"Placidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which the Nonsuch rode concealed was so completely land- locked that not a breath of air stirred within it as the boats left the ship's side, the surface of the water was mirror-like in its absolute placidity, and it was only when the men began to descend into the boats, rocking them more or less as they entered them, and so sent a few ripples undulating away across the glassy surface, or when some fish stirred in the depths below, that the phosphorescence latent in the black water awakened ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... elder returned to her apartment as much disturbed as her placidity was capable of allowing. Marius had just asked his grandfather's permission to take a little trip, adding that he meant to set out that very evening. "Go!" had been his grandfather's reply, and M. Gillenormand had added in an aside, as he raised his eyebrows to the top of his forehead: ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... can catch up," said Emmy Lou's Aunt Cordelia, a plump and cheery lady, beaming with optimistic placidity upon the infant populace seated in parallel rows at ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... first few mouthfuls Kirk ate wolfishly. The doctor munched a sandwich with the placidity of a summer boarder at a picnic. His calmness amazed and almost ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... starlike eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul—But phoo! phoo! phoo! she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.—There is a Head for a painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms—those sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... corpulence such as I should never have thought the slender lieutenant of artillery capable of acquiring; his heated, sun-burnt complexion, and dissipated look, exchanged for a fresh colour and benevolent placidity; the Dutchman I had left on the Rhine stood beside me in the lobby of the French theatre. I turned to the lady: she was less changed than her companion, and now that I was upon the track, I recognised Emilie Sendel. By this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... you something, Florence," Rachael said to her sister-in-law when she was stretched upon the wide couch in Florence's room, watching with the placidity of a good baby that lady's process of dressing for an afternoon of bridge, or rather the operations with cold cream, rubber face brush, hair tonic, eyebrow stick, powder, rouge, and lip paste that preceded the process of dressing. Mrs. Haviland, even with ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... did with considerable care,—I may say, with a show of care; and then, though she did not absolutely call Clara by her Christian name, she did call her 'my dear'. Clara saw it all, and felt that the usual placidity of the afternoon would be broken by some special event. At three o'clock, when the carriage as usual came to the door, Belinda was out of the way, and Clara was made to understand that she and Lady Aylmer were to be ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... those times, drove a little trade with the natives of foreign parts in articles of curiosity and vertu, for which, I suspect, the custom-house dues were not always paid. With all his Scotch prudence, however, and with much kindliness of heart and placidity of temper there was some wild blood in his veins, derived, mayhap, from one or two buccaneering ancestors, that, when excited beyond the endurance point, became sufficiently formidable; and which, on at least one occasion, interfered ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the appearance of having a nose and two eyes. Houses of this kind have literally got a sort of expression on—if we may use the word—their countenances. Square windows give the appearance of easy-going placidity; longish ones, that of surprise. Mrs. Varley's was a surprise cottage; and this was in keeping with the scene in which it stood, for the clear lake in front, studded with islands, and the distant hills beyond, composed a scene so surprisingly beautiful that it never failed to ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... woman said as was looking for her needle in the bundle of hay," observed old Bob, with provoking placidity. "On course she is, and we is looking for her: but it's quite a different thing whether we finds her or not, 'specially when it gets dark; and if, as I suspects, it comes on to blow freshish there'll be a pretty bobble of a sea here at the turn of the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... cold water is what you want." Sophia Antonovna glanced up the grounds at the house and shook her head, then out of the gate at the brimful placidity of the lake. With a half-comical shrug of the shoulders, she gave the remedy up in the face of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... more hours and days and weeks, even months have to elapse before he can make up his mind what to do. Our haste, and what we consider smartness in business, are looked upon by the Persian as quite an acute form of lunacy,—and really, when one is thrown much in contact with such delightful placidity, almost torpor, and looks back upon one's hard race for a living and one's struggle and competition in every department, one almost begins to fancy that we ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fertility of the domestic rabbit. In consciously selecting the largest and most flourishing individuals and the best and most prolific mothers, he must have unconsciously selected those rabbits whose relative tameness or placidity of disposition rendered it possible for them to flourish and to produce and rear large and thriving families, instead of fretting and pining as the wilder captives would do. When we consider how exceedingly delicate ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... order to allow her the small luxuries which were necessaries in her condition. She would so fain have made sacrifices for them, and have lightened their cares, that the original generosity of her disposition added acerbity to her temper. All this was borne by Miss Jessie and her father with more than placidity—with absolute tenderness. I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and her juvenility of dress, when I saw her at home. I came to perceive that Captain Brown's dark Brutus wig and padded coat (alas! too often threadbare) ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... brow, as by an effort; but the trouble was too deep-seated that its placidity should at once return. He said, however, that which fitted the occasion, "That he could not have the happiness of forgiving, because she who commanded him to do so could commit no injury ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... between the icy sheets of his bed. It seemed to him they never would get warm and cosy, as he had so confidently expected. Hawkins, being a bank clerk, was a patient and enduring man. Years of training had made him tolerant even to placidity. As he cuddled in the bed, his head almost buried in the covers, he resignedly convinced himself that warmth would come sooner or later and even as the chills ran up and down his back he was philosophic. So much for ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... worth living and life worth dying at La Ferte Mace was the kinetic aspect of that institution; the arrivals, singly or in groups, of nouveaux of sundry nationalities whereby our otherwise more or less simple existence was happily complicated, our putrescent placidity shaken by a fortunate violence. Before, however, undertaking this aspect I shall attempt to represent for my own benefit as well as the reader's certain more obvious elements of that stasis which greeted the candidates for disintegration upon their admittance ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... point, by the procession of cars occasioning a stoppage of about three-quarters of a mile in length, as nearly as I could judge. His Majesty, however, entreating me not to be discomposed by the contingent uproar, smoked with great placidity, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... too continuous, too seldom relieved by spaces of repose. It is all too much of a Mazeppa ride; there are times when we pray for a good quarter of an hour of comfortable dulness, or at least of wholesome bovine placidity. The laws of such a poem are wholly determined from within. The only question we have a right to ask is this—Has the poet adequately dealt with his subject, adequately expressed his idea? The division of the whole into five parts ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Chewton Cudley had a way of looking with a slow, placid, immovable stare at anybody who showed unseemly haste. If they were told to "be quick" or to "look sharp," they would leave what they were about to gaze with a cow-like serenity at the disturber. It was quite a lesson in placidity even to watch a farm-labourer or a workman sit on a gate or a cart-shaft to eat a slice of bread and cheese. Each bite was only taken after a deliberate investigation of the sides and edges of the hunch, and was slowly masticated during a peculiar ruminating ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... and Bill dwelt largely with his books, or sketched and figured on operations at the claims. Their domestic affairs moved with the smoothness of a perfectly balanced machine. To the very uttermost Hazel enjoyed the well-appointed orderliness of it all, the unruffled placidity of an existence where the unexpected, the disagreeable, the uncouth, was wholly eliminated, where all the strange shifts and struggles of her two years beyond the Rockies were altogether absent and impossible. Bill's views he kept largely to himself. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of this opponent's intellect, but forced to admit his mistakes—the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue, the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington. Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such hate and resentment ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... unsolvable to living man. No man, his spinal cord so severed, has ever given one word or whisper of testimony as to what were his sensations and impressions. No less swift than the hatchet stroke was the limp placidity into which Borckman's body melted to the deck. He did not reel or pitch. He melted, as a sack of wind suddenly emptied, as a bladder of air suddenly punctured. The bottle fell from his dead hand upon the yams without breaking, although the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... course, but being there expressly and solely for the purpose of being caught! A little further down, the river took a slight bend, and immediately after, recurring to its straight course, it dashed down, for a distance of fifty yards, in a tumultuous rapid, which swept into sudden placidity a few hundred yards below. Having taken all this in at a glance, Frank dropped the fly into the water and raised his rod to make a cast. In this act he almost broke the rod, to his amazement; for, instead of whipping the fly lightly out of the water, he dragged ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and pluralists. The ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... he was alone with her, and his unusually agitated manner betrayed that he had been conversing upon some subject of the deepest interest. Madeleine, too, looked paler than usual, and the troubled expression which had displaced the wonted placidity of her countenance was, doubtless, owing to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... with all the placidity of her age suddenly broken up; and a curious hard excitement, dignified but dogged, ladylike but implacable—the manner of the Old Guard of the Women's Rights movement—coming upon her). Phil: take care. Remember what I have always taught you. There are two sorts of family ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... that the environment was, to my mind, unworthy the martyr, though I found the market at the foot of the statue given over, not to flowers, as the name of the place might imply, but to such homely fruits of the earth as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above all, onions. There was a placidity in the simple scene that pleased me: I liked the quiet gossiping of the old market-women over their baskets of vegetables; the confidential fashion in which a gentle crone came to my elbow and begged of me in undertone, as if she meant the matter to go no further, was even mattering. But ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Newton's beauties, languishing, and lithographed. "Newton, I suppose, like Lady Wortley Montague, is of opinion, that the face is not the most beautiful part of woman; at least, if I am to judge from these elaborate ankles. Now, the countenance of this Donna, forsooth, has a drowsy placidity worthy of the easy-chair she is lolling in, and yet her ankle would not disgrace the contorted frame of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the emotional ruin of some, and in the ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it. When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died, he exclaimed, "Heaven is destroying me!" His disciples on this said, "Sir, your grief is excessive." "It is excessive," he replied. "If I am not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Winter's Tale,' and 'The Tempest,' the three latest plays that came from his unaided pen, Shakespeare dealt with romantic themes which all end happily, but he instilled into them a pathos which sets them in a category of their own apart alike from comedy and tragedy. The placidity of tone conspicuous in these three plays (none of which was published in his lifetime) has been often contrasted with the storm and stress of the great tragedies that preceded them. But the commonly accepted theory that traces in this change of tone a corresponding development ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... placidity, conveying the impression of fate, death, repose, or immortality, which render sculpture so congenial as commemorative of the departed. Even quaint wooden effigies, like those in St. Mary's Church at Chester, with the obsolete peaked beards, ruffs, and broadswords, accord ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... rain or shine, a little blue indefatigable figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows, late for every meal. She has reached a sort of tragic placidity. Whenever she plants anything new the boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep anything for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has reached that pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she would almost say she did not mind. Anyway, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faded image of goodness, with Janet's full red lips and Janet's kindly eyes, sat as usual, whether in winter or in summer, near the fireplace, surveying with placidity the theatre where the innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the observer by his sanguine, bubbling, provoking, unreserved, quick, fiery or humorous, cheerful, even unrestrainedly gay manner, winning him by his hearty open advances where he felt himself attracted and encouraged to confidence; at other times he was all seriousness, placidity, self-possession, cool circumspection, methodical consideration, prudence, criticism, even irony and scepticism." Such is not the portrait which imagination paints of the demeanour of a court favourite. But Stockmar had one invaluable qualification for the part— he had conscientiously ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... that we should walk any further. Here are two chairs," said Sir John. There was in truth no need. He had ascertained something about which, in spite of his outward placidity, he had been ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... wage combat over this. You're right, Doubtless, as usual, Brander. I have not Your fortunate placidity of mind, And ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... the things that have been done to Mr. Larkin are contemptible and mean." There was no placidity in those brown eyes now. They flashed fire. Her face had grown pale, and she, too, had risen to her feet. "I'm a cowman's daughter, but still I can be reasonable. Our range is free range, and he has a perfect right to walk ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... his big revolving chair with a look of agitation on his face. His hands were clenching and unclenching rapidly. It was evident that something much out of the ordinary had occurred to rob him of his usual placidity. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... no longer. She knew that Hope expected to hear that she was engaged. And not with less placidity than ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the remains of her ennui with a cry like that of a dazed wild beast, a sort of yawning roar which she called "the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which would drive the blood from the excellent Crenmitz's cheeks, taking her by surprise in her torpid placidity. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... rooms would be vacated the next day. When the servant, who, like most of her class, was devoted to the good-natured, good-looking, liberal Chris, asked with some concern if the young gentleman was no better, Miss Trotter, with equal placidity, answered that it was his intention to put himself under the care of a specialist in San Francisco, and that she, Miss Trotter, fully approved of his course. She finished her letter,—the servant noticed that it was addressed to Mr. Bilson at ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience, another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks, the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way that ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... that she liked him on his own merits—and he did believe it, as his softened glance rested upon her where she sat almost facing him in her padded, wicker chair—small, white-haired, rosy-cheeked, her intelligent face radiating a kind of alert placidity which somehow made him feel ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... sympathy for my distress, but secretly laughing at it, doubtless,—that provoked me; and I was pleased to think of him waiting there still, after I should have escaped, until at last his beaming red face would suddenly grow purple with wrath, and his placidity change to consternation, on discovering that he had been outwitted. But I knew too well what he would do. He would report me to the police! Worse than that, he would report me to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... not. Let any kind critic convince me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that, if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your now restless and ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... the daily routine of life amused these votaries of fashion—nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity, except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena—one of those unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which have for ever disgraced the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was permitted to return to Beorminster, and very pleased he was to find himself once more in the vicinity of his beloved. After congratulating the bishop on his recovered cheerfulness and placidity, George brought forward the name of Mab, and was pleased to find that his father was by no means so opposed to the match as formerly. Dr Pendle admitted again that Mab was a singularly charming young lady, and that his son might do worse than marry her. Late events had ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... that something was seriously wrong with Abdulla the Dhobi. His features had lost their former placidity and wore an aspect of troubled wonder; the clothes which he erstwhiles washed and returned to their owners with such regularity were now brought back long after the proper date and occasionally were not returned at all; and the easy ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... went his way rejoicing in the possession of that peace of mind which comes to some men who let neither the joys nor woes of others break through the armament of their own comfortable placidity. Every night of his life was crowded with curious, sad and ridiculous incidents; had he let them linger long in his mind his hand and temperament would have suffered a loss of accumulative skill. That would have spelled ruin, and this particular waiter, like so many of his ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... the declaration of peace." For wares to sell they had what remained of their depleted stocks; and for customers, their friends and neighbors, who looked forward to commercial ruin, which each day brought nearer to them all. Outwardly they were placid enough, but it was not the placidity of content. It bespoke rather a dumb, disciplined acceptance by those who have had fatalism literally thrust on them as a doctrine ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a dry smile twinkling in the placidity of her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then you can ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... the Inscrutable, and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven?" Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment: and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. "Look what a little vain dust we are;" he says, smiling over the tombstones, and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks in words of inspiration almost, of "the Great ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... figure before him, till gradually,—very gradually,—that figure took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which life has but recently and painlessly departed. The limbs grew stiff and rigid—the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,—the closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised ... there was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of returning animation,—and when, after some little time, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... had not been expected till the racing, which was not to begin for two days. A faint, faint rose bloom flushed Lady Lesbia's cheek at sight of him; and Mr. Smithson gave a little look of vexation, just one rapid contraction of the eyebrows, which resumed their conventional placidity the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... window, saw his neighbor, M. Bellombre, the retired professor, making the round of his garden to see if his fruit trees were well covered with blossoms. The sight of the old man, so neat and so erect, with the fine placidity of the egoist, on whom illness had apparently never laid hold, suddenly put Pascal ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... still well. I stopped at this line and thought I'd rest and resume the work later. See what a simple, placid line it is, yet horrible to look at. It may be the last line I shall have drawn in our boy's lifetime. What malicious ignorance there is graven in its simplicity and placidity. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... "I was the beau ideal of the morbid young aesthetical— To doubt my inspiration was regarded as heretical— Until you cut me out with your placidity emetical." ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the advantages that might result as well to the health of her mind as that of her body. They had waited—a vain waiting—for the wearing out of the traces of the obdurate image; and when they thought they might take placidity as the sign of what they waited for, they first hinted, and then expressed in plain terms, the wishes of their hearts. For a time all their efforts were fruitless; but John Carr getting old and weak, wished to be succeeded in his business by George; and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... her analyse him ruthlessly; his childish lack of self-criticism, his placidity, his insatiable vanity, his almost deliberate exploitation of his personal charm, all these things she cast aside and ignored. She came then to his thoughts, and here she was baffled because she knew so little of his history. Beyond his thoughts lay that in which she was passionately ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... rarely speak with great ability. He would speak as a scribe. His habits must have been formed in the quiet of an office: he is used to red tape, placidity, and the respect of subordinates. Such a person will hardly ever be able to stand the hurly-burly of a public assembly. He will lose his head—he will say what he should not. He will get hot and red; he will feel he is a sort of culprit. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... himself, and on still better with his neighbor. The heart under his ribs was larger even than indicated by the benevolence of his countenance and the humor hovering over his mouth. Upon the countenance of his wife rested a placidity sinking almost into fatuity. Its features were rather indications than completions, but there was a consciousness of comfort about the mouth, and the eyes ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the two sides. Hence the feeling of balance. Hence (from the lack of unimpeded movement on the short side) the feeling there of 'intensity,' or 'concentration,' or 'greater significance.' Hence, too, the 'ease,' the 'simplicity,' the 'placidity' of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the placidity of the other's tone, "if you had been wiser, you wouldn't have lost your pulp-wood holdings. Oh, there's no use beating about the bush—I knew the minute Jean told me you had come in by the tote-road, that you had seen ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... touching." Was Madame de Fondege speaking sincerely? There could be no doubt of it. Her features, which had been distorted with anger when the General took it into his head to order the bottle of Bordeaux, had regained their usual placidity of expression, and had even brightened a little. "I am entirely at your service, my dear, if you wish any shopping done," she continued. "And if you are not quite pleased with your dressmaker, I will take you to mine, who works like an angel. But how ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Thackeray's haunting sense of the pathos of the dead Past and the flying Present. But will the memsahib of to-morrow take warning by the fate of Helen Peachey, who went out to India in all her bridal bravery, in all her youth and freshness? Will she escape exchanging the placidity of Fra Angelico's piping cherubim for the petulance and ring-shadowed eyes of the seasoned matron? Will she be on her guard against shrinking to the prejudices and flirtations of a coterie, dying to all finer and higher issues? Will she worship virtue ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in following. Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... unexpectedly came to the castle he started, and lost placidity. It was not at her presence as such, but at the new condition, which seemed to have something sinister in it. On the other hand, the most abrupt encounter with him moved her to no emotion as it had moved her prototype in the old ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... him, and in its kind an insult. Mrs. Hanway-Harley also became more and more instructed in this love-match so near her heart, and those difficulties which the capricious coldness of Dorothy arranged for its discouragement. The placidity of Mrs. Hanway-Harley was becoming ruffled; the hour was drawing on apace when she would make clear her position. She would issue those commands which were to fix the attitude of Dorothy towards the sighing ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... bath in the pavilion, and in that I regaled myself gladly, though there was some paltry scent added to the water that took away half its refreshing power; and then I set myself to wait with all outward composure and placidity. The chamberlains were too well-bred to break into my calm, and I did not condescend to small talk. So there we remained, the four of us, I sitting, they standing, with our Lord the Sun smiting heavily on the scarlet roof of the pavilion, whilst the music ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the placidity of Mr. Blithers came with the brief note in reply to his request for an informal conference. The Lord Chamberlain curtly informed him that the Cabinet would be in session at two and would be pleased to grant him an audience of half an hour, depending ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fire, with her hands lightly clasped in front of her; and her father, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her, made this remark with a placidity that ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... and seldom; smiles when she does speak; and looks as if nothing ever ruffled the placidity of her mind, or the even tenor of her pleasant existence. She looks all this, sitting directly opposite John Burrill, her reluctantly accepted son-in-law, for what Mrs. Lamotte cannot overcome, she ignores, and her proud calm is the result of ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... his love story, or that which in the life of such a man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote to her every week a long letter, and spent a large part of the long vacation ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... steadily with quick energetic steps, an alert and suggestive figure amidst a scene of placidity. Up the uneven plank walk he went, noting with a swift, sidelong glance the neat white house of Dibbott, the Indian agent, a house that thrust its snowy, wooden walls and luxuriant little garden close up to the street. On his left, still further west, was the home of Worden, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... could see. That was his way—he never slopped over, no matter how he felt. If ever a mortal had a firm grip on his emotions, MacRae had, and yet there was a sleeping devil within him that was never hard to wake. But his looks gave no hint of the real man under the surface placidity; you'd never have guessed what possibilities lay behind that immobile face, with its heavy-lashed hazel eyes and plain, thin-lipped mouth that tilted up just a bit at the corners. We had parted in the Texas Panhandle ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... made me turn my head. Father Antonio was mopping his brow in the doorway. Though a heavy man, he was noiseless of foot. A wheezing would be heard along the dark galleries some time before his black bulk approached you with a gliding motion. He had the outward placidity of corpulent people, a natural artlessness of demeanour which was amusing and attractive, and there was something shrewd in his simplicity. Indeed, he must have displayed much tact and shrewdness to have defeated all O'Brien's ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... rabies; venomous things such as tarantulas and centipedes, scorpions, rattlers, hydrophobia skunks. Not so many of them that they are a constant menace, but occasionally to be reckoned with. Great sprawling dry lakes ominous in their very placidity; dust dry, with little whirlwinds scurrying over them and mirages that lie to you most convincingly, painting water where there is only clay dust. Water that is hidden deep in forbidding canyons, water that you must hunt for blindly unless you ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Miss Catherine Talbot, deserve to be especially Mentioned. Miss Carter and Miss Talbot corresponded regularly for thirty years, and shared almost every secret. Not a single misunderstanding occurred to mar the placidity of their solid confidence and good will. It is a pleasure, even at this day, to look through their voluminous, rather stiff and prosy, but entirely sensible and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... gesticulatory enthusiasms of the saints at the camp-meeting. He was a thickset fellow of only medium height, and was called, somewhat invidiously, "a chunky man." His face was broad, prosaic, good-natured, incapable of any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an elementary rage or a sluggish placidity. He had a ragged beard of a reddish hue, and hair a shade lighter. He wore blue jeans trousers and an unbleached cotton shirt, and the whole system depended on one suspender. He was engaged in skimming a great kettle of boiling sorghum with a perforated gourd, ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... she said with unwonted placidity, "the world is so full of treachery that men and women ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... excitement was a strong contrast to the Major's placidity. He walked round McNabbs, looking at him and questioning him with his eyes without eliciting one remark from the imperturbable Scotchman, or awakening his curiosity in the least, to know ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... early in the afternoon, waking the torpid town into semblance of interested activity during the brief duration of its stay. But before she had disappeared over the horizon native Davao had relapsed into stupid placidity, and the Chinos had stored the meager cargoes dropped for them—print goods, cigarettes, matches, rice, a few small agongs, and, probably, a little opium. The lethargy of the tropics during the hot hours is entire and complete: the angel Gabriel himself will fail of unanimous ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen, they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better halves until they dropped down to sleep off ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... house-party. It touched everybody, affecting them in different ways according to their characters, but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly so serious. Lady Richard's alarm was the most outspoken, and her dismay the most clamorous; yet perhaps in Dick Benyon himself was the strongest fear. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... became excited, speaking of his quarrels with the Chapter; the placidity of mind produced by the quiet of the garden disappeared as he thought of his hostile subordinates. He felt obliged as at other times to confide his troubles to the gardener's widow with that instinctive kindly feeling ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of his own position compared with Wotan's, in whose hand that spear of his must fly to pieces should he break a covenant established as sacred by the runes carved on its shaft. Wanderer, a shade weary of such a berating, yet losing little of his placidity, retorts: "Not through any runes of truth to covenants did my spear bind you, malignant, to me; you my spear forces to bow before me by its strength; I carefully keep it therefore for purposes of war." ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... illustrious predecessor, and in Persius the severity of Roman satire re-appears. We could scarcely expect a man who lived under Nero, and after the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius to write with the mild placidity of the Augustan poet. Moreover, the satires of Persius were written at an early age—twenty-eight, and youth always feels acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... kind smile. As his outward placidity becomes only more pronounced, if possible, the more reason there is for excitement; and as Davidson's eyes, when his wits are hard at work, get very still and as if sleepy, the huge Frenchman might have been justified in concluding that the man there was a mere sheep—a sheep ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... way: but it is broad comedy. The philosopher knows that his wife does not comprehend him: she knows that she never will; and neither of them much cares. The husband snubs her openly for her mental defects, and she with perfect placidity accepts his rebukes. "Master," as he once complains, "of one of the finest chains of reasoning in the world, he is unable for the soul of him to get a single link of it into the head of his wife;" but we never hear him lamenting in this serio-comic fashion over his brother's ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... should we see our task But through his blunt and lashless eyes? Alive, he is not vital overmuch; Dying, not mortal overmuch; Nor sad, nor proud, Nor curious at all. He cannot tell Old men's placidity ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... situated on the borders of Exmoor and the journey from Paddington was long and slow, he was received by the Superintendent with the grave welcome and studious absence of questioning that was the rule of the house. The Superintendent was an elderly man, inclining to stoutness and of unyielding placidity. It was suspected that the Founder had taken pains to choose a man who would observe his injunction of not meddling with thorny questions the more strictly from his own inability ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... who takes business and pleasure alike with imperturbable placidity of temper, and who always uses a double-handed rod for mayfly fishing): The same to you, old blue-bag. I'll back my 14-footer against ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... of Mr. A—— tallies exactly with Miss M——'s. She, too, said that placidity and mildness (rather than originality and power) were his external characteristics. She described him as a combination of the antique Greek sage with the European modern man of science. Perhaps it was mere perversity in me to get the notion that torpid veins, and a cold, slow-beating ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... again into the streetside near the hotel. Most of the houses are pensions or boarding-places during the summer, and while the spot is much less fashionable and populous than its neighbor, Eaux Bonnes, it is instinct with a comforting placidity not easily to be attained in larger resorts. The waters are said to be specifically good for rheumatism. Both drinking and bathing are prescribed. In former times the simple rule was, the more the better; Thor himself could scarcely have outquaffed the sixteenth-century invalids. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... woods that winter, and toward spring there came a sudden, prolonged, and heavy thaw. The ice broke rapidly and every loosened brook became a torrent. Past the door of the camp, which was set in a valley, the Gornish River went boiling and roaring like a mill-race, all-forgetful of its wonted serene placidity. ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not satisfied with this. He is never altogether content unless he can, at the same time that he takes advantage of all the placidity of repose, tell us something either about the past commotion of the water, or of some present stirring of tide or current which its stillness does not show, or give us something or other to think about and reason upon, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... be bothered with looking into our spiritual state at all. We have been going on for years now following the rules that we laid down when we first realised that the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine. There has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never felt any real temptation to abandon the practice oL our religion. We run along as easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid rails. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... luminous blue. From the moment the lofty lines of the coast—our mountains now—faded, till the birds came out of the west, the Pacific Ocean justified its name. The magnificent monotony of its stupendous placidity was not broken except by a few hours of ruffled rollers that tell of agitations that, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead |
