"Placid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being, endowed by a will of its own, and served by sentient organs. From the elevation the Elbe is seen, spreading broadly like all great rivers as they near the sea. Its waters, sure of arriving at last, are in no haste; placid as a lake, they flow with an almost invisible motion. The low opposite shore was covered with verdure, and dotted with red houses half-effaced by the smoke from the chimneys. A golden bar of sunshine shot across the plain; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... little Parisian shops wherein debatable antiques accumulate dust till they fetch the ducats of the credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a thrifty and respectable bourgeois, the final avatar ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the kind that most adorned her. She wore tonight a little frock made by her own fingers, of some crimson woolen stuff, without a vestige of ornament save a bit of lace, yellow with age, at the throat. Her hair was parted above the placid brow, looped over her ears and twisted in a loose knot at the back of her head, in the prevailing fashion for a young matron; which with her youthful face, gave her a most quaint ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... morning hours during which Mrs. Cliff's mind wandered over the beautiful drives, or stood upon the rustic bridges which crossed the stream dashing among its rocks and spreading itself out into placid pools; or when, mentally, she sat in the shade of the great trees and looked out upon the wide stretches of verdant lawn, relieved by the brilliant colors of the flower-beds, she often felt it was almost the same thing as if it were actually summer, and ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... quickly, and consequently it will be slight." "The nidification of birds," rejoined Goldsmith, "is what is least known in natural history, though one of the most curious things in it." While conversation was going on in this placid, agreeable and instructive manner, the eternal meddler and busybody Boswell, must intrude, to put it in a brawl. The Dillys were dissenters; two of their guests were dissenting clergymen; another, Mr. Toplady, was a clergyman of the established ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... garden-porch, and here she hesitated again, apparently waiting for a sign from the house. She glanced timidly about her, as though in fear of marauders that might spring out upon her from the shadow. Just over the boundary wall the placid flame of a gas-lamp peeped. Then, feeling with her feet for the steps, she ascended into the shelter of the porch. Almost at the same moment there was another flare behind the glass of the door; she heard ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... be fine over the British Islands. The anti-cyclone has not yet passed away from the Bay of Biscay...." He read the jargon through to the end. But it seemed as if it were not he who was reading, but someone else—a quiet, placid gentleman, deeply versed in the harmless science of meteorology. Where his real self was he did not know, so he ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... lake where land is unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice and catches his fish or shoots his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely-rushing torrent, or lie like a sea-bird on the placid water. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... copses, and hedge-row trees are interspersed very happily, and meadow, pasture, and grain-fields seen through them, with villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and isolated cottages, make up a landscape that grows more and more interesting as you contemplate it. And this placid locality, with its peaceful river seemingly sleeping in the bosom of its long and level meadows, was the scene of Oliver Cromwell's young, fiery manhood. Here, where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... scene portrayed. No. 250, 'A Twilight in the Adirondacs,' glows with an intensity of light suggestive of some secret art, and not of ordinary paint and canvas. A few brilliant cloud-specks float in a golden sky, which is reflected from the surface of a placid lake, high up among the hills, whose haze-flooded and light-crowned tops fade away into the far distance. To many this picture will prove more attractive than the view from the South Mountain: perhaps it is our familiarity with and love for the original of the last-mentioned view, which induce ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... penniless professor, succeeded at length in fastening a respectable widower. She trots him out regularly every Sunday with that ineffable smirk of satisfaction that only an old maid can assume. Then there was Miss Anthon, a demure little body, who wore her gray hair brushed back from her placid face, without resort to hair dyes, cosmetics, or other rejuvenating articles of the toilet. She kept her eyes open, though, and in her unobtrusive way, after lying in wait for her victim all these long and weary years, she suddenly pounced upon a fortune to reward ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... bully, just going right ahead like this after all the terrible things that happened in the night!" exclaimed Harry, as the Bolo cut along through the placid waters. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... at Ghent, rather wild, disheveled weeks of clutching at work. They had one objective: the battlefield; one purpose: to make a series of rescues under fire. Cramped in a placid land, smothered by peace-loving folk, they had been set quivering by the war. The time had come to throw themselves at the Continent, and do or die where action was thick. Nothing was quainter, even in a land of astounding spectacles, than the sight of the rescuing ambulances rolling ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... professional relish, coolly telling us, that "the operation is unattended with cruelty;" yet we must be content to refer our readers to the passage (vol. ii. p. 96) as an illustration of his skill in this interesting branch of farm-surgery. He is really an amiable sheep-operator, our author—what placid benevolence and hatred of quackery appear in his instructions— "Learn to slaughter gently, dress the carcass neatly and cleanly, in as plain a manner as possible, and without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... we came in sight of the Mahakam River. At this point it is only forty to fifty metres wide, and the placid stream presented a fine view, with surrounding hills in the distance. In the region of the Upper Mahakam River, above the rapids, where we had now arrived, it is estimated there are living nearly 10,000 Dayaks of various tribes, recognised under the general name Bahau, which they also employ ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... present, and in the memory of other men—a death which caused to be loved the passage from this life to the other by those whose existence upon this earth leads them not to dread the last judgment. Athos, preserved, even in the eternal sleep, that placid and sincere smile—an ornament which was to accompany him to the tomb. The quietude of his features, the calm of his nothingness, made his servants for a long time doubt whether he had really quitted life. The comte's people wished to remove Grimaud, who from a distance devoured the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... 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 stalking ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... from the church the great placid eye of the lighthouse at the Beal Point was open, and he moved thitherward a few steps to escape Nichola, or her double, and the rest of the congregation. Turning at length, he hastened homeward along the now deserted trackway, intending to overtake the revitalized Avice. But he could see ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... neck are full upon you as you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending to the wife, whilst the two elder children play ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... through, Looked at each other as yellow and blue, As any electioneering crew Wearing the colours of Whigs and Tories. Ah! well the Poet said, in sooth, That "whispering tongues can poison Truth," - Yes, like a dose of oxalic acid, Wrench and convulse poor Peace, the placid, And rack dear Love with internal fuel, Like arsenic pastry, or what is as cruel, Sugar of lead, that sweetens gruel, - At least such torments began to wring 'em From the very morn When that mischievous Horn Caught the whisper ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... ingenious manoeuvres by which the promising couple of conspirators averted, upon the eve of the sister's bridal, the threatened expose of their machinations to entrap the wealthy lover. Suffice it to say that the duped husband (by brevet) lived for a decade and a half in the placid enjoyment of the ignorance which my sagacious sister here is disposed to confound with rational bliss—nor is he quite sure, to this day, whether spouse No. 1 of the partner of his bosom still lives, or by clearance in what court of infamy or justice she ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... by the calm banks of the placid lake, amidst the fairest landscapes of the Island Garden, the youngest born of Catherine passed his tranquil days. The monotony of the retreat did not fatigue a spirit which, as he grew up, found occupation in books, music, poetry, and the elegances of the cultivated, if ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little past twilight, and the western sky presented an unusual, if not an ominous, appearance. A sharp and melancholy breeze was abroad, and the sun, which had set among a mass of red clouds, half placid, and half angry in appearance, had for some brief space gone down. Over from the north, however, glided by imperceptible degrees a long black bar, right across the place of his disappearance, and nothing could be more striking than the wild and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 Irene Straley, and he felt that ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... building, on a smooth gliding elevator, up seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof doors labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room," we find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and turrets, minarets, and ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... on the Banks. It would be difficult to imagine a more placid and lovely scene. Everything perfectly calm, all sail set, and the heavens becoming gradually sprinkled with silver stars. The sky blue, and without a cloud, except where the sun has just set, the last crimson point sinking in the calm sea and leaving a long ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... was in motion. The inhabitants are for the most part extremely ignorant and poor; they take no part in the business of the country, and they are frequently oppressed by the government; yet their countenances are generally placid, and their spirits light. In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men, placed in the happiest circumstances which the world affords: it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad even in their pleasures. The ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost placid quality in her determination, it was so final and ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... no reason that he could discover, something sharp and icy in her would momentarily make itself felt, and he would find himself driven back within bounds that he had perhaps been tempted to transgress. And the result of it all was that he fell day by day more tormentingly in love with her. Those placid matrimonial ambitions with which he had left England had been all swept away; and as he followed her—she on pony-back, he on foot—along the mountain trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled, introspective ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Though placid, this early Lincoln was not resigned. He differed from the boors of Pigeon Creek in wanting some other sort of life. What it was he wanted, he did not know. His reading had not as yet given him definite ambitions. It may well be that New Orleans was the clue to ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... to speak to him, I finished my splint till tea-time. But I couldn't bring myself to sit down to it, for fear that the too placid resumption of my duties should outrage ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... are, though you compress, With even your most impenetrable fears, A placid and a proper consciousness Of anxious ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... of this century, nor the prophetic light that shone in the faces of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats; if he apprehended the stir of the new spirit he still, by mental affiliation, belonged rather to the age of Addison than to that of Macaulay. And his placid, retrospective, optimistic strain pleased a public that were excited and harrowed by the mocking and lamenting of Lord Byron, and, singularly enough, pleased ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... he suggests the cosmic and the elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... smiling approval, and the brightest charm of our intercourse had departed forever. The last time in which it still remained unbroken—the last sweet time that I could call her wholly mine, was on a placid autumn evening. We had strolled farther than usual, tempted by the tranquil beauty around us, and during that walk I had been strangely, wonderfully happy. Many times, as we walked silently side by side, a strong, an almost irresistible impulse seemed to force me ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... d'O's confidence had raised my spirits lasted until one of the narrow streets by the Louvre brought me suddenly within sight of the river. Here faint moonlight bursting momentarily through the clouds was shining on the placid surface of the water. The fresh air played upon, and cooled my temples. And this with the quiet scene so abruptly presented to me, gave check to my thoughts, and ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... borrow trouble, therefore unqualified personally to oversee the actual management of a cow herd. In repose, Don Lovell was slow, almost dull, but in an emergency was astonishingly quick-witted and alert. He never insisted on temperance among his men, and though usually of a placid temperament, when ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... of the tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-colored donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman—the old woman, in person, with her red cloak and black bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside her decent, placid cheeks—the towering plowman with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big, red, rural face. We greeted these things as children greet the loved pictures in a story book, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... The placid voice, flowing on in gentle great content of itself (while all the boarders gallantly refrained from eating), was checked by an interruption which united into one shattering impact the effects ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... they sped right under the guns of the shore batteries, which could no longer resist the temptation to see what they could do. Puffs of white smoke dotted the landscape on the far shore, and dull booms echoed over the placid water. Around the ships fountains of water sprang up into the air. The enemy had been drawn, but his marksmanship was obviously very bad. I think I am right in saying that not a single shot directed against the ships came within a hundred ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of that organ and of the men by whom it was conducted. He distrusted that quiet-faced, thoughtful, and laborious young man, whom they so loved and reverenced—the founder, the soul, and the centre of their party. To the keen glance of the aged leader it appeared that for all that placid brow, those calm grey eyes and softly curving lip of his, the man had no horror of blood-spilling in a righteous cause, and was capable not only of deliberately inciting his countrymen to rise in arms against English rule, but ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... something eatable floating upon the tide, scattered and then joined up into a joyous chorus of association with gentle twittering cries. Watching them, dreaming, standing now and again looking out over the sweet wonder of the placid sea, sometimes wading ankle deep, sometimes walking on the firm floor of uncovered sand, Damaris passed onward ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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 problems of local government and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... death has taken it from your midst forever. It is such a beautiful day! The air is so soft, the grass so green, and the birds singing so joyously! The day and the event have become so interwoven with each other, that I cannot separate them. I think of his placid face, sleeping its last still sleep; and through the open window, I see the springing grass and the bursting buds. My ears are filled with bird-music, and all other sounds are hushed in this Sabbath ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... children should Be placid, mildly good And blandly meek: Whereat the broad smile rushes Full on your lips, and flushes ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... little dorg off you?" said a Sergeant acquaintance in the D.A.C. "I couldn't, Corp'l. Why, I don't even know how I'm goin' to take the foal yonder"—he glared reproachfully at a placid Clydesdale mare and her tottering one-day-old; "and 'ow I'm goin' to take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... our first sight of the mountain meadows. From time to time we found others, sometimes a half dozen in a day. The rough country came down close about them, edging to the very hair-line of the magic circle, which seemed to assure their placid sunny peace. An upheaval of splintered granite often tossed and tumbled in the abandon of an unrestrained passion that seemed irresistibly to overwhelm the sanities of a whole region; but somewhere, in the very forefront of turmoil, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... muzzle fine and encircled with a light stripe, the nostril high and open; the horns smooth, crumpled, but not very thick at the base, tapering and tipped with black; ears small and thin, deep orange color inside; eyes full and placid; neck straight and fine; chest broad and deep; barrel hoofed, broad and deep, well ribbed up; back straight from the withers to the hip, and from the top of the hip to the setting of the tail; tail fine, at right angles with the back, and hanging down to the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... "laudanum or opium", but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and achings of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of Ether in a wine glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third teaspoon full at ten o'clock, and I received complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the morning, my right hand, with three of the fingers, was swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... its close as Mr. Heard, in a placid, contemplative frame of mind, once more drew nigh the pink ramparts of the Old Town, purposing to find his way ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... guardian's chair. That had not been 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
... pilot-house forthwith, closing the door securely after them—the air-pump was stopped, the sea-cock communicating with the water-chambers was opened, and the Flying Fish, with an easy imperceptible motion, sank gently beneath the placid waters, to rest, a minute or two later, on a bed of gravel at the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... almost as soon as he was up. Kennedy was always a straight hitter, and now a combination of good cause and bad temper—for the thought of the foul in the first round had stirred what was normally a more or less placid nature into extreme viciousness—lent a vigour to his left arm to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He did not use his right again. It was ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... expression of sarcastic humor passed over the placid countenance of Miss Incledon, but she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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
... middle of 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 letter ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... it was lighter, and upon the placid waters of Snake River, only fifteen feet away, lay quiet shadows cast from the opposite side, clearly and beautifully reflected. A few small steamers lay further down stream near the river's mouth, row boats were tied along the edge of the water, and on the Sandspit below us was ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... and varying of color, in the ordinarily placid Clara, which prevented a display of her usual manner; while Jane walked gracefully, and with a tincture of her mother's manner, by her side. She stole one hastily withdrawn glance to the deanery pew ere she kneeled, and then, on rising, handed ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... gaunt, straddling, gallows-like 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 prison, which seems to put the finishing touch on the forbidding character ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... saved it he is entitled to fling it away; trooper George, with the Bagnets and their household, where the most ludicrous points are more forcible for the pathetic touches underlying them; the Jellyby interior, and its philanthropic strong-minded mistress, placid and smiling amid a household muddle outmuddling Chancery itself; the model of deportment, Turveydrop the elder, whose relations to the young people, whom he so superbly patronizes by being dependent on them for everything, touch delightfully ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sensible nun, and ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the neighborhood of the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and sang at her work, and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment. Her life was as placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by tempestuous winds, and upon her bosom light cares, like passing barges, left but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Rutherford's bete noir, albeit his own was not of the most placid type, and that it was liable to be roused to what he called "just indignation," on that which to others appeared small provocation. The flash was always momentary, but it was severe while it lasted; and ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... be desirous of seeing any more specimens of rustic happiness; but could not believe that all the accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous, and was in doubt whether life had anything that could be justly preferred to the placid gratification of fields and woods. She hoped that the time would come when, with a few virtuous and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted by her own hands, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... child in his arms, he suddenly let out a frightened yell. "I sees smoke—oh, my Lawd! I sees smoke an' fire an' brimstone comin' out'n dat cabin!" he gasped, and fled, clutching the placid Kitty. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... walked out to the confines of the town and up by the River Dodder. There are exquisitely beautiful places along the side of the Dodder: shy little harbors and backwaters, and now and then a miniature waterfall or a broad placid reach upon which the sun beats down like silver. Along the river bank the grass grows rank and wildly luxurious, and at this season, warmed by the sun, it was a splendid place to sit. She thought she could sit there forever watching ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... he sang and sewed from morning to night; his hot goose no longer burned him, for his heart was as hot as his goose; the vibrations of his head, at each successive stitch, were no longer sad and melancholy. There was a buoyant shake of exultation in them which showed that his soul was placid and happy within him. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded. A Petion has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young: convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the time we write of. True, the pernicious practice of smoking tobacco had not yet been introduced among them, so that the social pipe was neither offered, desired, nor missed! but the Indian accepted a birch-bark basket of soup with placid satisfaction, and consumed it with slow felicity. Then, being offered a formidable venison steak, he looked calmly at his host, blinked his thanks—or whatever he ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... strictly called by the name directly implying a complacent self-estimate unwarranted by performance. Nay, the total privacy in which he enjoyed his consciousness of inspiration was the very condition of its undisturbed placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests: in attempting to make an impression on others he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague depreciation of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... and serious studies. India is governed bureaucratically, but this bureaucracy differs in more than one respect from ours in Europe. To the public servant in Europe one day is like another; some great revolution, some European war, is needed to disturb the placid monotony of his existence. In India it is not so. The variety of his duties enlarges and fashions the mind of the Anglo-Indian official; and the dangers to which he is occasionally exposed serve to strengthen and give energy to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... guide-book maps various spots of historic or picturesque interest which we should see en route, especially Menthon, the birthplace of St. Bernard. Now, here we were at Annecy, and in all the world there could not be a town more charming. By the placid blue lake—whose water, I am convinced, would still be the colour of melted turquoises if you corked it up in a bottle—you could wander along shadowed paths, strewn with the gold coin of sunshine, through a park of dells as bosky-green as the fair forest of Arden. In the quaint, old-fashioned ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage? For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,—her top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely from over Biscay. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... when North Island was given over to the gulls and long-billed pelicans, and San Diego valued it chiefly as a natural bulkhead that made the bay a placid harbor where the great combing rollers could not ride. But other birds came; great, roaring, man-made birds, that rose whirring from its barrenness and startled the gulls until they grew accustomed to the sight and sound of them. Low ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... And in the second Worcester fight 1651 Cromwell for good asserts his might. And there are those who love to tell About that day at Boscobel When Charles the Second's Majestye Found itself doubly 'up a tree.' And now we meet that quiet man Known as the early Puritan; Mild and placid in his talk, Calm and ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... fitness of things generally. The Parthenon was designed to be made in stone, as much for the construction as for the light color effect of the marble. Only the light color play of its exterior would do against a placid blue sky to relieve the otherwise exceedingly simple rigidity of its massive forms of construction. To make an imitation of this great building in uncouth, somber, almost black pine logs of dubious proportions is hardly an artistically ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... The girl drooped in the saddle from sheer exhaustion. The past few days had been hard ones, and last night she had lost most of her sleep. She had ridden far on rough trails, had been subjected to a stress of emotion to which her placid maiden life had been unused. But she made no complaint. It was part of the creed she had unconsciously learned from her father to game out ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... a little cloud upon Anne Dorset's placid face, for she too, like Mr. Beecham, had a brother whose wife it was not agreeable to think of as mistress in the old house. She went on quickly after that looking in at no more shops. Perhaps she who could buy everything she wanted (as Ursula thought) ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... dizzily, and his hand sought the support of the wall. To him Foyle's voice sounded unreal. He stared at the detective as though doubtful of his sanity. His life had been hitherto ordered, placid. That there were such things as crimes, murders, detectives, he knew. He had read of them in the newspapers. But hitherto they had only been names to him—something to make the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... such a piece of quicksilver as you in a state of placid stodge!" she murmured. "I suppose I ought to have forbidden you to talk. But how could I dream that—all this would come of it? You must lie absolutely quiet and see no one for the rest of the evening. I will send at once for Dr Mackay; and, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... 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 may have the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... if thou chuse it not, No man in all Phaeacia shall by force Detain thee. Jupiter himself forbid! For proof, I will appoint thee convoy hence To-morrow; and while thou by sleep subdued Shalt on thy bed repose, they with their oars Shall brush the placid flood, till thou arrive At home, or at what place soe'er thou would'st, Though far more distant than Euboea lies, 400 Remotest isle from us, by the report Of ours, who saw it when they thither bore Golden-hair'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... rhymes—anything to keep my thoughts quite underneath—but I—hated John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say, 'Why did you marry him?'" She looked drearily over the placid sea. "Why did I marry him? I don't know; for the reason that hundreds of ignorant, inexperienced girls marry, I suppose. My home wasn't a happy one. I was miserable, and oh—restless. I wonder if men know what it feels like to be restless? Sometimes I think they can't even ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Gauthier arrived, placid and cool as though everything were normal. "Paris is calm; calm as Paris always is ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... undertone; the look that went with them the doctor never forgot as long as he lived. His questions about the festivities she had answered with a placid, pleased face; pleased that he should ask her; but a soft irradiation of joy had beamed upon the fact that the poor cripple was making a great step upwards in the scale of human life. The doctor had not forgotten his share in the permission Daisy had received, which he thought he saw she ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... Lake Erie. On the upper deck our Kentucky friends were waving their handkerchiefs to Frank, who stood upon the wharf as long as one bright-haired girl could be distinguished by the light of the harvest moon, whose rays fell calmly upon the placid waters. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... accordance with his own canons of taste. He retained the Greek cross; but the dome, as he conceived it, and the details designed for each section of the building, differed essentially from what the earlier master would have sanctioned. Not the placid and pure taste of Bramante, but the masterful and fiery genius of Buonarroti, is responsible for the colossal scale of the subordinate parts and variously broken lineaments of the existing church. In spite of all changes of direction, the fabric of S. Peter's had been steadily ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... proved a failure. The despondent Verdi resolved to give up his career altogether, and only by the insistence of the manager, Merelli, was he finally persuaded to resume his occupation. In later life he married again, passing a placid existence on his ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... not shake the professor in his conviction that Indians had led a quiet, placid existence and ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... 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 ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... days passed with so ordered a calm that little would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near their placid surface. Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a shilling a game, or "two bits," as it is known ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... subjected—first, the removal of the tongue, which is a most delicate morsel; then the head, then the bones, before placing them in the reservoir, where they receive their first salting. Whatever their work was, Erik did his part not only conscientiously, but eagerly. He astonished the placid Otto by his extreme application to the smallest details ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... eye down the road and over the Random River, flowing smooth and peaceful through its great ox-bow. He recognized Dannie Snow, scuffling through the dust with his bare feet, as he drove home his father's great, placid, full-uddered cow. The comfort of the scene, the cosy pleasantness of the place among the close-coming hills, struck him, in his relieved mood, as it had never done before. Even though disappointed in political ambition, a man might live there in ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... Altair officers were already there, a score of correct young men in white dress uniforms. Short, squat, and placid looking, Jimmy Chung stood making polite conversation. "Ah, there," he said, "Lieutenant Ziska and gentlemen, my partner, Michael Blades, Mike, ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... unconcerned air, no one who saw him could have conceived that he had been engaged the moment before in so fierce though short a struggle. There was none of the heat of the combatant or the triumph of the victor in his air or countenance, and his placid and equable expression of face contrasted strongly with the cloud which sat upon the brow of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... speech, something more than the indefinable aversion of incompatible tempers, a very personal and present dislike. Had things passed between them, things of which she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, then, reciprocal? She hardly believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to his largest hostilities the character merely of languid contempt; it was not worth the trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often—neither to hate nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to the last part of his ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... huge Reuton station. In the half-light on the platform Mr. Magee encountered the mayor of Reuton. Above the lessening roar of the train there sounded ahead of them the voices of men in turmoil and riot. Mr. Cargan turned upon Magee a face as placid and dispassionate as that of one who enters an ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... windows sends his rays To light the darkest, warm the coldest heart. Sweet infancy! life's solace and its rest, Driving away the loneliness of age, Wreathing in smiles the wrinkled brow of care, Nectar to joyful, balm to troubled hearts, Joyful once more is King Suddhodana; A placid joy beams from that mother's face; Joy lit the palace, flew from street to street, And from the ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... in his office, and Jadwin was admitted at once. He sat down in a chair by the broker's desk, and for the moment the two talked of trivialities. Gretry was a large, placid, smooth-faced man, stolid as an ox; inevitably dressed in blue serge, a quill tooth-pick behind his ear, a Grand Army button in his lapel. He and Jadwin were intimates. The two had come to Chicago almost simultaneously, and had risen ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... stood; so he went to knock at the door, and again Gaelic was given in answer. But this time the door was opened by a woman who had only taken time to put on a short petticoat, and to throw a small shawl over her head; her feet, legs, and arms were bare, and she looked strong and placid; her English was scanty, but she understood pretty well what we wanted, and declared herself willing to row our party to the other side if any one could steer, for her "man" was asleep in bed and too tired for work; so my husband took a pair of oars, the woman another, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... shallow breathing. The boys and girls need to be, first of all, healthy animals with large powers of endurance, elastic, buoyant, graceful, and in general well set up. These conditions constitute the foundation for the superstructure of education. The placid, anaemic, fiberless child is ill prepared in physique to attain to that mastery of the mental and spiritual world that makes for an approximation ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... everywhere, this other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakespeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had the honour of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Guemenee arrived, a little more dressed than the Duchesse de Chevreuse, but taking events still more tragically. Her terror inspired the Queen with a slight degree of fear, because of the ceremonious and placid character she was known to possess. She entered without curtseying, pale as a spectre, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sweetness of seeming good-nature. Her large blue eyes, on fit occasions, became affectionate and caressing. But if any one dared to wound or ruffle her pride, gainsay her orders or harm her interests, her countenance, usually placid and serene, betrayed a cold but implacable malignity. Mrs. Grivois entered the cabinet, holding in her hand Florine's report of the manner in which Adrienne de ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing the third—and all three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... stores aboard." If anything could astonish the Trade at this late date, one would almost fancy that the apparition of Silas Q. Swing ("very happy to meet you, gentlemen") might have started a rivet or two on E11's placid skin. But she never even quivered. She kept a lieutenant of the name of D'Oyley Hughes, an expert in demolition parties; and he went aboard the tramp and reported any quantity of stores—a six-inch gun, for instance, lashed ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat, remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the world on ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a whisper of war, nor anything visible except the thin, pale line like a striation on the distant hills. Then a far-off sound of thunder is heard. It is a gun. A faint puff of smoke is pointed out to us. Neither the rumble nor the transient cloudlet makes any apparent impression on the placid and wide dignity of the scene. Nevertheless, this is war. And war seems a very vague, casual, and negligible thing. We are led about fifty feet to the left, where in a previous phase a shell has indented a huge hole in the earth. The ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... over her, longing to share his feelings with her. But she remained sunk in her placid sleep, and as he stood, he became conscious of a different sensation. He had never seen her face—except convulsed by weeping—when it was not under full control. Was it because he had stared so long at it, or was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... probably very prosaic out there, the same as it is anywhere, most of the time. It was a peculiar combination of circumstances that plunged us into such a maelstrom of adventure. And yet—I don't see why you should hope for such a placid courtship for them. It took just that ordeal to bring out your really fine points. They were there all the time, dear, but I might never have known they were there. Why, I've lived over those few days, step by step, a hundred times! The wreck, the celebration at Wolf River—" she paused and shuddered, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... inspiring strains of McAllister's violin, while Peter sat in a corner in constant dread of being accidentally sat down upon. Fred, in another corner, looked on, laughed, and was caressed furiously by the nine dogs. Mrs Sudberry talked philosophy in the window, with grave, earnest Mrs McAllister, whose placid equanimity was never disturbed, but flowed on, broad and deep, like a mighty river, and whose interest in all things, small and great, seemed never to flag for ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne |
