"Calmness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is revealed in the consciousness of a divine mission. He goes steadily forward with the calmness of one who knows himself and his work. He has no fear or hesitancy. Courage, earnestness, and singleness of purpose mark His career. He is conscious that His task has been given Him by God, and that He is the chosen instrument of His Father's ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... the publication before us, almost peculiar to this writer, when compared to others who have written upon this subject in our country, is, that it handles the matter of discussion with calmness, the writer not suffering himself to indite his letters under the influence of exacerbated feelings, but wisely avoids those harsh and blackening epithets which do more to irritate the passions than to convince and enlighten the judgment. On this ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... much," she said, speaking with a visible effort and enforced calmness. "Petronelle and I were together, and they made us open all the cupboards and uncover all the dishes. They ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... echo. But it does one's moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... foreign land. The wounds inflicted in this desperate conflict continued to rankle for many years. It was long before the members of either party could discuss the question of the peace of Utrecht with calmness and impartiality. That the Whig ministers had sold us to the Dutch; that the Tory ministers had sold us to the French; that the war had been carried on only to fill the pockets of Marlborough; that the peace had been concluded only to facilitate ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anything to you dubs, just now," he announced with ominous calmness, as they shambled along wearily and shamefacedly. "I don't dare to. What I'd have to say wouldn't be fit for the ears of young ladies like you. Besides, I don't want to commit murder. But I may have a few quiet remarks to ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... just returned from his lonely retreat with his mind and nerves in a state of unnatural tension,—a sort of ecstatic clearness and calmness, which he mistook for victory and peace. During those lonely days when he had wandered afar from human converse, and was surrounded only by objects of desolation and gloom, he had passed through as many phases of strange, unnatural experience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... calmness, as they rise, The changes of that rapid dream, And note its lessons, till our eyes Shall open in the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... said something in the bitterest of bitter voices. The girls turned their backs to the ship. The girl with brown eyes began to weep. The boy in the green tunic shifted the small tripod to a new position. As he carried it, the calmness and the warmth of the air changed remarkably. There was a monstrous gust of icy wind, and warm calm, and another gust. But when he put the tripod down again there was only calm ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... Ulysses: Ajax, from the very beginning, breaks out into his exclamations, and is swearing by his Maker,—Agimus, proh Jupiter, inquit. Ulysses, on the contrary, prepares his audience with all the submissiveness he can practise, and all the calmness of a reasonable man; he found his judges in a tranquillity of spirit, and therefore set out leisurely and softly with them, till he had warmed them by degrees; and then he began to mend his pace, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Garofolo were strikingly original in their background landscapes. Garofolo (1481-1559) was a pupil of Panetti and Costa, who made several visits to Rome and there fell in love with Raphael's work, which showed in a fondness for the sweep and flow of line, in the type of face adopted, and in the calmness of his many easel pictures. He was not so dramatic a painter as Dosso, and in addition he had certain mannerisms or earmarks, such as sootiness in his flesh tints and brightness in his yellows and greens, with dulness in his reds. He was always Ferrarese in his ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... to remain with Wolfe, who had come to depend upon him in no small measure. There was something in the temperaments of the two men which made them congenial one to the other. Wolfe's restless irritability was soothed by Julian's quiet calmness, and there was in both men a strain of ardent patriotism and self devotion which ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the god of war. I can imagine Mars himself no grander soldier. Oh, my dear, what a man! Nay, I will not call him by that common name. He was something more or less than man—of another species. In the thick of the fight a lion; in his dominion over armies, in his calmness amidst danger, a god. Shall I ever see it again, I wonder—that vulture face, those eyes ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of those splendidly tough and cheerful specimens of seafaring humanity whose combined courage, hardihood, and calmness in difficulty leads them naturally into high positions of trust. He was not the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there was something seriously wrong, which could not be ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... Baker has a right to speak, and ought to be permitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if I can prevent it." The suddenness of his appearance, his perfect calmness and fairness, and the knowledge that he would do what he had promised to do, quieted all disturbance, and the speaker concluded his remarks ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... these the reptiles—all the "rolling, clinging" creatures. In the fifth era is born a creature half pig, half man; the races of men also appear (?). In the sixth come the rats; in the seventh, dogs and bats; in the eighth is born the woman Lailai (calmness), the man Kii, and the gods Kane and "the great octopus" Kanaloa. Lailai flies to heaven, rests upon "the boughs of the aoa tree in Nuumealani," and bears the earth. She weds Kii and begets a generation ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... a man who does not allow himself to be drawn into that aimless bustle of pleasure business or politics, which is called modern life because outside that life there is—just as outside those noisy Oriental cities-a desert, a calmness, a true and almost majestic leisure, a leisure unprecedented in any age, a leisure in which one may arrive at several conclusions concerning English indifference towards the ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... halfway across the top of the valley, and the gloom was deepening steadily, when there stole to me upon the calmness of the evening air, a faint smell; something quite different from that of the surrounding fungi. A moment later I got a great whiff of it, and was near sickened with the abomination of it; but the memory of that foul thing which had come to the side of the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... with the most stony-faced calmness, with utter disregard of what significance her words had. A strong, mystic wall of cold flint insulated her. Strangely it came to Shefford how impossible either to doubt or believe her. Yet he did both! Judge ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... incident for its connexion with what followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of the race? I said, with philosophic calmness, No; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman replied that he didn't see that; for that a cat might look ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... with a stately calmness, though first she seemed to choke down some obstruction in her throat. "There! the last wash has buried it, and when we landed the one with the red veins—it is covered ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of General Smith-Derrien was of his absolute calmness. The major had been excited when he heard the report of the German infantry in the woods. But when they entered the room in which sat the British general who was responsible for the retreat, as they guessed, they saw a quiet-faced man with ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... water, a hint of action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it climbed, hurried an angular figure,—that of a woman of about fifty years, whose tense expression suggested an unrest at variance with the keen calmness of that of the other faces about the streets and doorways. Not that it was feverish in its intensity; rather, it was an expression of resolution, undeviating and persistent, but not ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... last rounds for the night, Major Hawke, with a soldier's cynical calmness, enjoyed a cheroot upon the veranda, as he bade his captain of the guard take charge until his return. The Major had most carefully examined the five bills of exchange which now occupied his attention, and his mind was now busied with the dead man's golden store. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... knives and cutlasses, might, at any moment, rush into the building and destroy them,—can the female heart, we are ready to ask, endure such fearful trial? Yes: her mind was stayed by a 'courage not her own;' ... its calmness was that of a child who, in its utter helplessness, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... admonished the professor. "We'll be down in a minute, my lads. Cling to anything handy. She will bounce some, but I believe we shall not be injured." The calmness of the aged scientist would have shamed the others into some semblance of order, were it needed; but both the boys were courageous, Andy Sudds did not know fear, and if Washington White was in a panic of terror, he did not get in the way of the others ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... woods"—Strangely down, upon the weary child, smiles the great enchantress, seeing the wine stains on his white skin, and the berries in his hair. The thing is slight enough; but in its coolness, and calmness, and sad delicate beauty, it makes one pause and grow silent, as in the long hushed galleries of the Vatican one pauses and grows silent before some little known, scarcely-catalogued Greek Vase. The spirit of life and youth is there—immortal and tender—yet there too ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... would kindle the faggots. Not a speck of dust, from the ceiling down, would escape Miss Strong's eagle eyes, and oh, how she would talk about it! Well, it was done; she threw them open, and turned around in the calmness of despair. The glaring sunshine came boldly in, and danced over the dusty table, over the top of the piano, where you might have written your name, right under the stove where the dirt lay thick, all around the corners, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... girl certainly, with a face that still was his child's face, he thought. And yet, as he looked, he slowly came to the conviction that it was the face of something more than a child. The old simplicity and the old purity were there indeed; but now there was a blessed calm upon the brow, and the calmness had a certain lofty quality; and the sweetness, which was more than ever, was refined and deep. It was not the sweetness of hilarious childhood, but something that had a more distant source than childhood draws from. The colonel ate his breakfast without knowing what he was eating; ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the day, when in a garden bare, Walked the Child Jesus, wrapt in holy thought; His brow seemed clouded with a weight of care; Calmness and rest ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... With pounding heart I entered the small circular turret and mounted its tiny spiral stairs to the upper control room. But as I touched the levers, calmness came to me with these familiar tasks at ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... announced he had succeeded in restoring himself to a state of comparative calmness. He did not dress for dinner, as was his custom, nor did he stop to ask Frances Cable if she were ready to go down. He heard Jane playing the piano as he descended. She nodded to him, but did not stop and he paused near the fireplace to look at her strangely. Somewhere back in his brain there ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... meditation on serenity, in which you rise above love and hate, tyranny and oppression, wealth and want, and regard your own fate with impartial calmness and perfect tranquillity." ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... and calmness of existence which breathes throughout your letter, gives me joy; I who am yet drifting to and fro between wind and waves, am forced to envy you that uniformity, that health of soul and body. To me also in time it will be ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... doubt that the ultimatum of the South is secession or death. We of the North can not contemplate such a picture with calmness, and therefore evade it as amiably as we can. We say, it stands to reason that very few men will burn their own homes and crops, yet every mail tells us of tremendous suicidal sacrifices of this description. The ruin and misery which the South is preparing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... purest and simplest form, and when we are inclined to think that the crimes and the partial failure of the Revolution discredit its principles, it is well to remember that the man who believed in them most systematically, expounded his belief with perfect calmness and confidence as he lay under sentence of death from a ...
— Progress and History • Various
... to Italy, or in other words the day of decision, was left in his own hands. The parties in Rome meanwhile sat and waited. The Optimates indeed looked forward to the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative calmness; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy, which they saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but could only gain. The democrats on the contrary waited with painful anxiety, and sought, during the interval still allowed to them by the absence of Pompeius, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,—due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black reflections ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... bore little sign of their invasion of it, and, drawing a deep breath, Dorothy schooled herself to calmness as she awaited Moran, who was walking down the hall toward the entrance to the room. A plan had flashed into her mind by means of which she might save both Wade and herself, if he and her heart would only be quiet. The unruly heart was beating so violently that it shook her thin dress, and ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... coolness; but the real work is rather a matter of skill than strength. Not only have boys of five or six stone become successful horse-tamers, but ladies of high rank have in the course of ten minutes perfectly subdued and reduced to death-like calmness ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... however much my lost heart might cry out for its happiness and honor. Leaning forward, I told the pompous driver that Miss Leighton had been taken very ill, and bade him drive back; and then with the calmness born of utter despair and loss, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... like one guilty. His calmness was terrible to her. She seemed to feel in herself all the anguish which he ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... of all faith, all trust, all loyal daring for the sake of duty and of God! Look at His patience. See how He endured the cross, despising the shame. See how He endured—how patience had her perfect work in Him—how in all things He was more than conqueror. What gentleness, what calmness, what silence, what infinite depths of Divine love within Him! A heart which neither shame, nor torture, nor insult, could stir from its Godlike resolution. When looking down from that cross He beheld none almost but enemies, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a cold, calm mask, but behind his gray eyes lay anything but calmness. Ku Sui's easy assumption that the information as to Eliot Leithgow's whereabouts would be forthcoming from his lips, puzzled him, brought real anxiety. Torture would probably not be able to force his tongue to betray his friend, but there were ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... raiment thou shalt happy be." Heabani listened to the words that came From Samas, and his brow was lit with shame To hear the god of war urge him to go To earthly happiness—mayhap to woe; But he within his cave now listless turns When Samas ceased; then to his rock returns, And seats himself with calmness on his brow; His thoughts in happy memories now flow, And he recalls the blissful days of yore When he as seer lived on Euphrates' shore, As the queen's bard oft tuned a festive lay, While soft-eyed maidens dance ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... hard one, and it was not yet over. She was a challenge to all that he tried to master. He wondered why there was a smile in her lovely, soft eyes, while in his own there must have been the hardness of steel. And he wondered long afterward how she could have possessed the calmness to say: ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... stockbroker, and, by the methods peculiar to that mysterious profession, he had captured a sufficiency of money to enable him to regard the future with calmness and his fellow-creatures with condescension—perhaps the happiest state to which ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... and guns? One need not be a Jingo; one can hate war and love peace with all one's heart and yet rejoice that the flag symbolizes authority—the ability to back up a decision without which the mind itself cannot decide in calmness and impartiality. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... to respect the flag of any friendly nation or the just rights of its citizens, nor to exact the like treatment for our own. Calmness, justice, and consideration should characterize our diplomacy. The offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of friendly arbitration in proper cases should be adequate to the peaceful adjustment of all international difficulties. By such methods we will make our contribution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... then)—and the figure, Booth, the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bareheaded, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal's, flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back of the footlights—turns fully towards the audience, his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... fellow started, like a man suddenly awakened from a happy dream to face the most unwelcome of realities. Impelled by that natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst, he went toward the buffet, affecting a calmness which it cost him a great effort to maintain. As he went along he mechanically gave money to each of the ladies whom he knew, moving off without waiting for their thanks or stopping to choose anything from their tables. He seemed to feel the floor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... made without enthusiasm; not a cheer greeted Senator or Assemblyman charged with the task of putting the aged Senator in nomination. Pulcifer of Alameda, who made the nominating speech in the Assembly, was received with icy calmness. Even when the Alamedan referred to the veteran Senator as "one whose hair has grown white and whose eyes have grown dim in the service of his country," not so much as a ripple of applause stirred ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Doctor Dormann (taking his annual holiday, this year, in England). The doctor gives his arm to the woman of all women whom Jack worships and loves. My kind and dear aunt—with the old bright charm in her face; the firm friend of all friendless creatures—why does my calmness desert me, when I try to draw my little portrait of her; Minna's second mother, standing by Minna's side, on the greatest day ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... the carriage at the door in fifteen minutes, exactly," and she drew out her little jewelled watch, and gave him the time with a smiling, invincible calmness. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... counsel in his ruthless, selfish mind. Not a thought of others' wo suggested itself—not one doubt or hesitation held him back from trampling on a trusting and devoted heart. "But it may still not be true!" The hope, faint as it was, aroused him to exertion. He rang the bell, and with his usual calmness of manner and voice, said that he should not want his horse that day, but that he might probably have to go away for a short time, and gave directions to have every thing ready for his departure in an hour. He then walked out into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... find no words of comfort in the bewildered glimpse at his sorrow and agitation. Richard spoke with calmness and good sense, and his replies, though brief and commonplace, were not without effect in lessening the excitement and despondency which the poor doctor's present mood had ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... enough to vanish. And, with that, a touch of masculine softness, a sort of regard for appearances surviving his degradation: "You might behave decently at the last, Eliza." But there was no softness in the sallow face under the gala effect of powdered hair, its formal calmness gone, the dark-ringed eyes glaring at him with a sort of hunger. "No! No! If it is as you say then not a day, not an hour, not a moment." She stuck to it, very determined that there should be no more of that boy and girl philandering since the object of it was gone; angry with herself ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... o'clock by a man they brought down from Oxford, and who stayed the night in the house," she repeated with great calmness. "There's no sense in lashing yourself into a rage. I've seen the bride, and spoken ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... Her calmness was rather ominous, and I feared I had bungled. Yet my meaning should have been transparent even to a child. To make sure she had not ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... but the others were calm with what is sometimes called the calmness of despair. The Lamb was gone—the Lamb, their own precious baby brother—who had never in his happy little life been for a moment out of the sight of eyes that loved him—he was gone. He had gone alone into the great world with no other companion and protector than a carpet with ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... at the hole with the swift clutch of a miser visiting his treasure-chest. The woman surveyed him with pleasure and with pride in her achievement, and with the calmness of routine she fitted a bar across the door of the cupboard where it opened into the envoy's room. Udal was fumbling already with the strings of a packet, his eyes searching the ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... I begin by friendly conversation to place my patient in a condition of absolute calmness and quiescence. I also try to win his confidence by appealing to his own volitional effort to aid me in obtaining the desired clad. I impress upon him that hypnosis in his condition is a benign agency, and far from subjugating his mentality, it becomes intensified ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... pause he extended his right hand majestically toward the altar, at the same time fixing his gaze on the alcalde. He slowly crossed his arms without uttering a word, then suddenly passing from calmness to action, threw back his head and made a sign toward the main door, sawing the air with his open hand so forcibly that the sacristans interpreted the gesture as a command and closed the doors. The alferez became uneasy, doubting whether he should go or stay, when ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... presented himself, Jonas got up from his chair, and swearing a great oath, caught it in his grasp, as if he would have felled Tom to the ground with it. As he most unquestionably would have done, but that his very passion and surprise made him irresolute, and gave Tom, in his calmness, an ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... and departed from Brita's cheeks. And still she was strangely self possessed. She even wondered at her own calmness. Alas, she did not know that it was a calmness that is more terrible than pain, the corpse of a forlorn and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... or insolence," the voice was more curt and the eyes lost some of their calmness in a flash ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... cause than all this for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen confuse inconveniences with dangers; they have forgotten what real peril is; they cannot understand the calmness with which, not a century ago, their fathers resisted at once insurrection in Ireland and the most powerful foreign enemy who has ever challenged the power of England, and this too at a time when the population of Great Britain was not above nine millions and the people of Ireland ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... of friends such as Goldsmith and Thrale, and by an estrangement from Mrs. T., on her marriage with Piozzi, an Italian musician. Notwithstanding a lifelong and morbid fear of death, his last illness was borne with fortitude and calmness, soothed by the pious attentions of Reynolds and Burke, and he d. peacefully on December 13, 1784. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and a monument in St. Paul's was erected by the "club." Statues of him ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... except himself, would have grieved and groaned. For the evening dress of that time, though less gorgeous than of the age before, was still an expensive and elaborate affair; and the young man, in this ebb of fortune, was poorly stocked with raiment. But he passed this trouble with his usual calmness and disregard of trifles. "If I wear the best I have got," he thought, "I cannot be charged with disrespect. The Admiral knows what a sailor is; and, after all, who will look at me?" Accordingly he went just as he was, for he never wore an overcoat, but taking ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... or speak, but looked steadily into his bright eyes, and the calmness with which she listened, comforted and encouraged him to hope that ere long she would ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... to her account. Moreover she was young and warm and enthusiastic. Sometimes the spell of Miss Terry's sombre house threatened her to the point of desperation. It was so this Christmas Eve; but she made her request with apparent calmness. ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... that the calmness and deliberation, with which the measures requisite for withdrawal were adopted and executed, afford the best refutation of the charge that they were the result of haste, passion, or precipitation. Still more contrary to truth is ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... The woman's calmness presented a strange and touching contrast to the man's emotion. There was no shrinking in her face, there was no unsteadiness in her voice as she answered him. He took her hand. Twice he attempted to speak; and twice his own agitation ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... six thousand men, met with the same fate. The garrison of Dendermonde surrendered themselves prisoners of war; and Aeth submitted on the same conditions. The French troops were dispirited. The city of Paris was overwhelmed with consternation. Louis affected to bear his misfortunes with calmness and composure; but the constraint had such an effect upon his constitution, that his physicians thought it necessary to prescribe frequent bleeding, which he accordingly underwent. At his court no mention was made of military ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... he, assuming a calmness he was far from feeling. "If you like to give me the bill, I'll see that it is posted to your lawyer ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... I said, and spoke suddenly, with the hope of seeing a startled little face look round at me. Diamond turned his head as quietly as if he were only obeying his mother's voice, and the calmness of his face rebuked my unkind desire and made ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... crushed into her chair, with her face buried in her right arm folded on the table, while the left hung lifeless by her side. Her whole attitude expressed abject misery, profound despair; she seemed extinguished in a terrifying calmness. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Madam," said I, with tolerable calmness, "let the chaise then be ordered again;-I will go to Berry Hill;-and there, I trust, I shall still ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... form, and with his fearless and noble demeanor. The young prisoner seemed perfectly self-possessed and at his ease; and though he knew well that his life was at stake, there was a certain air of calmness and composure in his manner which seemed to denote very lofty qualities, both of ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and republicanism could bring into conflict. Had that cabinet been a directory, like positive and negative quantities in Algebra, the opposing wills would have balanced each other, and produced a state of absolute inaction. But the President heard with calmness the opinions and reasons of each, decided the course to be pursued, and kept the government steadily in it, unaffected by the agitation. The public knew well the dissensions of the cabinet, but never had an uneasy thought on their account; because they knew also they had provided a regulating ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... discovered, caused him to be dismissed from his situation. This made him mad. Think, whilst you peruse this plain narration, what an impression the circumstance has made upon me! But it was related to me by Albert with as much calmness as you will ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness. ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... artful and brilliant; her lips were endowed with such gifts already—not merely of speaking four or five languages—such silent gifts as brought me beside myself. That child-mouth could smile enchantingly with encouraging calmness, could proudly despise, could pout with displeasure, could offer tacit requests, could muse in silent melancholy, could indulge in ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... he, with a calmness which was maddening to her. "I am sure we understand each other, now." And then, still further maddening her: "I must go now, and look after Madge and dear Queen Bess. I never should forgive myself if anything should happen to the girl. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... would have hurried over with indifference; conversation degenerated, I could hardly tell how, into discussion; and notwithstanding the ascendency and elevation of her language and her manner, I could see that there was less real strength behind, and that beneath the calmness which still sat loftily upon her, there was much secret and repressed agitation. Sometimes she presented to me the idea of a woman who was sustaining an habitual expression of command and self-possession by the mere energy of her will, and who, when that failed her, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... occur to him "to throw any part of the burden of guilt upon that being who so closely participated in it. His rightful feeling remained in regard to it that he had this night given to a woman a right to himself, which he, if she should demand it, could not dispute. It was a source of calmness to him to look upon himself as punished, as it were, in this manner." Only all too evident! This punishment was in reality a disguised reward, fulfilment of the infantile wish to win the mother.[24] For this reason ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... whether the minority should be allowed to protest against this decision. The excitement was so great that several members were on the point of proceeding to personal violence. "We had sheathed our swords in each other's bowels," says an eye-witness, "had not the sagacity and great calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented it." The House did not rise till ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the time to have put a stop to this persecution against him;—and tried an experiment at least—whether calmness and serenity of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother Toby, to her evacuations and repletions—and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.—My child was bereft of these!—What a teazing life did she lead ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Mr. Kennedy. Could it be that at that moment she could have loved him as she now said she did, and that she should have been so cold, so calm, and so kind; while, at that very moment, this coldness, calmness, and kindness was but a thin crust over so strong a passion? How different had been his own love! He had been neither calm nor kind. He had felt himself for a day or two to be so terribly knocked about that the world was nothing to him. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... then from her, in icy calmness: "I am in your power just now, but I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you will wish ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... an exceeding bitter cry, and the pain of it pierced through even Commines' armour of calmness. But Villon, though he shivered a little, only shook his head. His face, dimly seen, was full of a ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... not, however, of this little book, valuable and interesting as it is, but of the author, that we meant to speak; and we will try to do so with calmness and impartiality. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... inconsiderable sum; yet the fact being clearly proved against him at the next session at the Old Bailey, he was convicted, and having no relations capable of making interest sufficient to obtain a reprieve, he lost all hopes of life. Under sentence he conducted himself with much calmness, penitence, and resignation, confessing the truth of that charge which had been laid against him, acknowledging the justice of the Law in this sentence, and disposing himself to submit to it with much ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... that the excitement raised by the publication of the Fragments was intense. There was in them more calmness of expression, and more apparent effort for truthful conclusions than many of the previously published works of the Rationalists had indicated. By and by, there sprang up a decided opposition to the work of Lessing; and from all quarters of the German ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Bear Cat," she said with the calmness of complete recovery. "And it's just about ready to start for its very own cave ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... now. The light shed softly on the timbered barn, on the whitewashed walls, and the great heap of hay; instruments cast their shadows largely, a ladder rose to the dark arch of a loft. Outside there was the driving rain, inside, the softly-illuminated stillness and calmness of the barn. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Inexcitability. — N. inexcitability[obs3], imperturbability, inirritability[obs3]; even temper, tranquil mind, dispassion; tolerance, patience, coolth [coll.]. passiveness &c. (physical inertness) 172; hebetude[obs3], hebetation[obs3]; impassibility &c. (insensibility) 823; stupefaction. coolness, calmness &c. adj.; composure, placidity, indisturbance[obs3], imperturbation[obs3], sang froid[Fr], tranquility, serenity; quiet, quietude; peace of mind, mental calmness. staidness &c. adj.; gravity, sobriety, Quakerism[obs3]; philosophy, equanimity, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... sighed Virgie, and there seemed a great blank, and then she heard a scream—was it she that screamed so?—and she was trying with all her might to get somewhere, and was fainting in the labor, but trying again and again, and then a calmness that was like gentle awe, strange because so painless, spread into her nature, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... this man, breathed easier. But of course any man would give way when a Hapsburg had irrevocably made up his mind. The padre laid down the candle, and interlaced his bloated fingers over his paunch in an attitude of sleek calmness. He was smiling and fawned meek anxiety to second his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with Zanoni, was unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon his eyes as he opened them to the day. He rose refreshed, and with a strange sentiment of calmness that seemed more the result of resolution than exhaustion. The incidents and emotions of the past night had settled into distinct and clear impressions. He thought of them but slightly,—he thought rather of the future. He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian mysteries who ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... life at Oxford, he came to Cambridge ignorant of mathematics and in delicate health, which prevented him from reading hard. In spite of this, he was senior wrangler in 1811—a feat which would now be impossible for a Newton. He was the calmest and gentlest of human beings, and to his calmness was attributable the fact that he lived till 1858, although when he was twenty the offices refused to insure his life for a year on any terms. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of singular wisdom ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and the constant threats made of personal violence. Malignity and hate, with threats of assassination, followed me like a shadow for months. I went always armed for protection against assault. I should have been less or more than man had I preserved at all times perfect calmness either in my ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... he took the corner by the barrack gate, on one wheel, any criterion; he always did it, just as he never failed to acknowledge the sentry's salute by raising his whip. It needed the observant eyes of Outram's Own to detect the rather strained calmness and the almost inhumanly ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... behind me stood the tall figure of a man, dressed in raiment of quaint and singular fashion, but of goodly materials. He was in the prime and vigour of manhood; his features handsome and noble, but full of calmness and benevolence; at least, I thought so, though they were somewhat shaded by a hat of finest beaver, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... bosom, drew out a paper, and laid it on the table. It was a pardon, a full, free pardon of all his offences, given him by the king, and sealed with the royal signet. This was the secret of his peace. This was what gave him such calmness and confidence in his dreadful position as a ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... This very calmness annoys me. If she would only once shriek and tear her hair a bit! It would be horrible, but there would be something natural about it. It is this smiling and then turning away to dry secret tears that makes me lose my composure. It ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the Virgin Mary at Loretto. Worn out by the long journey, which he made in the old fashion on foot, he knelt in prayer before the magnificent shrine; and thus, admitted as it were within the domestic enclosure of the holy household, he felt that the Blessed Virgin had given him that calmness and repose of heart which he had not known since he had prayed as a boy beside his mother's knee. Strengthened by the successful accomplishment of his vow, he went on to Rome; but the stern Sixtus V., who was now upon the Papal throne, was too much occupied with the architectural ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... for such was the name of the Boy Chief, was the first to recover his calmness. Turning to his warriors ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... be commanded, to her own safety, but here before her were the dark necessities she must share. And suddenly, as she sat there, and the sense of Raven's protectingness enfolded her and she grew more rested, a feeling of calmness fell upon her, of something friendly nearer her than Raven even (though it had seemed to her lately as if nothing could be more near), and she almost spoke aloud, voicing her surprised delight: "Why, the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of the child. How could she find indulgence for the shameful hypocrisy of two years' standing, for the villainy of that treachery practised at the domestic hearth, for the continued, voluntary disloyalty of every day, every hour? Though Maud experienced, in the midst of her despair, the sort of calmness which proves a firm and just resolution, when she reentered the Palazzetto Doria—what a drama had been enacted in her heart since her going out!—and it was in a voice almost as calm as usual that she asked: "Is the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... what you have just said, Carnaby," said his grandmother with dangerous calmness, "and ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... other wilful. Being established, fate makes use of it. One of the chief lessons of the plays is that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment when an established blindness in two men is about to become an instrument of fate ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... coming to the rescue, when of a sudden his fingers relaxed; he shifted his grasp from her head to her arm, and gazed intently in her face. Then he drew his hand over his eyes, stood a moment to collect himself apparently, and turning anew to Catherine, said, with assumed calmness—'You must learn to avoid putting me in a passion, or I shall really murder you some time! Go with Mrs. Dean, and keep with her; and confine your insolence to her ears. As to Hareton Earnshaw, if I see him listen to you, I'll send him seeking his bread where he ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... After having attended early morning service, a member of either church unhesitatingly seeks his favorite amusement. The horse-races of Paris, the bull-fights of Madrid, and the grand military parades of St. Petersburg, all take place on Sunday. Few European communities find that repose and calmness in the day which best ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... minutes before the train was due. She walked up and down the platform, which extended east and west. The new moon was just rising, a slender crescent of light, and off one upper horn burned a great star. It was a wonderful night, cold, with a calmness and hush of all the winds of heaven which was like the hush of peace itself. Charlotte noticed everything, the calm night and the crescent moon, but she came between herself and her own knowledge of it. Her mind was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... road to Delhi, by continual meditation upon the indestructibility of Force, that I try to cultivate calm, and by continual meditation upon the oneness of Force that I try to cultivate charity, being fully convinced that in calmness and in charity lies the secret of a placid if not ecstatic happiness. It is often said that no thinking person can be happy in this world. My view is that the more a man thinks the more happy he is likely to be. I have spoken. I ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Shaw, recovering breath, and speaking with preternatural calmness. 'Oblige me first by having those men removed. Their presence disturbs me. I pity them from my lowest soul; but they have—it is ridiculous—ha! ha! ha! yes, it is ridiculous—but they have hurt me ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... M'Carthy, raising his voice with a desperate effort to recover his calmness, "I say that Perkins landed with double that number of men yesterday around that point, and that he'll be aboard here in half an hour to make you answer for this insult to his ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... it indeed, Frank," she said. "I am so sorry for the poor children, bereft of both parents. Their mother was a refined, gentle creature, too, I have been told; of a different mould from Miss Hepsy. The calmness, though, to ask you to do all this simply because Joshua is too hard to spare a day's labour! Are you doing altogether right, Frank, I wonder, in ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan |
