"Sedate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but, though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... this boy—Helen's boy, with Helen's nature strong in him, only the more sensible of his deficiencies as well as his responsibilities—humble, self-distrustful, and full of doubts and fears. Ten years seemed to have passed over his head since morning, changing him from a boy into a sedate, thoughtful man. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 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
... great impatience in his looks. I met him at the chamber door, with a very sedate countenance, and my heart was high with my purpose, and supported me better than I could have expected.—Yet, on recollection, now I impute to myself something of that kind of magnanimity, that was wont to inspire the innocent sufferers ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... learning is much worn out. Mr Hume is, I think, a very proper person for a young man to cultivate an acquaintance with.' Then he digresses to 'my passion for Miss W——t,' of whom, he assures his friend, he is 'excessively fond, so don't be surprised if your grave, sedate, philosophic friend who used to carry it so high, and talk with such a composed indifference of the beauteous sex, should all at once commence Don Quixote for his adorable Dulcinea.' We catch sight of him, at eighteen, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... vulgar rowdyism; the smugly dressed apprentice and the servant-girl in her Sonntagsputz; the pert student and the demure Buergermaedchen with her new Easter hat and her voluminous-waisted Frau Mama; the sedate school-master or shopkeeper, leading his toddling child; sour-faced officials; grey-locked and spectacled professors and 'town-fathers' discussing the world's news or some local grievance—all flocking countryward, with some Waldhaus or Forsthaus Restaurant as their ultimate ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... all, no one in the Army of the Valley went to church! The bugler blew another call, the chaplains stopped short in their sedate stride, short as if they had been shot, "Old Hundred" was not sung. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... have a little money over and above these things," proceeded Miss Peel in her sedate voice. "I am not rich, but I'll allow you— yes, I'll manage to allow you two shillings a week. That will be for pocket-money, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... mere child on a fast young man about town—or I should not have been amused. For there were times when I myself thought quite seriously of Leah Gibson, and what she might be in the long future! She looked a year or two older than she really was, being very tall and extremely sedate. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... is told 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 ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... to the treaty ground, where the people had already assembled, and where all soon seated themselves on the grass in front of the treaty tent—a large marquee—the Indians being separated by a small space from the half-breeds, who ranged themselves behind them, all conducting themselves in the most sedate and ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... cause and reason why the acolytes of Santa Maria de la Cabeza first, all the boys of the town afterward, and finally the more respectable and sedate persons, bestowed on Manuel the extraordinary name of "The Child of the Ball": we know not whether by way of applause of such vehement idolatry, and to commit him, as it were, to the protection of the Christ-Child himself; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... real horse at a trot, which horse was driven (as far as the telescope was credible) by a man! Over four years have elapsed since I saw any wheeled vehicle other than my own barrow—the speed of which is sedate (for I am a sedate and determined man, and refuse to be flurried by my own barrow). Nervousness and excitement began to play. Thank the propitious stars, two miles and more of mighty ocean separated me from the furious ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his meditations. I could have blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France, who had left these sweet old bells ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to those subjects and those methods which cast so much confusion into the mind of Mrs. Dennistoun, when practised under her sedate and middle-aged eyes. But Elinor, as has been said, did not ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... along the trail left by vice. Louise-Angelique was admirably adapted for her way of life; not that her features wore an expression of shameless effrontery, or that the words that passed her lips bore habitual testimony to the disorders of her existence, but that under a calm and sedate demeanour there lurked a secret and indefinable charm. Many other women possessed more regular features, but none of them had a greater power of seduction. We must add that she owed that power entirely to her physical perfections, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... emphasis and spirit too. She seemed to have slipped back from sedate and dignified young womanhood to mere flippant girlishness and not to have gained appreciably by the transition. Preciosa McNulty, still a girl and giving no immediate promise of developing into anything more, shared with her the over-cushioned disorder ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... she concluded light-heartedly, as she stitched the last clean ruching into the last wrist-covering, sedate sleeve, "at any rate I'll have a chance to-morrow to wear mother's gold earrings that I mustn't have on in the library. And oh, how lovely it will be to have a dinner that wasn't cooked by a poor old bored boarding-house cook or a ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... mounted his horse. "We'll take a sedate walk through the woods," he said. "Zeke, you might lead ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... what 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 them ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... vivid contrast to what he had hitherto known and seen of life that his soul was greedy for it all. To Mike these scenes were all familiar; his attitude towards them was one of quiet indifference, and he regarded Jim's rapture with the amused tolerance a sedate, elderly gentleman feels for the enthusiasm of ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... ever read them, will tell you enough of the elegant, the witty Lord Lilburne; a man of eminent talent, though indolent. He was wild in his youth, as clever men often are; but, on attaining his title and fortune, and marrying into the family of the then premier, he became more sedate. They say he might make a great figure in politics if he would. He has a very high reputation—very. People do say that he is still fond of pleasure; but that is a common failing amongst the aristocracy. Morality is only found in the middle ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was already on him in another form. A lady of fifty or thereabouts was coming up the path, refined, sedate, mistress of herself, the one type of all others most difficult to accost. All the same he must do it. He must keep on doing it till some one yielded to his suit. The rebuffs to which he had been subjected did no ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... such a leading light in Parliament, his speeches have taken a much more solid, sedate, and serious tone than they had in his early Birmingham days. They have become considerably more weighty—perhaps some of his unfriendly critics would say more heavy—than they were in bygone times. Without being open to the charge of levity or flippancy, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... Arguing requires a cool, sedate, attentive aspect, and a clear, slow, emphatical accent, with much demonstration by the hand. It differs from teaching (see Teaching) in that the look of authority is not ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the household band completed his studies, and decided to accept a naval appointment, the consternation and grief which the announcement produced at the homestead, proved how essential the presence of the half-brother had become to the happiness of the sedate stolid Enoch, and equable unselfish Jane. But the desire to travel subordinated all other sentiments in Ulpian's nature, and he eagerly embarked for a cruise, from which he was recalled by tidings of the death ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... extremity. In consideration of this eminent public service, the Barnacle then in power had recommended the Crown to bestow a pension of two or three hundred a-year on his widow; to which the next Barnacle in power had added certain shady and sedate apartments in the Palaces at Hampton Court, where the old lady still lived, deploring the degeneracy of the times in company with several other old ladies of both sexes. Her son, Mr Henry Gowan, inheriting ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... The Queen had asked for this, as a test of Swedenborg's veracity; and she became pale with astonishment when every minute particular of her interview with her brother was reported to her. Swedenborg was a sedate man, apparently devoid of any wish to excite a sensation, engrossed in scientific pursuits, and remarkable for the orderly habits of his mind. The intelligent and enlightened German, Nicolai, in the later years of his life, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man's life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... arranged, therefore, for the meeting with pistols on the following morning; and the combatants proceeded to the spot fixed on, some five or six miles, I think, from the Baths. Plowden, who, as a sedate business man was less intimate with the generality of the young men at the Baths, was accompanied only by his second; his adversary was attended by a whole cohort of acquaintances—really far more after the fashion of a party going to a picnic, or some other party of pleasure, than ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... happy that Sanin was simply astonished; her face even wore at times that sedate expression which children sometimes have when they are very ... very ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the mornings, and mostly read, or often was too feeble even for that; but later in the day his strength used somewhat to revive, and he would walk along the lanes with Flora, now growing older and more sedate, trotting by him. He was known and loved in the circle of the hills. "Oh, sir," as a poor woman said to me, with tears in her eyes, after he was gone, "I can't tell you how it was—he spoke very little of Him—but he seemed to remind me of the Lord Jesus, if I am not wrong to say it, more than ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Sartoris, who, taking Jim's advice, had followed at a more sedate pace, this was soon done; and Sylla, having rectified her toilette as far as circumstances permitted, was once more in the saddle. That she presented a rather dilapidated and woebegone appearance, nobody could be more conscious than herself; but, ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... derived from objects in the exterior world. The subjective life, that in which the soul finds the living source and the true communion within itself, is not sufficiently prevalent to impart to the establishment the permanent and sedate character it should enjoy. Undeniably, many devoted individuals are there; several who have, as generously as wisely, relinquished what are considered great social and pecuniary advantages, and, by throwing their skill and energies into a course of the most ordinary labors, at once prove their ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... commandeer the various family buckets and fiber pails. Skinny, who lived farthest from the Silvey's, came up at last with his utensil, and they set off, single file, past Neighborhood Hall and the corner grocery stores, and around to quiet, sedate Southern Avenue, beating a crude marching rhythm on the tins as they went. At the sight of the ten-foot sandhill which the excavations for the apartments had formed, John broke ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was a love, 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 ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... came, with looks sedate. The coin on her lips was ready; "I buy," quoth she, "my Love by weight, "Full grown, if you please, and steady." "Let mine be light," said Fanny, "pray— "Such lasting toys undo one; "A light little Love that will last to-day,— "To-morrow I'll ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 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 in one corner ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... holiday," said Nan, when tea was fairly begun, and her new friend was acknowledging an uncommon attack of hunger, and they were all merry in a sedate way to suit Miss Prince's ideas and preferences. "I have been quite the drudge this winter over my studies, and I feel young and idle again, now that I am making all these pleasant plans." For Mr. Gerry had been talking enthusiastically about some excursions ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a crag, a lofty stone As ever tempest beat! Out of its head an Oak had grown, A Broom out of its feet. The time was March, a chearful noon— The thaw-wind with the breath of June Breath'd gently from the warm South-west; When in a voice sedate with age This Oak, half giant and half sage, His ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... man, very sober and sedate who for years had carried the mail twice a week from a station farther up the railroad to the village. But he was not a mail-carrier now. His employer, a white man, who had the contract for carrying the mails, had also gone into another business ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... questions of the day; they read essays with a wide range of style and topic; they gave readings from popular authors, and contributed airy creations in prose and in verse to the Society's manuscript magazine. Wilkinson, the older and more sedate of the two, who wore a tightly-buttoned blue frock coat and an eyeglass, was a schoolmaster, pretty well up in the Toronto Public Schools. Coristine was a lawyer in full practice, but his name did not appear on the card of the firm ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... suppressed a sigh in saying it. She was a warm-hearted little creature with all her vagaries, and he was less inclined to reject her unobtrusive sympathy than if a more sedate or prudent person had ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... wound the foe, Need only shift and guard against a blow. 155 But none, however, can presume t' appear Within his reach, but must his vengeance fear; For he on ev'ry side his terror throws; But when he changes from his first repose, Moves but one step, most awfully sedate, 160 Or idly roving, or intent on fate. These are the sev'ral and establish'd laws: Now see how each maintains ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... along, old and young, and twice a trio—one, two young men in black, who skirmished on either side of a very sedate girl in white; one, two girls who shoved one another, and giggled, walking in step three yards behind another young man with his hat on one side, who gloried in being talked at and pretended to be rapt in abstraction. Then some children came; then a family—papa walking severely apart in ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... told of conspiring schoolboys whose heads had been turned toward a career of crime. A well-born youth who had essayed the role of Robin Hood near Strassburg and was hanged there in October, 1783, confessed suspiciously that he had been brought to his fate by the reading of bad books. The sedate authorities of Leipzig forbade the further performance of the play in their city because they had observed a sudden increase of burglary and petit larceny. An edition of 1782, which the publisher, possibly without Schiller's ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... looked at her sharply, the girl's face was so sedate that the lady supposed she was treating ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... this letter that Bayard's school life was very sedate and Quakerish. Nearly all the people in Kennett Square were Quakers, and though Bayard's father and mother were not, they had all the Quaker habits. Among other things, he was taught the wickedness of all kinds of swearing. His mother "talked so earnestly ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... Under some sedate shade trees, you are led to an old Pennsylvania stone farmhouse—the administration building, if you please. Beyond are the barns, poultry houses, nurseries and greenhouses, and a cottage which is used as a dormitory for ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... luxurious style, with carpets, cushioned seats, and an expensive paraphernalia. Many Senators and Representatives who had been initiated at their respective homes were regular attendants, and there was no lack of candidates, until a sedate citizen, enraged by the disclosure of his domestic infidelity, denounced the whole affair as a ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... were they, With gold and jewelled ear-rings gay. The best of Brahmans praised the fare Of countless sorts, of flavor rare— And thus to Raghu's son they cried:— "We bless thee, and are satisfied." Between the rites some Brahmans spent The time in learned argument, With ready flow of speech, sedate, And keen to vanquish in debate. There day by day the holy train Performed all rites as rules ordain. No priest in all that host was found But kept the vows that held him bound; None, but the holy Vedas knew, And all their sixfold science too. No Brahman there was found unfit To ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... least difficulty; I even entered on my new office; I kept the cashbook and the cash; I paid and received money, took and gave receipts; and although this business was so ill suited to my inclinations as to my abilities, maturity of years beginning to render me sedate, I was determined to conquer my disgust, and entirely devote myself to my ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... noble families in the peerage; so, at any rate, all his future associates could learn with tolerable certainty that he was forty-two years of age, married, and with eight daughters and one son. The deanery, formerly so quiet and sedate a dwelling of the one old man, was now to be filled with noise and merriment. Iron railings were being placed before three windows, evidently to be the nursery. In the summer publicity of open windows and doors, the sound of the busy carpenters was ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the surroundings in which the boy's literary talent was to develop. His father was a deacon in the Presbyterian church, a sedate, God-fearing man, with the strict severity of the Scotch Covenanter, serious in his intercourse with his family, without sympathy in the amusements of his children; he was not without tenderness in his nature, but the exhibition of it was repressed on ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... men attracted far greater admiration amongst the crowd, and pleased more the experienced eye of the warlike Knight of St. John. Their arms were polished like mirrors; their height was to an inch the same; their march was regular and sedate; their mien erect; they looked neither to the right nor left; they betrayed that ineffable discipline—that harmony of order—which Adrian had learned to impart to his men during his own apprenticeship of arms. But the disorderly train of the Lord of Porto was composed of men of all heights. Their ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Serene, sedate Flaxman, who adored the antique, who held that sculpture should be nothing if not calm and classical, was little likely to sympathize with Roubiliac, or to comprehend his close following of Bernini, or indeed to care ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... glance. She had a forward, self-satisfied air, and her mob-cap trimmed with a triple row of lace, her silk apron, and her black lace fichu were decidedly not in harmony with the idea he had conceived of a sedate, serious-minded widow. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the sunlit clearings where negroes sang as they tilled the soil. In the all-surrounding green the plantations showed like intaglios. From pleasant hillsides, shady groves, and hamlets of offices and quarters, the sedate red-brick, white-porticoed "great houses" looked easily forth upon a world which ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... a Dryad in the wood, She is not sad. Too wise the spirits are to brood; Divinely glad, They dream with countenance sedate Not melancholy. ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... to Cuba as not," she said, in her sedate way. "One place is the same as another to me. But it's ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... many an hour she spent at the old spinet drawing tender tones from the yellowed keys. The spinet had been in the family for a number of years and very proud had the Schuyler girls been of it. Kate could rattle off gay waltzes and merry, rollicking tunes that fairly made the feet of the sedate village maidens flutter in time to their melody, but Marcia's music had always been more tender and spiritual. Dear old hymns, she loved, and some of the old classics. "Stupid old things without any ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... pleasing task than Virgil, (tho' I say not the translation will be less laborious). For the Grecian is more according to my genius than the Latin poet. In the works of the two authors we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 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 ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the curate of Buckland, living at the Pear-tree Cottage in Rodden, required a pony for locomotion, which he showed with some pride to his neighbours on first buying it. It was an iron-gray, and a sedate clerical pony enough, to which he gave the name of Rumplestiltskin, after one of Grimm's popular stories; and whenever he spoke of him or to him, he gave him his name at full length. The country and some of the places round Buckland are very interesting. On the west is ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... had ceased to visit the theatres, Macklin's farce of Love A-la-mode having been acted with much applause, he sent for the manuscript, and had it read over to him by a sedate old Hanoverian gentleman, who being but little acquainted with English, spent eleven weeks in puzzling out the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... our speech proceed from such a disposition of mind as that in which we would have the judge be. Will he grieve who hears me speak with an expressionless face and air of indifference? Will he be angry when I, who am to excite him to anger, remain cool and sedate? Will he shed tears when I plead unconcerned? All this is attempting impossibilities. Nothing warms nor moistens but that which is endued with the quality of heat or moisture, nor does anything give to another a color it has not itself. The principal consideration, then, must be ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... admiration. She surrendered the Atlantic packet 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
... nearness of its location to the former Bunhill residence of the great epic poet. But modern Fleet Street exists to-day as the street of journalists and journalism, from the humble penny-a-liner and his product to the more sedate and verbose political paragrapher whose reputation extends throughout ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... of which Farmer Green's sheep never seemed to tire. They called it "Follow My Leader." And even the oldest members of the flock played it every day. Though they had grand-children—many of them—and were quite solemn and sedate, they still continued to run anywhere whenever somebody happened to ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... the orchestra was duly selected and engaged by the indulgent father from the members of the Court Band. To his delight—yet nowise to his embarrassment—Felix found himself in command of a company of sedate and experienced musicians, ready to follow the lead of his baton when it pleased him to take his place at the music-desk. Everything was now furnished for the performance, but the sense of completeness was ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... sense can bear any doubt, to follow the strongest and most poetical, as most agreeing with that character; to copy him in all the variations of his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve, in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... with scarlet satin embroidered with a monogram in gilt, had defied the bienseance of fashionable canine and feline etiquette, by flying at somebody's sedate, snowy Maltese cat, whose collar of silver bells jangled out of tune, as the combatants rolled on the velvet carpet, swept like a cyclone through the reception room, fled up the corridor. Two pretty children, gay as paroquets, in their cardinal plush cloaks, ran to the piano ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was that sedate Puritan strain in me that appealed to him, but we became great friends. We talked of many things, and most of all I loved to get him to tell of his early life. It was just like a story: thrown on the world while yet a child; a shoeblack in New York, fighting for his stand; a lumber-jack ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... on account of his make-up being an exact reproduction of THACKERAY's sketch, gave us as good a grotesque performance as I've seen for some considerable time. To see him on the ground after the fight, tearing his hair out in handfulls, is something that will shake the sides of the most sedate or blase, and among the audience that will crowd to see this juvenile show, there will be very few sedate (I hope) and still fewer (I am sure) blase. It is an excellent performance throughout. But, my dear Mr. CAROLUS HARRIS, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... 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 of the French Republic. I think it is ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Townsend's poetry; let us now see his etching. "Boyhood:" those who delight in the easy, every-day, every-hour play of boyhood, will enjoy this plate. A boy is, with a peacock's feather, tickling a child asleep in the arms of a grave old lady—so sedate have we seen grimalkin look whilst encouraging her kitten, lightly and coquettishly, to play with a ball of cotton. "The Beach" is a well-sketched coast scene, and shows Mr Townsend to have an eye for nature's scenery, as well as nature's sympathies. Very good is "The Model"—an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... peasants in the county of Waterford on repeal, and an assembly of Quakers, Methodists, and "other sectaries," as he would himself call them, in the city of Cork, on an anti-slavery occasion, with equal effect. His broad-brimmed and sedate audience were as much delighted with his elegant and pathetic eloquence in favour of humanity and natural rights, as his peasant mob were while he discoursed to them upon the certainty and glory of repeal, and declared that "they were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the horse was in full gallop over rough and difficult ground, and clutching the mane, he again vaulted into the saddle with the agility of a monkey, without once checking the speed. The fact of being on horseback had suddenly altered the character of these Arabs; from a sedate and proud bearing, they had become the wildest examples of the most savage disciples of Nimrod; excited by enthusiasm, they shook their naked blades aloft till the steel trembled in their grasp, and away they dashed over rocks, through thorny bush, across ravines, up and ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... patience. And that which embraces these two qualities is called magnanimity. And one of the forms of this virtue is shown in the use of money. And at the same time loftiness of spirit in supporting disadvantages, and especially injuries, and everything of the sort, being grave, sedate, and never turbulent. But that division of virtue which is exercised between one being and another is called justice. And that when exercised towards the gods is called religion; towards one's relations, affection; towards all the world, goodness; when displayed ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... 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 ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were brought to trial for unchastity first before the pontifical college, and then, when it sought to hush up the matter, before an extraordinary court instituted by special decree of the people, and were all condemned to death. Such scandals, it is true, sedate people could not approve; but there was no objection to men finding positive religion to be a folly in their familiar circle; the augurs might, when one saw another performing his functions, smile in each other's face without detriment to their ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... watching with gloomy forebodings the downward progress of their country, began to despair of her future fate. Such was the state of things when, on the morning of the 14th of August, 1670, several sedate, grave-looking persons were collected at the north end of Gracechurch Street, in the City of London. Others were coming up from all quarters towards the spot. As the first arrived, they stood gazing towards the door of a building, before which were drawn ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Venus' anger. At 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, and pouting that Venus should ever ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... aunt was always present at the lessons; and, knowing that she was very devout, I rejected all songs that were of an amorous tendency, and would only practise such as were unimpeachable. In my demeanour I was always sedate and respectful—full of humility, and self-accusation. When I received my money from the old lady, I used to thank her in the name of our convent, for whose use it was to be appropriated, and call her ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... crowd to feel itself well treated, Especially since it lives and lets me live; The posts are set, the booth of boards completed. And each awaits the banquet I shall give. Already there, with curious eyebrows raised, They sit sedate, and hope to be amazed. I know how one the People's taste may flatter, Yet here a huge embarrassment I feel: What they're accustomed to, is no great matter, But then, alas! they've read an awful deal. How shall we plan, that all be fresh and new,— Important matter, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... corner was listening, straining his attention in order to catch every word she uttered, and Ross again caught a gleam in his eyes which puzzled him. Before he had time to turn his wonder over in his mind they all caught the sound of feet along the walk, but this time the sound was sedate and regular, like the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... very house, which he had built. He was supposed to have retired into this country with a large fortune. But to the general surprise, after being at great cost in building himself this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved and inexpensive old age, which by the neighbors was thought all the better for his heirs: but lo! upon opening the will, his property was found to consist but of the house and grounds, and some ten thousand dollars in stocks; but the place, being found heavily ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... 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 and begun to ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... the heron; "coming splashing, and dashing, and sending the water all over a sedate, quiet gentleman, quietly fishing by the side of a pond! And a nice pond it seems too, with plenty of fish in it. It strikes me I ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... where everybody went and sat on benches in the shade of the old trees, or, if cool, in the delightful sunshine. The pretty and well-dressed senoritas cast shy glances at the young officers of the Tenth; but, alas! the handsome and attractive Lieutenants Van Vliet and Seyburn, and the more sedate Lieutenant Plummer, could not return these bewitching glances, as they were all ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... now," 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... graves, of old ivy walks and iron bars imprisoning past memories, with fragrant fumes of lilac and of elder, one could picture to oneself, as in a waking dream, two figures advancing from the corner house with the ivy walls—distinct, sedate—passing under the old doorway. I could almost see the lady, carefully dressed in many fine muslin folds and frills with hooped silk skirts, indeed, but slight and graceful in her quick advance, with blue eyes, with delicate sharp features, and a dazzling skin. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... upon Philip's arrival in his native city, he had visited his friends, and disposed of his daughter, he called upon Madame X—, she presented to him her choice for Mrs. St. Leger, in the person of Miss Arethusa Toothaker, the eldest, tallest, most sedate young ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... him by his uncle at Lisbon, and he engaged for a 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
... war, going on in Sonora between two factions for the control of the State government. Gaudara was the actual governor, and had been so for many years, during which time he had accumulated a handsome fortune in lands, mills, mines, merchandise, live stock, and fincas. He was a sedate and dignified man, much respected by the natives, and especially polite and hospitable to foreigners. Pesquiera was an educated savage, without property or position, and naturally coveted his neighbor's goods. Consequently ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... of an ancient Greek—felt no inclination to fight for the dead or the living body of his foe; and the whole party of plunderers were speedily in the saddle and on the retreat, with the exception of the more sedate personage on the bank. He, indeed, was more slow to mount, calling the man who had been knocked down "The Knight of the Bloody Nose" as he passed him; and then with a light laugh springing into the saddle, he followed the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... unmarried daughters—belonged to one of the oldest and best known New York families. The house was in keeping with its inmates. It closely resembled an old-fashioned house in Curzon Street. As I drove up to the steps a butler and a groom of the chambers, both sedate with years and exhaling an atmosphere of long family service, threw open tall doors, and admitted me to the sober world within. The room in which the guests were assembled seemed to be lined with books. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... supernormal condition, and the mild state of passivity or enthusiasm created makes him more susceptible to the influence brought to bear upon him. This is true of religious singing and chanting, from the forest gatherings of the primitive savage down to the more sedate and elaborate assemblages ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... happy people and disappointed people from talking to me. If I listened to all they had to say, I should have no time for anything else. By the way, have you heard any news from the Bannister family? That sedate Herbert is going to be married, and he intends to live with his wife in ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... if the leader uses the proper approach; and before old Deacon Hasbrook knows it, he and his good wife, neither of whom have played in nigh on to thirty-five years, will be laughing and frisking about with the rest in a way that you would have said impossible if you had known this sedate dignitary for ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... in those filled with enthusiasm, that it seemed a natural consequence in any young man possessing even ordinary intellect. Middleton, his friend, passed on without attaching himself to either party. His manners (as I have before noticed) were austere and sedate. He steadily persevered, without deviation, in his studies, though chance did not always favour him, nor crown him with the success he merited. He was a good and amiable man, and an affectionate friend; but early want of success in his academical exertions rendering ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... himself, at any rate to his ship, there is no use in recording the other events of the passage out. It was an ordinary passage, the crew was an ordinary crew, the weather was of the usual kind. The black mate's quiet, sedate method of going to work had given a sober tone to the life of the ship. Even in gales of wind ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... to give a ball in her honor at New Tavern. Mrs. Hancock was also in the city, and some fine preparations were made. There was a heated discussion. Some of the more sedate people, who never took part in gayeties, represented that this would be a most inopportune time for such a revel when the country was in the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... examination will not be stirred up in many minds by the name of Darien. In truth that name is associated with calamities so cruel that the recollection of them may not unnaturally disturb the equipoise even of a fair and sedate mind. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... monkeys, for they came from nowhere. You must remember, too, that elephants rarely see monkeys because monkeys are above the elephants most of the time, jumping and squealing among the trees in a manner most annoying to a quiet and sedate creature like an elephant. ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... female sex. But these signs, and all others which betoken an ardent desire to win the favor of the fair, were wanting in the Doctor's aspect and deportment. Though, as my reader knows, he was by nature a man of lively temper, he was now grown more sedate than he had ever been before; and instead of attiring himself more sprucely than of old, he neglected his apparel to such a degree, that, although few would have noticed the untidy change, Statira was filled with continual alarms, lest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various |
