"Placidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cares. The Blessed Virgin also, as she sat at table with the other women, looked most placid and calm. When the other women came up, and took hold of her veil to make her turn round and speak to them, her every movement expressed the sweetest self-control and placidity of spirit. ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... country in his own way, lost in admiration of this opponent's intellect, but forced to admit his mistakes—the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue, the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington. Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such hate and resentment that Washington elevated his hands an inch. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... one corner lay an elderly man in the last stage of consumption, and by his side, busily engaged in knitting, sat a child about ten years old, whose pretty white face wore that touching look of patient placidity peculiar to the blind. Huldah Reed had never seen the light, but a marvellous change came over her countenance when Edna's light step and clear, sweet voice fell on ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Father Antonio was mopping his brow in the doorway. Though a heavy man, he was noiseless of foot. A wheezing would be heard along the dark galleries some time before his black bulk approached you with a gliding motion. He had the outward placidity of corpulent people, a natural artlessness of demeanour which was amusing and attractive, and there was something shrewd in his simplicity. Indeed, he must have displayed much tact and shrewdness to have defeated all O'Brien's efforts to oust him from his position of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... man would be unbearable to me. Rather than prolong the futility of existence with one I could not provoke, even enrage, I should commit suicide. My own disposition is so equally divided between perversity and repentance that I could not endure the placidity, the ennui, of ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... into the kitchen, took a little tin kettle from a nail over the dresser, and her sun-bonnet from another behind the door, and made her way through the apartment as well as she could for bristling chair-legs, with exemplary placidity. She was used to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... people who've broken down under stress of too much worry and strenuous living; well, you're suffering from overmuch repose and placidity, and you need the opposite ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... my dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... with a thought besmirch Blood over all our soul, How should we see our task But through his blunt and lashless eyes? Alive, he is not vital overmuch; Dying, not mortal overmuch; Nor sad, nor proud, Nor curious at all. He cannot tell Old men's placidity from his. ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed placidity, said: "Nurse... Nurse..." Jeremy cried: "It's all right, he wouldn't touch anything, he's only friendly." Mary and Helen together moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be heard in a confused wail: "Not me, Mum... Wickedest boy... better give ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... January seemed fated to pass out in uneventful placidity so far as Jane and Judith were concerned. Elsie Noble continued to glower her silent disapproval of her tablemates three times a day, but that was all. Since the disastrous failure of the scheme to leave Jane, Judith and Adrienne in the lurch at the freshman frolic, she had made no ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... shaken out of her habitual placidity by the abrupt withdrawal of the girl's hands. Kate sat inertly staring, but no answer rose to ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... inexcitability^, imperturbability, inirritability^; even temper, tranquil mind, dispassion; tolerance, patience, coolth [Coll.]. passiveness &c (physical inertness) 172; hebetude^, hebetation^; impassibility &c (insensibility) 823; stupefaction. coolness, calmness &c adj.; composure, placidity, indisturbance^, imperturbation^, sang froid [Fr.], tranquility, serenity; quiet, quietude; peace of mind, mental calmness. staidness &c adj.; gravity, sobriety, Quakerism^; philosophy, equanimity, stoicism, command of temper; self-possession, self-control, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... school and its lessons go on continually. Now and then perhaps we have a vacation—a period in which all appears to be at rest—but in this very placidity there are often bred the storms that are to trouble and perhaps renew us. For some time after the departure of Harry and his bride, John's life appeared to flow in a smooth but busy routine. Between the mill and Harlow House, he found the days all too short for the love and business ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Chewton Cudley had a way of looking with a slow, placid, immovable stare at anybody who showed unseemly haste. If they were told to "be quick" or to "look sharp," they would leave what they were about to gaze with a cow-like serenity at the disturber. It was quite a lesson in placidity even to watch a farm-labourer or a workman sit on a gate or a cart-shaft to eat a slice of bread and cheese. Each bite was only taken after a deliberate investigation of the sides and edges of the hunch, and was slowly masticated during a peculiar ruminating survey of ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... little squire, who takes business and pleasure alike with imperturbable placidity of temper, and who always uses a double-handed rod for mayfly fishing): The same to you, old blue-bag. I'll back my 14-footer against your miserable little ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Forced to choose between absolute subserviency to the South and what was left of his principle of popular sovereignty, he remonstrated angrily with the President for breaking faith with Walker and the Kansans. At the end of a stormy interview, Buchanan, stirred out of his wonted placidity, threateningly reminded the senator that no Democrat ever broke with a Democratic administration without being crushed. Douglas scornfully retorted: "Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead." The new Congress was no sooner assembled than the Lecompton ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... to Chris." Was there a hint of sternness underlying the placidity of the rejoinder? There might have been, but Aunt Philippa was too intent upon the matter she had taken in hand ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... confident of her inheritance. I could discover no evidence of a creature alarmed with a sense of guilt, loathing itself, conscious of its worthlessness. Her nature, in truth, seemed to have usurped a sweetness and placidity, the possession of which, as Mr Clayton afterwards observed, was justifiable only in those who could find nothing but vileness and depravity in every thought and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... hunched up in his big revolving chair with a look of agitation on his face. His hands were clenching and unclenching rapidly. It was evident that something much out of the ordinary had occurred to rob him of his usual placidity. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... began to think of matrimony. A family of Godfreys lived in the same house with him, and now Mrs. Godfrey undertook to make a match between him and the daughter of a relative of hers. Franklin's account of this affair for its coolness and placidity may almost be compared with Gibbon's "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." On learning that the girl's parents could not or would not give with her enough money to pay off his debts, the gallant suitor at once and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... Lawrence would carry the Hudson as a trophy in his belt and hardly know the difference; yet our river is doubtless the most beautiful of them all. It pleases like a mountain lake. It has all the sweetness and placidity that go with such bodies of water, on the one hand, and all their bold and rugged scenery on the other. In summer, a passage up or down its course in one of the day steamers is as near an idyl of travel as can ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Mrs. Merrithew, a dry smile twinkling in the placidity of her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then you can ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... had his love story, or that which in the life of such a man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote to her every week a long letter, and spent a large part ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... a party on the way from Lyme, and he's full up and wants the four-horse stable," she told him. It was part of Job's genius never to be put about, or driven from placidity by anything. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... been the first time that the Duke had ventured to enter the lists of gallantry in rivalry of his Sovereign, which made the present insult the more intolerable. His purpose of lying concealed in those private apartments was explained by the exclamations of Alice; and Charles, notwithstanding the placidity of his disposition, and his habitual guard over his passions, resented the attempt to seduce his destined mistress, as an Eastern Sultan would have done the insolence of a vizier, who anticipated his intended purchases of captive beauty in the slave-market. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the house to prepare breakfast. Her three children crowded around her, loudly testifying their admiration of the partridges and hares. She commenced dressing the game with that placidity of countenance, and with that dexterity which proved she was well versed in that most important ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... attack of a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... her pale clear eyes that made you think of the far northern seas, by the borders of which her forefathers in a remote time were probably born. As I have said, Peggy could use very rough words when farmers' wives tired her with too much chaffering; but mostly her face had a hard placidity that refreshed the mind, just as it is refreshed by considering the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... given up to his simple reflections and resources. Dull lie these stone walls round him; of his loved ones none with him. In this state of 'uncertainty,' providing for the worst, he writes his Will: a Paper which can still be read; full of placidity, simplicity, pious sweetness. The Convention, after debate, has granted him Legal Counsel, of his own choosing. Advocate Target feels himself 'too old,' being turned of fifty-four; and declines. He had gained ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... river was overhung by dark and stupendous rocks, rising like gigantic walls and battlements; these would be rent by wide and yawning chasms, that seemed to speak of past convulsions of nature. Sometimes the river was of a glassy smoothness and placidity; at other times it roared along in impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here, the rocks were piled in the most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another place, they were succeeded by delightful ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... nor nature could improve. She was the sort of person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in the worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for a moment, but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity of a contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for Anastasie was of a very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold pleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather than for his. She was imperturbably good-natured, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... something, Florence," Rachael said to her sister-in-law when she was stretched upon the wide couch in Florence's room, watching with the placidity of a good baby that lady's process of dressing for an afternoon of bridge, or rather the operations with cold cream, rubber face brush, hair tonic, eyebrow stick, powder, rouge, and lip paste that preceded the process ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... and I can say with truth such has been the effect on my own nerves of the plaintive murmurs of the neela-cobeya, that sometimes, when irritated, and not without reason, by the perverseness of some of my native followers, the feeling has almost instantly subsided into placidity on suddenly hearing the loving ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... She was holding in her hand an empty glass. As my eyes encountered her calm, inquiring gaze, my courage fled precipitately, likewise the object of my errand. There was a pause; diffidence and embarrassment on my side, placidity ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... shocked, but her placidity was too deep-rooted to be altogether destroyed. And so Albert found himself looking into two large eyes the persistency of whose gaze ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... The lines suggest placidity of existence, and placid, indeed, was the married life of Booth, barring his moments of ill-health. When his career is compared to that of certain other players, it stands out in rather pleasant relief, by virtue of its even tenor and prosperity. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... bear such behaviour! Composure with a witness! to look on, while repeated attentions were offering to another woman, before her face, and not resent it.—That is a degree of placidity, which I can neither comprehend ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... love for learning—though these were accompanied with a vigour of life and soul—an energy—a daring—which gave Cleveland some uneasiness, and which did not appear to him at all congenial with the moody shyness of an embryo genius, or the regular placidity of a precocious scholar. Meanwhile the relation between father and son was rather a singular one. Mr. Maltravers had overcome his first, not unnatural, repugnance to the innocent cause of his irremediable loss. He was now fond and proud ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... believe that sort of a man ever would do that sort of thing," repeated Plank obstinately, his Delft-blue eyes partly closing, so that all the Dutch shrewdness and stubbornness in his face disturbed its highly coloured placidity. And he walked away toward the wash-room to cleanse his ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sketched and figured on operations at the claims. Their domestic affairs moved with the smoothness of a perfectly balanced machine. To the very uttermost Hazel enjoyed the well-appointed orderliness of it all, the unruffled placidity of an existence where the unexpected, the disagreeable, the uncouth, was wholly eliminated, where all the strange shifts and struggles of her two years beyond the Rockies were altogether absent and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess. The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himself placid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power of commonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice say: ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is broad comedy. The philosopher knows that his wife does not comprehend him: she knows that she never will; and neither of them much cares. The husband snubs her openly for her mental defects, and she with perfect placidity accepts his rebukes. "Master," as he once complains, "of one of the finest chains of reasoning in the world, he is unable for the soul of him to get a single link of it into the head of his wife;" but we never hear him lamenting in this serio-comic ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... was the most stirring and remarkable feature of the ceremony. It began with an almost European placidity of decorum, standing quietly behind the wooden railing on three sides of the Campus, and as quietly filling the seats in and about the glowingly draped grand stand before the University building. As the ceremony proceeded, however, the crowd behind the stand pressed forward, getting ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... art of self-repression, or failing that, knew how to mask an inner emotion behind their normal outward semblance. When they presently left the study for the luncheon table, Simon wore his usual frown above knitted brows, while Miss Ocky displayed her accustomed placidity of countenance with its high-lights of humor about her ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... semi-priestly appearance. The lad, who entered with a slow and almost languid step, though in face resembling his father, was evidently not without an element of his mother in his mental composition. His hair was dark, and his eyes brown: but the same calm placidity of expression rested on his features as on hers, and his motions were quiet ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... placidity that the master asked him to stand and give out the answer, and he gave it gladly enough—999.009—which sounded particularly learned to a class ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... know of few nations who can control the movements of their features so well as do the Coreans. They are trained from their infancy to show neither pain, nor pleasure, grief nor excitement; so that a wonderful placidity is always depicted on their faces. None the less, however, though slightly, different expressions can be remarked. For instance, an attitude peculiar to them is to be noticed when they happen to ponder deeply on any subject; they then slightly frown, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... she was; Mrs. Richie's quiet life with her son had kept her forehead smooth, and her eyes—eyes the color of a brook which loiters in shady places over last year's leaves—softly clear. There was a gentle placidity about her; the curious, shy hesitation, the deep, half-frightened sadness, which had been so marked when her landlord knew her first, had disappeared; sometimes she even showed soft gaieties of manner ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... putting a stop to the argument, before it got out of hand, since no police were near; but adults had no business in kid fights. He watched them retreat slowly back to an alley, still shouting to work up their courage. Maybe he should be glad that there was even this much fire left under the smug placidity ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... scampering vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship's bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of mind, placidity of conduct and control of passion rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and tyranny, making him always master of the human midgets or vultures ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the great Gorges of the Upper Yangtze—to China what the Niagara Falls are to America—was not remarkable for its placidity, albeit taken with as much complacency ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... motive that sense of pleasure which follows the deliberate performance of a virtuous act. This emotion is a distinct and isolated gratification following a distinct action, and may therefore be easily separated from that habitual placidity of temper which results from the extinction of vicious and perturbing impulses. It is this theory which is implied in the common exhortations to enjoy "the luxury of doing good," and though especially strong in acts of benevolence, in which case sympathy with the happiness created ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice—and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... discovered to be perfectly calm; so they remonstrated instead, and presently Billy's commander-in-chief, a ship-boy called Georgie White, shoved in and asked him in a shrill haughty voice how he dared do that. "My dear," said Billy, with great humility and placidity, "he was killing God's creatures, no allowance: * so, ye see, to save their ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... post-office, about nine o'clock in the morning, that Morgan met Rhetta Thayer. She saw him coming, and waited. Her face was flushed; indignation disturbed the placidity ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the gauze bell, whether in assemblies of half a dozen or in separate couples, she at no time loses her placidity. Like the larva, she is very abstemious and contents herself with a Fly or two as her ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... though not similar, signs of mental disturbance; for, womanlike, she clothed her worry in placidity and silence. Her kindly face became drawn and lined; she laughed less frequently. She never went "neighboring" or "buggy-riding" with old Bill now. But the trim farmhouse was just as spotless, just as beautifully kept, the cooking just as wholesome and homelike, the linen as white, ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... dropped from her fingers; she sat up. Then he saw that she too was agitated. There was an unusual spot of colour in her cheeks, her breathing was certainly less regular. The variance from her habitual placidity encouraged him. He scarcely hesitated ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... during their labour and long walk. I got the story from one of the guards who had accompanied them. But even these thick-skinned disciples of "kultur" and brutality were not disposed to be communicative. The stoicism, grim determination and placidity of the Reverend Fathers constituted something which their square heads and addled brains failed to understand. They had never ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... fleeting pride in the lethargic, composed front he was able to present. "All right," he said with forced placidity. "If he's got to be paid, we'll pay him." He continued to smile ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... feeling overpowering him. He had heard that women were immediately aware of such emotion. But he realized that she had been lulled into a false sense of security, of present immunity from "the old, old thing," by her own placidity. He did not know when his mother left the room. He wondered continuously when it would happen, when the bolt would fall, what she would do. Howat was hot and cold, and possessed by a subtle sense of improbity, a feeling resembling that of a doubtful advance through the dark, for ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was on tolerable terms with himself, and on still better with his neighbor. The heart under his ribs was larger even than indicated by the benevolence of his countenance and the humor hovering over his mouth. Upon the countenance of his wife rested a placidity sinking almost into fatuity. Its features were rather indications than completions, but there was a consciousness of comfort about the mouth, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... console him had thin and worn slippers on her tender feet, and her snowy skin was in more than one place visible through the rents of her frock. The old man looked at them, from time to time; and there might have been observed, notwithstanding the sweetness and placidity of his smile, a secret expression of inward agony—the physical and natural feelings of the parent and the man mingling, or rather struggling, with the great principle of dependence on God, without which he must at once have ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... temper, Mrs. Alice," said Everard, with equal firmness and placidity of manner; "and you, Sir Henry, do not think that if I speak firmly, I mean therefore to speak in anger, or officiously. You have taxed me with much, and, were I guided by the wild spirit of romantic chivalry, much which, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... story, an interesting adventure with which to beguile a weary hour of stage riding in the darkness. It would have gratified Albert to have been able to detect the vibration of a painful memory or a pitying emotion, but Helen did not suffer her placidity to be ruffled by disturbing emotion. The conversation drifted to other subjects presently through Mr. Minorkey's sudden recollection that the drowning excitement at Metropolisville had brought on a sudden attack of his complaint, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... "it is all very well for you, who have a lovely wife and a sweet little daughter, to laugh at me. But I am a bachelor; I have no wife, no daughter, no domestic ties of any sort to beguile my restless nature and render me content to settle down in the monotonous placidity of a home; I must always be occupied in some exciting pursuit, or I should go mad from very weariness and ennui; and since our memorable cruise in your Flying Fish, I have been unable to find anything exciting and adventurous enough to suit my taste. That cruise has spoilt ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... as are all the works of the God of us all. Nay, but, thinks I, the sins of life are more lovely than the righteous accomplishments. Removed by the starlit sky, wherein He dwells—removed because of its tender distance and beauty and placidity, because of its compassion and returning gift of faith, removed by the vast, feeling territory of sensate waters, whereupon He walks, because they express, eternally, His wrath and loving kindness—carried ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... sought refuge in the Ruin, there to rehearse her art hereafter untroubled by the jeers of an untemperamental world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby, who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of La Tosca, Camille or Manon, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought, "It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal! Whatever should I do with her ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... that have been done to Mr. Larkin are contemptible and mean." There was no placidity in those brown eyes now. They flashed fire. Her face had grown pale, and she, too, had risen to her feet. "I'm a cowman's daughter, but still I can be reasonable. Our range is free range, and he has ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... welfare of Fatherland were but convertible terms. He soon came into bitter conflict, not with nobles, but with progressive liberals in the Chamber, who detested him and feared him, but to whom he did not condescend to reveal his plans,—bearing obloquy with placidity in the greatness of the end he had in view. He was a self-sustained, haughty, unapproachable man of power, except among the few friends whom he honored as boon companions, without ever losing his discretion,—wearing a mask with apparent frankness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... the declivity ceased to be so abrupt, the stream must resume its peaceful course. At this moment it reminded me of my uncle, his impatience and rage, while when it flowed more peacefully, I pictured to myself the placidity ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superiority—my accomplishments and my function—in ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... Barker, with a perfect placidity. "Suppose he is a tyrant—he is still a check on a hundred tyrants. Suppose he is a cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. Suppose he is a criminal—by removing poverty and substituting power, we put a check on his criminality. In ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... before you could pronounce it properly. Ordinarily the most good-natured of men, Peter became an elemental savage when hungry. If then spoken to his only reply would be a snarl quite likely to be followed by a blow. However, as Peter ate, his normal placidity gradually returned. When fully satisfied he would say leaning back with a smile and a sigh ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... realize the extent of his disaster. As he took his place at the head, his wrathful eye swept from Frances in her high chair, up along the line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,—the most irascible of unsuccessful men,—and the snort with which he finished the inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan annals long before Sissy brought ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... that dinner was a notable success socially. The Allans and Miss Stacy exerted themselves to save the situation and Marilla's customary placidity was not noticeably ruffled. But Anne and Diana, between their disappointment and the reaction from their excitement of the forenoon, could neither talk nor eat. Anne tried heroically to bear her part in the conversation for the sake of her guests; but all the sparkle ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gallery, whither indeed we have generally come in quest of them, and the results are very like those of a first sight of Niagara. Everybody knows how that looks—the huge downpour of the American Fall, the graceful rush of the slenderer stream formed by Goat Island, the mighty curve and tremendous placidity of the Horseshoe Fall, the clouds of spray, the lightly poised rainbow. But all this does not give us the feeling of Niagara: one person is overwhelmed, another enraptured, very many are disappointed. Besides, we are bothered by notions of how we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... small stature, not over five feet four inches, when young, and of very light make. But he was now bent by age, and walked with a staff. His hazel eyes still sparkled in a head of no striking development, and with a peculiarity of expression of his lips, gave him a striking expression of placidity in cunning. Hence his name, which was given by the Indians from some fancied resemblance to this animal, when jutting its head above water. He had, for forty years, made jeesuckawin (prophecying) ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... dainty little cow of most placid disposition. Nothing disturbs her placidity, incites her to hurry, or bewilders her. Cure the dove of its timidity and shrinking and you will have a good prototype of Parilla, who, taking life easily and affably, is fat and amiable. When she brought home her firstborn, mooing plaintively, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... their victims in an attendant capacity. I have a suspicion, moreover, that a good number of women poisoners actually chose the medium as THE KINDEST WAY. Women, and I might add not a few men, who would be terribly shocked by sight or news of a quick but violent death, can contemplate with relative placidity a lingering and painful fatal illness. Propose to a woman the destruction of a mangy stray cat or of an incurably diseased dog by means of a clean, well-placed shot, and the chances are that she will shudder. But—no ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... slow, he was received by the Superintendent with the grave welcome and studious absence of questioning that was the rule of the house. The Superintendent was an elderly man, inclining to stoutness and of unyielding placidity. It was suspected that the Founder had taken pains to choose a man who would observe his injunction of not meddling with thorny questions the more strictly from his own ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... happened, there was a sort of vague scare in the house-party. It touched everybody, affecting them in different ways according to their characters, but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly so serious. Lady Richard's alarm was the most outspoken, and her dismay the most clamorous; yet perhaps in ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... energetic animal, with its various reflex movements and pulsating organs, stands the plant, in its apparent placidity and immobility. Yet that same environment which with its changing influences affects the animal is playing upon it also. Storm and sunshine, the warmth of summer and the frost of winter, drought and rain, all these come and go about it. What coercion do they exercise upon it? What subtle impress ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... take it all together, in volcanic mood. Peculiarity of situation, as SAUNDERSON put it, with some mixing of metaphor, was that "it was the cucumber that kept the pot a-boiling." Whenever any sign of placidity was visible, JOSEPH sure to appear on scene, rub someone's hair the wrong way, or stir up some slumbering lion with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... contrast to the cool placidity of her face one of Eve Edgarton's boot-toes began to tap-tap-tap against the piazza floor. When she lifted her eyes again to Barton their sleepy sullenness was shot through suddenly with an ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... looking down at his own hand that gripped the chair back so tightly. Emma sat back and surveyed her trim and tailored self with a placidity that had in it, perhaps, a dash of malice. His last speech had cut. Then she reached forward, helped herself to an olive, and nibbled ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... room, in which he broke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by the hearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiry concerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; the serene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angry voices of elements without, answered to the peace—the strange peace—that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of such uncongenial memories as now rose up before ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... my sentiment to my companion, I observed that she had folded her hands in an attitude of sorrowful resignation, which showed her thoughts were far from the scene which lay before her. When she saw that her abstraction was observed, she resumed her former placidity of manner; and having given me sufficient time to admire this termination of our sober and secluded walk, proposed that me should return to the house through her brother's farm. 'Even we Quakers, as we are called, have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... silently, but politely, rose and bowed, I said, "M. de Talleyrand m'a oubli: mais on n'oublie pas M. de Talleyrand."(287) I left the room with quickness, but saw a movement of surprise by no means unpleasant break over the habitual placidity, the nearly imperturbable ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... him, and regard for her kept her father quiet; so that the evening passed off very well. Mrs. Edmonstone waited on both; and, in Amy's presence, was better able to resume her usual manner towards her nephew, and he sat wondering at the placidity of Amy's pale face. Her hair was smoothed back, and she wore a cap,—the loss of her long shady curls helping to mark the change from the bright days of her girlhood; but the mournfulness of her countenance did not ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this placidity had been already solved by our captain, whom I had asked what price I should bargain to pay from the steamer to the shore. "There is a tariff," said he, "and the boatmen keep to it. The Neapolitans are good people, (buona gente,) and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... these mats Lo Ong, gaunt, curious, even hostile, retreated, squatting with his delicately thin hands folded over his abdomen. A look of recognition disturbed only for the instant the placidity of the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... beast, something like a donkey, bundled out in a clumsy, unwilling sort of manner, and on his egress commenced cropping the grass with the utmost sang froid and placidity. My friend the sweep threw his cap at him. He raised his head, shorn of its branching honours, and, after staring about him, trotted quietly off amongst the spectators, closely followed by two well-mounted officials, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... that I could see. That was his way—he never slopped over, no matter how he felt. If ever a mortal had a firm grip on his emotions, MacRae had, and yet there was a sleeping devil within him that was never hard to wake. But his looks gave no hint of the real man under the surface placidity; you'd never have guessed what possibilities lay behind that immobile face, with its heavy-lashed hazel eyes and plain, thin-lipped mouth that tilted up just a bit at the corners. We had parted in ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and evening views—one of Lochness, and the other of Elcho Castle—which make fine companions, and which I always placed together, were also highly admired. Each of them had their different partizans, and I myself was for a good while undetermined which of them to prefer. At last, I found the placidity of the scene in Elcho Castle, with the cottages among the trees, dwelt most on my imagination, though the gaiety and brightness of the morning sky in the other has also exquisite beauty. On the whole, I am persuaded that ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... at first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava, it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous antecedents. The winds never reach it and its surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you fancy it in communication with the capricious and treacherous forces of nature. Its very colour is of a joyless beauty, a blue as cold and opaque as a solidified sheet of lava. Streaked and wrinkled by a mysterious ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence, indeed! And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, of stroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under my ear! Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray? I suppose I have all my limbs and all my features like ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... with unalterable placidity, "business is not one of your strong points. You really are not fit to manage any important matter alone. At Dudleigh you have your papa to advise with, at London your papa's solicitors, and here at Dalton you need a sound adviser too. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... but still young enough in her thoughts and looks to appear of his own age. She was slightly taller than he—though he was now his full height (five feet ten and one-half inches)—and, despite her height, shapely, artistic in form and feature, and with a certain unconscious placidity of soul, which came more from lack of understanding than from force of character. Her hair was the color of a dried English walnut, rich and plentiful, and her complexion waxen—cream wax—-with lips of faint pink, and eyes that varied from gray to blue and from gray ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... suffer from ennui. Nor is Fanny any less active. Ill or well, rain or shine, a little blue indefatigable figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows, late for every meal. She has reached a sort of tragic placidity. Whenever she plants anything new the boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep anything for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has reached that pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she would almost say she did not mind. Anyway, her cabbages have succeeded. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her life on a point of brief suspense ought not to be so merry as Miss Gryll evidently was. He said little to Miss Niphet; and she, with her habit of originating nothing, sat in her normal state of statue-like placidity, listening to the conversation near her. She was on the left hand of Mr. Gryll. Miss Ilex was on his right, and on her right was the Reverend Doctor Opimian. These three kept up an animated dialogue. Mr. MacBorrowdale was in the middle of the table, and amused ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... was roused out of his usual placidity, although Uncle Jack's letter from Valparaiso had told all about the wonderful escape of the survivors of the Greenock; while, as for Miss Conny, who was now a perfectly grown-up young lady of eighteen, all her sedateness was gone for the moment and she ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... natives of foreign parts in articles of curiosity and vertu, for which, I suspect, the custom-house dues were not always paid. With all his Scotch prudence, however, and with much kindliness of heart and placidity of temper there was some wild blood in his veins, derived, mayhap, from one or two buccaneering ancestors, that, when excited beyond the endurance point, became sufficiently formidable; and which, on at least one occasion, interfered ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Giggleswick has but once been the prey of the brigand and then it was fortunate enough to have a friend at court. It lost its original endowment and its private character. It gained a larger revenue and a Royal Charter. The placidity of its life was undisturbed by financial deficits. Its income expanded steadily. The close corporation of Governors were never ambitious to display their wealth, they never excited the greed of the statesman; ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... only the spasmodic puffs from his cigar betrayed agitation. Van Ness walked back and forth, cramming his hands into his breeches pockets and withdrawing them every ten seconds. Volney looked down with his usual sardonic smile but his eyes were bitter with hate. Sherman alone displayed the placidity of a soldier. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Davidson was placidity itself. It was his nature. He did not betray his sentiments, which were not favourable ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... permitted to ruffle this placidity. Gold! Our ears were tickled by the tale that good folks had actually thrilled when we slunk away to our Island. Rumour wagged her tongue, abusing God's great gift of speech, until scared Truth fled. She said—how cheap is notoriety!—that secret knowledge of hidden wealth which good ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... great man's countenance, that I first drew my conceptions as to how a proud and unsociable man looked. With very different emotions I was wont to survey the mild but expressive features of his great opponent, Fox: there was a placidity mixed up with the graver lines of thought and reflection, that would have invited a child to take him by the hand; indeed, the witchcraft of Mr. Fox's temper was such, that it formed a triumphant source of gratulation in the circle of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... the Midlands you may have enjoyment of another kind. Some men prefer the sleepy settled villages, the sweeping fens with their bickering windmills, the hush and placidity of old market-towns that brood under the looming majesty of the castle. The truth is that you cannot go anywhere in England outside of the blighted hideous manufacturing districts without finding beauty and peace. In the first instance you seek health ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... you, Beauchamp, I attended that soiree from curiosity to see whether M. Guizot retained his habitual placidity of manner amid the clouds ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... penetrating, and a sense of form and symmetry almost Greek in its fastidiousness. The sweet, vague, passionate aspiration^, the sensibility that quivers with every breath of movement from the external world, he could not understand. Placidity, grace, and repose he had in perfection. Yet he was very highly appreciated by those who had little in common with his artistic nature. As, for example, Robert Schumann writes of Thalberg and his playing, on the occasion of a charity concert, given in Leipzig in ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... position compared with Wotan's, in whose hand that spear of his must fly to pieces should he break a covenant established as sacred by the runes carved on its shaft. Wanderer, a shade weary of such a berating, yet losing little of his placidity, retorts: "Not through any runes of truth to covenants did my spear bind you, malignant, to me; you my spear forces to bow before me by its strength; I carefully keep it therefore for purposes of war." "How haughtily do you threaten in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... ruthlessly; his childish lack of self-criticism, his placidity, his insatiable vanity, his almost deliberate exploitation of his personal charm, all these things she cast aside and ignored. She came then to his thoughts, and here she was baffled because she knew so little of his history. Beyond ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... from a crowd," remarked Arabella, with terrible placidity. "It is where we see few that we are at the mercy of kind ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... minutes before the hour, she compelled herself to outward tranquillity—while she strove for inward calm. And succeeding wonderfully well—so well, indeed, that none would ever have suspected the agitation seething under the cold placidity. Its only evidence was in the gentle swing of her narrow foot, and the nervous play of her slender fingers. And even these indications disappeared at the knock on the corridor door; and she went almost blithely and flung it back—to Harleston bowing ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... be, but I have it not. Let any kind critic convince me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that, if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your now ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... medium height, clad in priestly garments, with a white surplice sweeping to the marble floor; a finely modelled head thickly fleeced with light brown hair, a serene pleasant face, with regular features, deep-set black eyes magnified by spectacles, and an expression of habitual placidity, that bespoke a soul consecrated by noble aims, and at perfect ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... failing spirits and smile languidly upon the bridegroom, who bent over her enamoured; and then, as if beguiled from some painful contemplation by the sweet accents of the man she loved, she became calm, and her quivering features resumed their wonted placidity. But these moments of tranquillity were of short duration; she started at every shadow; the flash of one of the jewels which broidered her satin robe would cause a fit of trembling; and at length, when seated at the banquet opposite her brother and his bride, a richly clad domestic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... so little account of physical beauty, is itself a singularly handsome one. This is owing doubtless in part to the absolute compatibility of temperaments in all the marriages, and partly also to the reaction upon the body of a state of ideal mental and moral health and placidity. ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Madam," said that damsel with much placidity. "He's only got to put the horses to, hasn't 'Zekiel, and they're at Tomkins' stable yon, by th' Tilt Yard—Spring Gardens, I reckon ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... together with the little one, and Flora put her down within the arm her father stretched out for her. He gazed into the baby face, which, in its expressionless placidity, almost recalled ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge |
