"Unruffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and when the trees were swaying on the earth they were also swaying in the water, and when they quivered on the earth they seemed to quiver in the water; as they stood in the still air motionless, then every needle of the pines was painted distinctly on the smooth, unruffled surface, and the straight trunks of the trees standing like rows of pillars reaching afar off into infinity. In the middle of the lake the water in the daytime reflected the sun, and in the morning and the evening the glories of its rising and its setting; at night ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... them clerks taking bills of lading from a merchant. Who could have imagined that the giving and receiving of Denunciations, Arrest-orders, and Death-warrants—the providing of its doomed human meal for the all-devouring guillotine—could have been managed so coolly and quietly, with such unruffled calmness ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... and serene. The stars shone with their brightest lustre. The sea extended with an unruffled surface. The vessel moved swiftly, at no great distance from the shore, under the regular sweep of the rowers' oars. Yet little way had been made when there came a disastrous change. A signal was given, and suddenly the deck over Agrippina's cabin sank in, borne ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... blood which Ovid had once seen on Benjulia's stick, were on his hands now. With unruffled composure he looked at the horrid stains, silently telling ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the other feller lashed the poor chap—han's an' feet—and so kep' him from goin' overboard. But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all. When they was rescued from the Posy Lass, her decks awash and her slowly breakin' ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... grim wall of granite that stood sharp-edged to withstand them. It was curved like a scimitar, that rock, and within its curve there slept, when the tide was low, a pool. When the tide rose the waters raged and thundered all around the rock, but when it sank again the still, deep pool remained, unruffled as a mountain tarn and as ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... master, Wainamoinen, Guided home his willing vessel; And the blacksmith, Ilmarinen, With the lively Lemminkainen, Led the mighty host of rowers, And the war-ship glided homeward O'er the sea's unruffled surface, O'er the mighty waste of waters. Spake the reckless Lemminkainen: "Once before I rode these billows, There were viands for the heroes, There was singing for the maidens; But to-day I hear no singing, Hear no songs upon the vessel, Hear no music on the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... it galled him, and he laid it off only in Marta's presence. With her, his growing sense of isolation had the relief of companionship. She became a kind of mirror of his egoism and ambitions. He liked to have her think of him as a great man unruffled among weaker men. In the quiet and seclusion of the garden, involuntarily as one who has no confidant speaks to himself, reserving fortitude for his part before the staff, while she, under the spell of her purpose, silently, with serene and wistfully listening eyes, played ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... said Paul. There was a span of awkward silence. "Well," said he, with a wan smile, "we're facing, not a political, but a very unimportant party situation. Don't suppose I haven't a sense of proportion. I have. What for me is the end of the world is the unruffled continuance of the cosmic scheme for the rest of mankind. But there are relative things to consider. You have to consider the party. I'm sort of fly-blown. Am I any use? Let us talk straight. Am I ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... teems with instances of unruffled patience in the pursuit of experiments. When he feels thoroughly impressed with the possibility of accomplishing a certain thing, he will settle down composedly to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... often faced death, and ain't afraid of it; but the unruffled face and the cruel smile of that man made my flesh creep on my bones, as I thought of what Rube and I had got to go through the next day. And now," Seth said, breaking off, "it's getting late, and I haven't talked such a heap for years. I ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... us of the narrow limits of the power of death. Love lives through death, memory lives through it. Christ has lived through it and comes up from the grave, serene and tender, with unruffled peace, with all the old tones of tenderness in the voice that said 'Mary!' So may we be sure that through death and after it we shall live and be ourselves. We, too, shall show ourselves alive after we have experienced the superficial change ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... came over him. He rose awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts, and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes out of these crucial moments unruffled. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Hafiz was an Epicurean without the atheism or the despair of Epicurus. The roses in his feast are ever fresh and sweet and there is nothing of bitterness in the perennial fountain of his Delight. This unruffled serenity, this joyful acceptance of material existence and its pleasures are not in the Persian poet the result of the carelessness and shallowness of Horace, or the cold-blooded worldliness and sensuality of Martial. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... he went on, in an unruffled voice, "do you send what remains in my cellar of the vintages we have been drinking, to the horse of my ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... left her again anchored in the very narrowest part of the channel, still some ten miles below the fort. No sign of human presence had been discovered by those on board, no sound came from the solemn forests. Shy water-fowl swam fearlessly on the unruffled current that gurgled against the schooner's bow, and for aught their senses could discover, her people might have been the sole occupants of that ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the canes. The fugitives, glad of an opportunity to rest their laboring lungs, squatted down with their backs against the cliff and congratulated themselves on having got rid of such perilous attentions. But Grom's sagacious eyes searched the cliff face anxiously, without neglecting to watch the unruffled water. If that water was so dreaded that even the mighty herd of their pursuers durst not approach it, surely its smiling surface must hide some peril of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was Jane's unruffled reply. "But just as much. I didn't absolutely refuse you, when you asked me the other day, partly because I saw no other way of stopping your tiresome talk—and your unattractive way of trying to lay hands on me. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... swiftly made aware of her mistake, for Geoffrey merely pursued his intention of searching the pockets of the coach, and when he emerged from it he came, hat in hand, toward the ladies with face more calm and unruffled ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... and wondering if women were never happy unless they were chasing after fashion. The elder Cameron was evidently not of his wife's way of thinking, but she let him go on until he was through, and then, with the most unruffled mien, suggested that his dinner would he cold. He was accustomed to that, and so he did not mind, but he hurried through his lonely meal to-night, for Wilford was home, and the father was always happier when he knew his son was in the house. Contrary to his usual custom, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... every beauty; the zephyrs whispered softly through the trees, which now began to shed their leafy honours; a solemn silence reigned: and to a happy mind an evening such as this would give serenity, and calm, unruffled pleasure; but to Montraville, while it soothed the turbulence of his passions, it brought increase of melancholy reflections. Julia was leaning on his arm: he took her hand in his, and pressing it tenderly, sighed deeply, but continued ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... the entire corps of cadets was as placid and unruffled as ever when the two battalions marched to ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... on, unruffled, in his great voice, as if I had not spoken: "Many names have been mine through the uncounted eons—many names. In this flesh men ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Webb, with unruffled calm, even while uplifting a hand in quiet warning. "We will consider that, if need be, on your return. Meantime, if you desire, I will receipt to you for the post fund ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... occasional laugh of a man, the silvery gurgle of a woman. The royal military band was playing in the stand near the edge of the great circle. There was gaiety, comfort, charm and security about everything that came to his eyes and ears. Was it possible that this peace, unruffled, was so near ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the probability of having to carry it in buckets from the creek for the house, and to obviate such drudgery he shrewdly exercised his wit. A thoughtful, designing person is Tom—ever ready to accept the inevitable, with unruffled aboriginal calm, and just as willing—and as competent, too—to assist weary Nature by any of the little arts which he, by close observation of her moods, has acquired, or the knowledge which has been handed down ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... to estimate her, as she thought, at her full value. That loss seemed to her the greatest of all; worse than that of the Earl; worse even than that of her father. Never more should she experience that tender love, that wise patience, that unruffled serenity, which she had always known from Hilda. Never more should she possess one devoted friend—the true and tried friend of a life—to whom she might go in any sorrow, and know and feel that she would ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that I must compel Brigitte to speak at any price. In vain I tried to think of some means of forcing her to enlighten me; for such power I would have given all I possessed. What could I do or say? She sat there calm and unruffled, looking at me with sadness. I heard the sound of the horses' hoofs on the paving as the carriage drew out of the court. I had merely to turn my hand to call them back, but it seemed to me that there was something irrevocable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... prayers," she returned, quite unruffled, "but I am afraid, Mr. Floyd, yours are merely a pretty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Blanche, she made her impression at first sight, and so long as the skies were clear, and the atmosphere unruffled, the sunbeam would continue to gild, to charm, to be worshiped. But if the time of darkness and affliction came, the gay sunbeam held aloof, while the poor icicle, melted from its seeming coldness, was ever ready to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... persons, but those who have had to do with him in literary matters are aware that no pose was ever more preposterous. When he has acted as the literary expert of the Fabian Society he has considered every criticism with unruffled courtesy, and dealt with the many fools who always find their way into extreme parties, not according to their folly, but with the careful consideration properly accorded to eminent wisdom. The business of examining over a hundred marked proofs of a document ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... then die. There is nothing in entomology so beautiful as a well-busked trout or salmon fly. And then it is comparatively indestructible. Take a natural May Fly and squeeze it in your hand. It is reduced to a pulp. Try the same experiment with an artificial one, and its plumage remains unruffled—which is more than you do, since the chance is that you will have to employ a surgeon to extract the hook from ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... a choking deep in the throat. Bauer was dead. He had paid the last great penalty. Blaine, still cool and unruffled, continued his search until he was in possession of all the two men had that was worth the trouble of taking. Among these were maps, air-craft photos of the Allied trenches and one valuable map the communicating transport and railway lines behind the new Tlindenburg ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... as he spoke to an opening ahead of us, which revealed a beautiful little lake, whose unruffled surface was studded with picturesque bush-clad islets. Water-fowl of many kinds were swimming about on its surface, or skimming swiftly over it. It seemed so peaceful that I was led to think of it as a ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... who knew better. This was a thing to take away a woman's breath, that she should grow the more glorious for her shame. Party feeling had been stormy, like crossing tides, between those who held Baldassare for a gull and those who resented Vanna's unruffled brows. But now there was but one party. It was very well to hoodwink an old skinflint; but, by the Mass, not honest to flaunt your methods in the world's face. And since our own dignity is the skin upon which we rely for all our protection, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... who she will please," the woman said, standing before her visitors with the most unruffled face ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... delightful to listen to the minister. I had never known him more sweetly disposed and more calm than on this occasion. He was unruffled by the presence of one anxious thought. Ah, how different would he have been if he had really proved to be my coach acquaintance! How I despised myself for the one unkind half suspicion which I had entertained so derogatory to the high character of the saint. But it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... place in the weather. As the sun rose next morning the fog gradually lifted, and they were able to see where they were. Their head pointed west; far away on their left could be seen a low line of coast. Not a sail was in sight, and indeed sails would have been useless, for the water was still unruffled by a breath of wind. The anchors were at once got up and the oars manned, and the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... party at the Savoy Restaurant. Penelope felt a little shiver when she saw him coming down the stairs. Somehow or other, she had dreaded this meeting, yet when it came, she knew that it was a relief. There was no change in his manner, no trace of anxiety in his smooth, unruffled face. He seemed, if possible, to have grown younger, to walk more buoyantly. His eyes met hers frankly, his smile was wholly unembarrassed. It was not possible for a man to bear himself thus who stood beneath the ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knew very well what was implied in following such a man as Starr King, but he was so little concerned with anything so comparatively unimportant as self-interest or so unessential as personal success that he was unruffled and calm. He indulged in no illusion of filling Mr. King's place. He stood on his own feet to make his own place, and to do his own work in his own way, with such results as came, and he ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... speaking. He had grown so used to the change in the girl since the time when he had prevailed upon Glenn to loosen the rein upon her, that the even stream of their intercourse had been unruffled. He had passed from teacher to friendly guide, from guide to good comrade; but here he was suddenly ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... that time he was an obscure man, known only for a witty speaker at street corners and in Park demonstrations. He had, with an assumed truculence and fury, cold logic, an universal gentleness, an unruffled courtesy, and yet could never close a speech without being denounced by a journeyman hatter with an Italian name. Converted to socialism by D..., and to anarchism by himself, with swinging arm and ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... Macbean, after a pause; and in the dead dark he went on to relate the frank and humble history of the hole, from its inception to the crooked climax of that bitter hour. A braver confession Fergus had never heard; its philosophic flow was unruffled by the more and more scornful interjections of the ungenerous cashier; and yet his younger countryman, who might have been proud of him, hardly listened to a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... pages of the fourth chapter of the last volume which he published. Every line of this answer, which is transcribed below, breathes the spirit of Him who, when he was reviled, reviled not again—the spirit of forbearance, of generous forgiveness, of magnanimity, of unruffled dignity. Buckle had learned, indeed, from his own investigations, that he who would elevate mankind must expect, not only its indifference to his labors, but its positive abuse. He knew, that the individual ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... of a philosophic disposition, and realized that one must not expect too much. Having made a handsome profit, he felt that he ought to be content, and bear a certain amount of suspicion and contumely with unruffled good-humor. For all that, he found it disagreeable to be looked upon as a trickster, and it was worse when his disgusted associates used more offensive ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... me 'Pet.'"—for it was thus he called his violin, which had been saved by Caesar's devotion and bravery when all else at Elk Hill was destroyed by order of my Lord Cornwallis. While this was going forward Calvert stood by silent, outwardly calm and unruffled, inwardly much perturbed. It was his pleasure and habit to sing for Mr. Jefferson or for General and Madame Washington, but it was something of an ordeal to sing before an audience. That quiet heroism, though, which was part of his character, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the unruffled speaker, "I chust said I vill come; yes; to show her a new vay to remoof, remoof? is sat English? So? A new vay ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... men to meet an emotional situation with propriety. They cannot embrace each other as women, and Frenchmen, and Germans do, and weep; a handclasp is all of demonstration that they permit themselves. For the rest, they are under bond to propriety to maintain as commonplace and as unruffled a front as stoicism can command. So, after Guilford Duncan had choked out the words: "Thank you, old fellow, and thank Mary," he turned to the table, pushed forward the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... are second natures, not first; mere shadows, we pursue them in vain; Falstaff himself has a distinct and separate subsistence; he laughs at the chace, and when the sport is over, gathers them with unruffled feather under his wing: And hence it is that he is made to undergo not one detection only, but a series of detections; that he is not formed for one Play only, but was intended originally at least for two; and the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... she spoke of the littleness of this world, and the boundless happiness that awaited true believers in the next—of the unutterable mercy of God, in removing us from a scene of trouble whilst our views were cloudless, and our hopes sure and abiding. Yes, charmed by the unruffled air, the angelic look, I could forget even my mortality for a moment, and feel my living soul in deep communion with a superior and brighter spirit. It was when she recalled me to earth by a reminiscence of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... doctor, in the most unruffled way, "no wonder the poor fellow's in such a state. Here, Mak—water—water. Let the arm sink down now, Mark, and take the light again. I want water, and I ought to have a basin and sponge. What can you get the water in? I don't want to wait while he is going back to the waggons. ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... and happiness of a family depend greatly on the order and regularity established in it. The husband, who can ask a friend to partake of his dinner in full confidence of finding his wife unruffled by the petty vexations attendant on the neglect of household duties—who can usher his guest into the dining-room assured of seeing that methodical nicety which is the essence of true elegance,—will feel pride and exultation in the possession of a companion, who ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... the good example you have set. For while many have received your benefits, all have profited by your example. Who would not gladly learn from you by what moderation one may acquire your pleasing gravity, your severity tempered with mercy, your unruffled resolution and the kindly energy of your character? Africa has within my knowledge had no proconsul whom she reverenced more or feared less. Your year of office stands alone; for in it shame rather than fear has been the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... stands out a picture of ourselves talking in a gondola on our way to Torcella. Far away behind us the smoke of Murano forms a black stain upon an immense shining prospect of smooth water, water as unruffled and luminous as the sky above, a mirror on which rows of posts and distant black high-stemmed, swan-necked boats with their minutely clear swinging gondoliers, float aerially. Remote and low before us rises the little tower of our destination. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... gradual evolution of species, a most striking instance of the perfection with which the most difficult consensual movements can be transmitted, is afforded by the humming-bird Sphinx-moth (Macroglossa); for this moth, shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... unsightly in reality, assumes ideal beauty in the reflection. The minutest things of earth and the broad aspect of the firmament are pictured equally without effort and with the same felicity of success. All the sky glows downward at our feet; the rich clouds float through the unruffled bosom of the stream like heavenly thoughts through a peaceful heart. We will not, then, malign our river as gross and impure while it can glorify itself with so adequate a picture of the heaven that broods above it; or, if we remember its tawny hue and the muddiness of its bed, let it ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hung some white or light colored cloth, making everything from the waterline up a white blank. Against this blank was superimposed, by running the film through the camera twice, a picture of the New York sky-line as seen from the Jersey shore. The unruffled surface of the water in the tank—so unlike the wavy North River—was almost the only thing to show certain of the spectators that the scene was not the real thing. In another episode of the same serial, after the German spies have caused an ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... found it deserted for the night. The boatmen had ceased their regular crossings nearly an hour before, and were quietly smoking their pipes at home. The moon was up, stars shone brightly in the serene sky, and not a sail specked the unruffled surface of the Tappan Zee. Lights twinkled on the opposite shore, and the little old town of ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... polite, always cheerful, always self-possessed. It seemed to any one who studied this phase of his character as if, in some early moment of destiny, his whole nature had been bathed in a cool, clear, and unruffled depth, from which it drew this lifelong serenity and self-control."[173] Any intelligent observer of public life must have felt that Martin Van Buren was only at the opening of a great political career. Inferior to DeWitt Clinton in the endowments which obtain for their possessor ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... hev speech with Hump Doane," answered Thornton, unruffled, counterfeiting a tranquil ease, and from the thicket drifted the unintelligible mingling of two low voices in consultation. Then ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... mean very little, just then. But Imogene's coolness was quite unruffled and again ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... creating an undulating surface, even during long-continued calms, excites the wonder of all who, never having been abroad upon the waters, imagine its surface is always smooth and unruffled unless disturbed by a gale of wind. This "tramp of the ocean waves" is beautifully described by Charles H. Brown, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... eyes; Then said, "Who art thou? and why com'st thou here?" To which King Robert answered with a sneer, "I am the king, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The angel answered with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the king, but the king's jester; thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counsellor shalt lead an ape: Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... from Flanders giving information of the outburst of iconoclasm and rebellion, or a subtly-conceived plan for the secret execution of Montigny or the assassination of Escovedo, or an order for the imprisonment—or the death—of the heir-apparent to the throne, you shall perceive nothing in that face, unruffled as a mask, by which to conjecture the sentiment or purpose of the mind. As little will he in the presence of others exhibit any signs of agitation on the reception of extraordinary news, or the occurrence of some great event. The fleet which he sent out under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... young, and judging exteriorly, you are wrong. There is recounted somewhere in the classics an altogether incredible story of a Spartan youth and a fox: the boy, with the animal hid beneath his cloak, preserved an unruffled demeanor despite the animal's tearing teeth, until he fell down and died. In the same way, young sir, no man can lose fifty-odd guineas from his pocket and remain unaffected ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... an exquisite autumn afternoon. From where they sat he could behold the line of shore on either side with its background of dark green woods. Below the wavelets lapped the shingle with melodious rhythm. As far as the eye could see lay the bosom of the ocean unruffled, and lustrous with the sheen of the dying day. Accustomed to prevail in buying his way, he could not resist saying, after a ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... chided the mayor, unruffled, speaking indulgently. "We seem to have a new war on the board! Have you forgotten, after all that has been happening in this world, that in time of war we must sacrifice public improvements and private enterprises? Go on and do ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... housewife she was, and so unruffled by the momentary haste of this rejection, that, an instant afterwards, she was tidily picking up a few leaves which had strayed from between her scissors and her apron, when she had ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... replied, still unruffled. "I quite understand. You will pardon my resuming, won't you?" And walking back to the open safe, he drew forth a small bundle of papers from a drawer. Then he threw himself into a leather arm-chair, and proceeded to untie the tape and examine the documents one by one, as though in eager ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... have hard work to prove it. And—" Bassett's eyes turned toward the window. His brows contracted and he shut his lips tightly so that his stiff mustache gave to his mouth a sinister look that Dan had never seen before. The disagreeable expression vanished and he was his usual calm, unruffled self. "And," he concluded, smiling, "I might have some ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... will, it is hoped, meet hereafter with their reward, and entreated her to observe her last requests, adding, with melancholy tenderness, "I cannot talk to my poor girl on these sad subjects." Then, with an unruffled manner and minute precision, she gave orders respecting her interment, which she desired might be performed with all possible simplicity. "Let me," said she, with an impressive though almost inarticulate voice, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... you, O Woodpecker, I observe that your feathers are unruffled by work and that there is no spot of soil upon your beak and claws. How did you manage to keep ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... point where I could again see the dugout, I was just in time to see it glide un-harmed between two needle-pointed sentinels of granite and float quietly upon the unruffled bosom of ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tall reeds to the bank of the stream. Here in the open, away from the shadow of the trees, the full moon had changed the night-time into a wonderful, silver day. Narrow above and belows the stream widened before him into a fairy basin, rimmed with reeds, unruffled, crystal-clear, stiller than a dream. The trees that grew upon the farther side were faint gray clouds in the moonlight, and the gold of the fireflies was very pale. From over the water, out of the heart of the moonlit wood, came the song of a mockingbird, a tumultuous ecstasy, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... flagged. She flitted from one want to another as naturally as she breathed and with as little consciousness of the process. Her household machinery ran no more smoothly than many another's, but Nellie met and surmounted all obstacles with an unruffled brow. Her outward calm was the result of some great inward peace. She simply had developed naturally from the girl we had known before we grew up and went away to be ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... into the body of the river. The canoe was above forty feet in length; it was propelled through the water by poles instead of paddles, and moved slowly and silently along. It was a clear and lovely night; the moon shone gloriously as a silver shield, and reflecting the starry firmament on the unruffled surface of the water, the real concave of heaven with its reflection seemed to form a perfect world. The scenery on the borders of the river appeared wild and striking, though not magnificent. In the delicious moonshine it was far from uninteresting: the banks were low and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... banks as if they had been planted for a park. The first faint touch of autumn colour was beginning to illuminate their foliage. A few weeks later the river would be a long, winding avenue of gold and crimson, for every tree would redouble its splendour in the dark, unruffled water. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... supreme. Lady Trevelyan thus describes their life at Clapham: "I think that my father's strictness was a good counterpoise to the perfect worship of your uncle by the rest of the family. To us he was an object of passionate love and devotion. To us he could do no wrong. His unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all made his presence so delightful that his wishes and his tastes were our law. He hated strangers; and his notion of perfect happiness was to see us all working round him while he read aloud a novel, and then to walk all together ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Jenkings's to dress for dinner, Lord Darcey attended me, as usual:—the coach was to fetch us.—I thought I never saw his Lordship in such high good humour; what I mean is, I never saw him in such spirits.—To speak the truth, his temper always appears unruffled;—sometimes a little gloomy; but I suppose he is not exempted from the common ills of life.—He entertained me on the way with a description of the company expected, interlarding his conversation with observations tending to raise my vanity. Notwithstanding his seeming ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... filled with water to its smooth, grassy banks, while about four miles above, it was joined by a large river flowing from the northwest, through a valley three miles in width, and distinguished by the timber which adorned its shores. The Missouri itself stretches to the south, in one unruffled stream of water, as if unconscious of the roughness it must soon encounter, and bearing on its bosom vast flocks of geese, while numerous herds of buffalo are feeding on ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... inconsolable distress.—"The letter which my uncle had written, said Edgar, announcing her death, mentioned with what patience and placidity she endured her malady, and with what calmness and resignation she met the approach of death. Her last moments, like her whole life, were unruffled and serene. She is in heaven Alonzo—she is an angel!"—Swelling grief here choaked the utterance of Edgar; for some time he could proceed no farther, and Alonzo, with bursting ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... the man who remained cold and unruffled in vital physical crises, met this second encounter with a very unformidable girl in different manner from the first. His mouth opened to reply and remained open; his eyes burned with the up-rushing flood that suffused his bronzed face, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Austrian end of the lake. The afternoon was lovely, and the panorama of mountain mirrored in the water, with picturesque villages and hamlets nestling at the water's edge, was inexpressibly grand. The deep azure of the unruffled water stood out in contrast to the dazzling snow above, and as the steamer, hugging the shore, rounded one rocky point after another, the scene was certainly, as the Italian contadino puts it, "a bit of Paradise fallen from heaven ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... passion which might break through the well-ordered sweetness of his chants. No; the Renaissance did not exist for him who lived in a world of diaphanous form, colour, and character; unsubstantial and unruffled, dreaming feebly and sweetly of transparent-cheeked Madonnas with no limbs beneath their robes; of smooth-faced saints with well-combed beard and placid, vacant gaze, seated in well-ordered masses, holy with the purity of inanity; of divine ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... administrators. Among them was remarked an elderly nobleman of by-gone days, when light and brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of some tree, occupying himself with unruffled gayety every morning in adjusting the details of his toilet: in the midst of a hurricane he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered with the nicest care, amusing himself in this manner with all our calamities, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Husband," before leaving London. The passage in this letter about Lady Townley sufficiently shows how bad my performance of it must have been, and how absolutely in the dark I was with regard to the real style in which the part should be played. The fine lady of my day, with the unruffled insipidity of her low spirits (high spirits never came near her) and the imperturbable composure of her smooth insolence, was as unlike the rantipole, racketing high-bred woman of fashion of Sir John Vanbrugh's play as the flimsy ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Something in the unruffled peace of the scene tore at my nerves. I have seldom felt so restless. It may have been the storm that made me so. I think myself that it was James's letter. The boat had been late that morning, owing to the weather, and I had not received the ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... in general. All were in good spirits—elated with the splendour of the day, the beauty of the views, and the freshness of the sea-breeze that sprang up soon after their arrival. The only one whose feelings were not absolutely unruffled was Oliver Trembath. That youth was afflicted with an unaccountable dislike to the dark stranger which rendered him somewhat uncomfortable. As for the stranger, he made himself extremely agreeable—told ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... prepared for this, and knew she had a shield in the real regard she bore her husband, for though sisterly, it was sincere. She felt its value now, for it gave her courage to confront the spirit of retaliation she had roused, and calmness to answer the whispered taunt with an unruffled mien, as lifting her white arm she let its single decoration drop glittering ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... quite unruffled, and went about for some hours lamenting the loss of the huge antarctic bird. He consoled himself later, however, by shooting a beautiful little snow petrel, which he stuffed and mounted and presented to Ben Stubbs, who was quite mollified by the kind-hearted, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... said with quite unruffled good humour, and with a smile on his face, as though such an upheaval of domestic politics were the simplest thing in the world. Though for years the insolence and the idleness of Ash had been favourite grievances with Lady Belstone and Miss Crewys, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... beware of the temptation of blinking half of the facts by reason of the clearness of our confidence or the depth of our feeling of the other half. That is always our temptation. You must have had a singularly unruffled life if there has never come to you some moment when, in the depth of your agony, you have ground your teeth together, as you said to yourself, 'Is there a God then at all? And does He care for me at all? And can He help me at all? And if there is, why ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I used to propose if I could but once see the great duke's gallery; I walk into it now with as little emotion as I should into St. Paul's. The statues are a congregation of good sort of people, that I have a great deal of unruffled regard for. The farther I travel the less I wonder at any thing: a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen custom; and men are so much the same every where, that one scarce perceives any change of situation. The same weaknesses, the same passions that in England plunge men into elections, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the other; then about ten o'clock, when the breeze came, I would paddle over to the lee of the weather side of the island (the land in places not being much wider than the Palisadoes of Port Royal in Jamaica) and fish in unruffled water in some deep pool among a number of sand banks, or rather round-topped hillocks, which even at high water were some ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... ANDERSON (quite unruffled, and helping Richard off with his coat). I think, sir, that since you accept my hospitality, you cannot have so bad an opinion of it. Sit down. (With the coat in his hand, he points to the railed seat. Richard, in his shirtsleeves, looks at him half quarrelsomely ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... embrace the opportunity of making an excursion by water. The tide served for London Bridge, and without further ceremony, Tom, Bob, and Sparkle jumped into a wherry, and were quickly gliding along upon the bosom of Old Father Thames. The smiling appearance of the day, and the smooth unruffled surface of the water, excited the most cheerful and enlivening feelings ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... I call her "Salemina," she knows, and we know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she remains unruffled under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual public comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was given her by her sponsors ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... perturbation and meet her guest with an unruffled countenance, but there was something about the bland smug countenance of Lieutenant Wainwright that irritated her. To have her first pleasant visit with Cameron suddenly broken up in this mysterious fashion, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... gazing at the brilliant and unruffled water, "greatly would this person esteem a short river journey, such as we often enjoyed together in the days when ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... true, Mr. Okada." Don Miguel's voice was unruffled, his manner almost benignant. "The old man is outside, and absolutely broken-hearted. His honor appears to be quite gone. I imagine," Don Mike continued, with a fleeting and whimsical glance at the potato baron, "that he ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... controversially slain lie thick in her streets. All the opposing forces of Church and State, of theology and politics, of philosophy and science, of literary and social and economic theory, have contended for mastery in the place which Matthew Arnold, with fine irony, described as "so unruffled by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!" Every succeeding generation of Oxford men has borne its part in these ever recurring strifes. To hold aloof from them would have been poltroonery. Passionately convinced (at ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that the water shall fall upon the crown of the head, just keeping the whole top wet with its stream. We saw two under this operation, and several others came in while we remained, to place their children in a similar way. Males and females are equally used thus, and their sleep seemed sound and unruffled." ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... imagination of the troops, was precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed. Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando, his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry |
