constant watching, and that contained scarce a trace of virility—only a keen selfishness and a crafty ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the insight and the power with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... round, and with the most serious face thus addressed them—'I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton |
