"Placable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Godfrey, and allowed his army to encamp near Constantinople. Shortly after, however, the emperor made a move indicating treachery. Godfrey at once sounded the trumpets and prepared to assault the city; but when Alexius quickly sought peace, the placable duke accepted his explanations and assurances of friendship. Then Alexius entertained Godfrey with unheard-of splendor, and soon thought so highly of the knight as to adopt him as a son, according ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... enemies; why should we fear?" asked Charles, the elder brother, a man of placable temperament, a fine worker with the axe or plough, a man of indomitable industry, endurance, and patience, but one who had never shown any desire after adventure or the chances of warfare. He was ten ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a placable and inoffensive man, then, the malignants of the petty burgh (it was scarce bigger than a village) would have fastened on his character simply because he was above them. No man has a keener eye for behaviour than the Scot ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... exaggeration was no longer the same; the remorseful gloom in which he had been habitually steeped had changed into a fatigued, yet haughty, fastidiousness more in keeping with his fashionable garments. He was more peaceful, yet not entirely placable, and, as he sat down at a side table and pulled down his striped cuffs with his clasped fingers, he cast a glance of critical disapproval on the general company. Nevertheless, he seemed to be furtively watchful of his effect upon them, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... glorious gain; In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives: By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; Is placable—because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress; Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. —Tis he ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... contrition and appeal—an outflung hand instantly withdrawn; this was not a woman whose susceptibilities were to be touched by such means; even now, beneath her ostensible generosity, one divined a nature cold and little placable. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... without Arrogance; gay, without Levity; polite, without Affectation; charitable, without Ostentation; religious, without Formality; affable, without Meanness; generous, without View; and hospitable, without Reserve: In their Converse, easy; in their Dealings just; placable in their Resentments, in their Friendship steady:—They have neither the volatile Airyness of the Frenchman, the stated Gravity of the Spaniard; the supicious Jealousy of the Italian; the forbidding ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... lad's faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... asks from man nothing but goodness; the true sacrifices are those of the heart and conduct. Man's intercourse with God is to be kept up as that of an affectionate human relationship, into which no motives either of force or of commerce enter. Although God is so just and holy, he is perfectly placable, and ready to greet the approaches which are made to him. It is absurd to spend so much money and toil on sacrifice, when the happiest relations with God can be attained so much more simply. God forgives without any sacrifice; his love and his desire to meet with ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... with the motion of the sails, I fell asleep, but was awakened at one o'clock, Monday morning, by a shower of rain. I found myself compelled to go down into the cabin, where I slept very soundly, and awoke with a very good appetite at breakfast time, my nostrils, the most placable of all the senses, reconciled to, or ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cruel! what has been his gain by making unhappy a creature who hoped to make him happy! and who was determined to deserve the love of all to whom he is related! —Poor man!—but you will mistake a compassionate and placable nature for love!—he took care, great care, that I should rein-in betimes any passion that I might have had for him, had he known how to be but commonly grateful or generous!—But the Almighty knows what is best for ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... removal to Ipswich, then known as Agawam, may have seemed desirable. Dudley, who was some thirteen years older than the Governor, and whose capacity for free speech increased with every year, had criticised sharply the former's unexpected removal to Boston, and placable as Winthrop always was, a little feeling had arisen, which must have affected both families. The first open indication of Dudley's money-loving propensities had also been made a matter of discussion, and was given "in some bargains he had made with some poor members of the same congregation, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... definitely in your own mind, have you, Hardwick?" was the placable rejoinder. "I'm sorry—right sorry. I've been hoping that you had learned your lesson—you and your tribe. I came to town this evening prepared to show you a decent way out of your troubles, so far ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... man of letters, a good Churchman, and a good citizen, brimful of likes and dislikes, and waving his red beard often as a flag of battle in many a hot skirmish, especially with J.R.G., but always warm-hearted and generally placable—except in the case of James Anthony Froude. The feud between Freeman and Froude was, of course, a standing dish in the educated world of half a century ago. It may be argued that the Muse of History has not decided the quarrel quite according to justice; ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... effectually checked any attempt at familiarity on the part of those who might be her associates in her present situation, but could not be well termed her equals. She was by nature mild, pensive, and contemplative, gentle in disposition, and most placable when accidentally offended; but still she was of a retired and reserved habit, and shunned to mix in ordinary sports, even—when the rare occurrence of a fair or wake gave her an opportunity of mingling with companions of her own ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... they retorted his wit, or defended themselves successfully against his satire. In dispute he was eager, fierce, unsparing, and often precipitated himself into angry discussions with the Council, which, however, always ended in peace and good humor—for he was as placable as passionate. On one occasion he flew into his own room in a storm of passion, and having cooled and come to himself, was desirous to return; the door was locked and the key gone; his fury overflowed ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... good i' the main, Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, 110 But rougher than His handiwork, be sure! Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, And envieth that, so helped, such things do more Than He who made them! What consoles but this? That they, unless thro' ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... to them, and addressed his chatter thitherward, and stretched out his long, lean arm and black hand between the bars, as if claiming the grasp of any one friend he might have in the whole world. He was placable, however; for when the keeper called him in a gentler tone, he hobbled towards him with a very stiff and rusty movement, and the scene closed with their affectionately hugging one another. But I fear the poor monkey will die. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... honorable father is not placable, where will my Elder-Brother shelter the Beauty whom he has carried away? Have you come to some arrangement ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... Poor Lady Grange! Quarrelling with her husband one day, on his return from London, where pretty Fanny Lindsay, who kept a coffee-house in the Haymarket, had bewitched him, she never knew peace again. Her temper, never very soothing or placable, got entire possession of her life, and she rained stormy gusts of passion on her guilty lord. He trembled and endured, till he found a razor concealed under his wife's pillow, and then he determined to remove ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... ministers. His temper and his understanding, eminently fitted him to act as mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous in his dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a timeserver in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in every way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the religious and the worldly enemies ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... story. Her eyes were large and bright as those of the bison-ox, and her hair black and braided with beads, brushed, as she walked, the dew from the flowers upon the prairies. Her temper was soft and placable, and her voice—what is so sweet as the voice of an Indian maiden when tuned to gladness! what so moves the hearer to grief and melancholy by its tones of sorrow and anguish! Our brother has heard them—let him say if the birds ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... most competent scholar and the most appreciative critic. In despite of his rare occasional spurts or outbreaks of self-assertion or of satire, he seems to stand before us a man of gentle, modest, shiftless, and careless nature, irritable and placable, eager and unsteady, full of excitable kindliness and deficient in strenuous principle; loving the art which he professionally followed, and enjoying the work which he occasionally neglected. There is no unpoetic note in his best poetry ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... elsewhere, to oppose Bonaparte. L'Ouverture will have to yield; you know that as well as I do, Monsieur Pascal; and those are the best friends of the blacks who help to render war impossible, and who bring the affair to a close while the First Consul may yet be placable." ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... first time the beauty and holiness of his life. His death, therefore, did what his life had not done. We, misled by a false theology, imagine Paul to be speaking of some transcendental transaction in the spiritual world by which the death of Jesus acted on God's mind to make him placable; whereas, in truth, he is speaking of the simple historic fact that the death of Christ did draw men to his religion, and so to God; did, therefore, bring them to see God's forgiving love; did unite them with each other. So Paul says ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... officials were treated with such harshness that Keiki found it impossible to calm their indignation; it culminated in an abortive attack upon Kyoto. Thereupon, Keiki retired to Yedo, which city he subsequently surrendered unconditionally. But all his former adherents did not show themselves equally placable. An attempt was made to set up a rival candidate for the throne in the person of the Imperial lord-abbot of the Ueno monastery in Yedo; the Aizu clan made a gallant and unsuccessful resistance in the northern ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... was so beautiful and well placed, it drew forth glances of marked disdain from every lady within sight of it, Zoe excepted. She was placable. This was a lesson in color; and she managed to forgive the teacher, in ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... found a right tone or a right colour, or made a dexterous stroke with his brush. And, again, painters may work out of doors; and the fresh air, the deliberate seasons, and the "tranquillising influence" of the green earth, counterbalance the fever of thought, and keep them cool, placable, and prosaic. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attempt: and would have proceeded to inflict the same punishment on Raleigh himself, had not Lord Thomas Howard interposed with his good offices, and persuaded Raleigh, though high-spirited, to make submissions to the general. Essex, who was placable, as well as hasty and passionate, was soon appeased, and both received Raleigh into favor, and restored the other officers to then commands.[*] This incident, however, though the quarrel was seemingly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... placable class of "Englishmen in the West Indies," whose final departure our author would have us to believe would complete the catastrophe to progress in the British Antilles, is very impalpable indeed. We cannot feel them. We have failed to even see ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... and scraped, his mouth grinning, and his countenance wearing at the same time an expression of the most intense hatred. "We may meet again, gentlemen, before long, but perhaps you may not find me in so placable ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... can think of nothing to apprehend—no incursion of your lady friends designing to reason with the proprietor and perhaps hold a prayer-meeting on the sidewalk; no incursion of the police, no row. Everybody is placable and quiet—preserves indeed a sort of deferential attitude toward his neighbor—and not only when he comes in, but again when he goes out, salutes the dame de comptoir—the lady superintendent, that is (not unfrequently the wife of the proprietor)—who sits enthroned in a little boxlike ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... passage, but turned about, and said: "Patience, Courage, Judgment. When thou art witness to all there is in the motto. O Sergius, it may be thou wilt be more placable. I shall see to it that the doors of the Academy are kept ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Seathwaite. To what degree this prejudice of his was blameable need not be determined;—certain it is, that he was not only desirous, as he himself says, to live in peace, but in love, with all men. He was placable, and charitable in his judgments; and, however correct in conduct and rigorous to himself, he was ever ready to forgive the trespasses of others, and to soften the censure that was cast upon their frailties.—It would be unpardonable ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of his immediate return to duty; and to invite him to repair to San Domingo to have an interview with the admiral, under a solemn, and, if required, a written assurance from the latter, of personal safety. Columbus was sincere in his intentions. He was of a benevolent and placable disposition, and singularly free from all vindictive feelings towards the many worthless and wicked men who heaped ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... partly by force, and partly by solicitations, prevailed upon her to order her horses back into their quarters. He succeeded in this attempt without much difficulty; for the lady was, as we have already hinted, of a most placable disposition, and greatly loved her brother, though she despised his parts, or rather his little ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... me for my hat, and whirled R——- before it like a feather. The people in the public square seemed much diverted at our predicament, being, I suppose, accustomed to these rude blasts in their mountain-home. However, the wind blew in momentary gusts, and then became more placable till another fit of fury came, and passed as suddenly as before. We walked out of the same gate through which we had entered,—an ancient gate, but recently stuccoed and whitewashed, in wretched contrast to the gray, venerable wall through which it affords ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Count's features expressed very different sentiments from those announced by his smooth and placable speech. In their convulsive workings, and in the savage fire of his eyes, jealousy and hatred were plainly to be read; he looked like a tiger about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... crew who survived that desperate fight, many of them smarting with the wounds that they had received—and meanwhile the weather grew ever more threatening, stimulating us all to exertions of which I am confident we should have been utterly incapable under more placable circumstances. Not that there was very much to find fault with at the moment, for it was not exactly blowing hard; but the gusts, which for the last hour or more had been sweeping over us, now from this quarter and anon from that, were steadily growing more frequent and stronger, while the sky had ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... eternal justice to the terrible tales of Thebes and Argos. There is for these men no fatality save the evil nature of man, no justice save the doubling of crime, no compensation save revenge: there is for Webster and Ford and Tourneur and Marston no heaven above, wrathful but placable; there are no Gods revengeful but just: there is nothing but this blood-stained and corpse-strewn earth, defiled by lust-burnt and death-hungering men, felling each other down and trampling on one another blindly in the eternal darkness which surrounds ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... I left him, and went to seek a more placable spirit in the shape of Anthony Sparsfield, carver and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... to his great and masterly understanding he had joined the greatest possible degree of that natural moderation which is the best corrective of power: that he was of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in the extreme; of a temper mild and placable even to a fault; without one drop of gall in his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that morning he had put off their joint session, and she had not seen him all day. Her mind was now always uneasily aware of him—aware, too, of some change in him, for which in some painful way she felt herself responsible. He had grown strangely tame and placable, and it was generally noticed that he looked older. Yet he was more absorbed than ever in the details of Greek research and the labour of his catalogue. Only, of an evening, he read the Times for a couple of hours, generally in complete ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... London.[42] The hero may be called a French Tom Jones in something (but not so much as in the original phrase) of the sense in which Klopstock was allowed to be a German Milton. He has his Allworthy in a benevolent uncle-colonel, peppery but placable; he is far more plentifully supplied than even Tom was with persons of the other sex who play the parts of Black George's daughter and Mrs. Waters, if not exactly of Lady Bellaston. A Sophia could hardly enter into the Kockian plan, but her place in that scheme (with something, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... exercise a power Which is our human-nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives; By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, render'd more compassionate; 20 Is placable because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more expos'd to suffering and distress; Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. Tis he whose ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... against the perfect Conway. With ladies, indeed, Walpole succeeded better; and perhaps we may accept, with due allowance for the artist's point of view, his own portrait of himself. He pronounces himself to be a 'boundless friend, a bitter but placable enemy.' Making the necessary corrections, we should translate this into 'a bitter enemy, a warm but irritable friend.' Tread on his toes, and he would let you feel his claws, though you were his oldest friend; but so long as you avoided his numerous tender points, he showed a genuine capacity ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... pacifists be of use? Those of them whom I happen to know, or to have met, have shown themselves, in the relations of civil life, to be irritable, self-willed, combative creatures, where the average soldier is calm, unselfish, and placable. There is something incongruous and absurd in the pacifist of British descent. He has fighting in his blood, and when his creed, or his nervous sensibility to physical horrors, denies him the use of fighting, his blood turns sour. He can argue, and object, and criticize, but he cannot lead. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... a regiment or two would do more harm than good. To carry over a whole army was a business which would require much time and management. [66] While James was murmuring over these apologies, and wishing that he had not been quite so placable, William arrived at the head quarters of the allied forces, and took the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ever by ready to face the fact that he will be called a curmudgeon, if he will not ruin himself to please others, and a weak fool, if he does. Many a fortune has melted away in the hesitating utterance of the placable "Yes," which might have been saved by the unhesitating utterance of the implacable "No!" Indeed, in business, the perfection of grit is this power of saying "No," and saying it with such wrathful emphasis that the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall. She had slid away a contemptuous space: And the old fat woman, late so placable, Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. In short, a spectator might have fancied That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber, Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, Through ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... into a Cathedral, which does not want it; and this is the Prelate by whom the proposed reform of the Church has been principally planned, and to whose practical wisdom the Legislature is called upon to defer. The Bishop of London is a man of very great ability, humane, placable, generous, munificent; very agreeable, but not to be trusted with great interests where calmness and judgment are required: unfortunately, my old and amiable school-fellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has melted away before ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... mean that those who had not received benefit from the teaching of the four previous Buddhas, that even these were placable and well-disposed.] ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various |
