"Sedate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Its flight is swift, but very short. When launching itself from the lofty height on which it is perched, it flies obliquely downwards, uttering at the same time a plaintive, whistling sound. It is more sedate in its habits than its brethren, nor does it seem to partake of their joyous spirit. The head and neck of the male are black, with a line running along the centre. The long beard is white, and round the neck and back of the head is a broad band of white. The upper ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... gods exultingly Thy coming wait; The ancient, honored sires, That on the portals frown sedate, Shall smile for thee! There blooming Hebe shall thy steps attend; And golden victory, that sits By Jove's eternal throne, with waving plumes For conquest ever spread, To ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... goes he will be accompanied by a sedate slave, generally elderly and also generally a Greek, whom you may call his "guardian," or his "governor," or his "mentor," according to your fancy. The function of this worthy is to look after the morals and behaviour of the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... will not be stirred up in many minds by the name of Darien. In truth that name is associated with calamities so cruel that the recollection of them may not unnaturally disturb the equipoise even of a fair and sedate mind. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... abashed by its reputation as the starting point of the mob spirit of the Revolution, Cafe Foy became in after years a sedate gathering-place of artists and literati. Up to its close it was distinguished among other famous Parisian cafes for its exclusiveness and strictly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... familiar roofs he heard some one coming from the village, on horseback. It proved to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of Nils who was called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair of saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame of one foot and no taller than a boy of nine, although he was thirteen this month and his head was nearly as large as a man's. He had been an orphan from baby-hood, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... reader, with so commonplace an incident. Let her act on serenely until that glorious night in April 1713, when, back at Drury Lane, under the triumvirate of Cibber, Wilks and Dogget, she helps to make sedate Addison's equally sedate "Cato" ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... say which of the two was the more beautiful. Both were unusually lovely. Alma Trepka was queenly, her movements sedate, her disposition calm and unclouded—Carl Bloch could paint a Madonna, or even a Christ, from her face without making any essential alteration in the oval of its contours. Clara Rothe's beauty was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... we have drugs with which we can diminish or increase the number of heart beats per minute, dilate or contract the pupils of the eye, check or stimulate the secretion of mucus, sedate or irritate the nervous system, etc., but all that is accomplished is temporary stimulation or sedation, and such juggling does not cure. The practice of medicine is today what it has been in the past, largely ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... enough, when the squire, followed hard by the parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean's report of the squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's ordinarily slow and sedate movements. And while the squire, sharing Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from the stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Dr. Riccabocca under the majestic shade of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fair as a lily, had chosen "sunlight," and was a bonny little sun goddess. Lily Pearl, after a great deal of fuss and fidgeting had elected to go as Titania, and Helen essayed Oberon. Juno, who was very musical, made quite a stately Sappho. Little, sedate Marjorie was an Alaskan-Indian Princess, and Rosalie rigged up a Puck costume which made her irresistible. Isabel chose to be Portia, though that erudite lady seemed somewhat out of place among the mythological characters. But Stella was a startling Sibyl, with book, staff, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... was not so strict in his ideas concerning the day as most of his parishioners. So long as we were sedate and orderly, and neither talked nor laughed too loud, he seldom interfered with our behaviour, or sought to alter the current of our conversation. I believe he did not, like some people, require or expect us to care about religious things as ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... was completely changed. The good-humored, spirited young fellow became suddenly a quiet, serious, sedate man, who would never join us in any amusement. He avoided the world, and I remarked that in the world he did his ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... discovered—for what, alas! can escape the acute penetration of a loving woman—she soon discovered that pity alone suggested the consoling token—pity which might alike have been excited by any other object of distress; and, oh! how little does the sedate voice of pity satisfy the craving bosom of one who had such claims ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... increased four pounds. The arrest of development seemed to be connected with hydrocephalus; although the head was no larger than that of a child of two, the anterior fontanelle was widely open, indicating that there was pressure within. He was strong and muscular; grave and sedate in his manner; cheerful and affectionate; his manners were polite and engaging; he was expert in many kinds of handicraft; he possessed an ardent desire for knowledge and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... How sedate and prosperous Springfield looked to me when I arrived there on an early spring day! How clean, orderly, leisurely, and respectable after the untidiness and explosive anarchy of New York! I made ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... countless sorts, of flavor rare— And thus to Raghu's son they cried:— "We bless thee, and are satisfied." Between the rites some Brahmans spent The time in learned argument, With ready flow of speech, sedate, And keen to vanquish in debate. There day by day the holy train Performed all rites as rules ordain. No priest in all that host was found But kept the vows that held him bound; None, but the holy Vedas knew, And all their sixfold science ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... A sedate-looking gentleman, about forty-five years of age, stepped into the boat, and in a few seconds I was in the stream, shooting the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... declared that it was time to go back again; and, wheeling round their steeds, they returned as fast as they had come. On nearing the town, they made signs to the young officers to fall into the rear, while they advanced at a more sedate pace, when they scattered in various directions to their different homes. This was only one of ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... of an artist for the beauty of a stranger. Since she had had neither hand nor say in her own making, the results were neither to her credit nor against it. For success in her chosen line she would have exchanged her beauty very willingly for a plain mask, her glorious youth for a sedate middle age. She would have given perhaps an eye, an ear, or so at least she thought in this ardent and generous period of early beginnings and insatiable ambition. In her thoughts nothing seemed to ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... its literary citizens were somewhat scurrilously assailed. I was one of them. There were two parties, who had each their "society." Maginn and a surgeon named Gosnell were the leaders of one: they were, for the most part, wild and reckless men of talent. The other society was conducted by the more sedate and studious. Gosnell wrote the ottava rima entitled "Daniel O'Rourke," which passed through three or four numbers of "Blackwood": he died not long afterwards in London, one of the many unhappy victims ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... to think of the children of past centuries as altogether different beings from those of our own day. With few toys and books and pictures such as we have now, they must have been, we fancy, very sedate little creatures. A child portrait like this in our illustration dispels these false ideas. This little daughter of a seventeenth-century sculptor is as full of life and spirits as any child of to-day. Barring her quaint dress and foreign ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Queenie, a small, sedate maiden of five, a miniature of Theo in face, stood silent in the doorway for a few seconds, wistfully piecing out the possible meaning of her tall sister's bewildered grief. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... very quiet little woman, and looked almost infantile as she gazed at one with her big, black eyes. She is very circumspect in her movements, and with such a mother and father as she had, I should think may be very brilliant. Naturally she had to be specially dignified and sedate at these public functions, as she and the Imperial Princess were the only ones belonging to the old imperial household, the descendants of Tao Kuang, who were intimately associated with the Empress Dowager's court. She is small, but pretty, and, as I have indicated, quiet and reticent. She was ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... sedate company of cows entering the pasture single file through an aperture made by letting down the bars. Behind them walked a boy of about his own size, flourishing a stout hickory stick. The cows went directly ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... at length passed, and Carl Proch returned home,—a trifle more sedate, perhaps, but the same noble, manly fellow. How warmly he was received by the constant Katrine it is not necessary to relate. Rauchen was not disposed to thwart his long-suffering daughter any further; and with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Suzanne," while Suzanne danced a veritable can-can through two acts, she was brought back to a sedate English jig in the third. It was a play that could not stand, and that did not need a close analysis, for it was just a vehicle by means of which Miss Tempest could let loose the matchless bag-o'-tricks among which her art may be said to lurk. Suzanne ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... from the holes and caverns of their original destinations, apostates from the loom and the anvil—he should have said the awl—and renegades from the lowest handicraft employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... shiny and crinkly, and altogether attractive. One thinks of the more aristocratic and dwarfed Japanese maples, in looking at the opening of these red-brown beauties, and it is no pleasure to see them smooth out into sedate greenness. Again, in fall, a glory of color comes to the leaves of the red maple; for they illumine the countryside with their scarlet hue, and, as they drop, form a brilliant thread in the most beautiful of all carpets—that of the autumn leaves. I think no walk in the really ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... kneeling down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music; and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff, arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at another dog: and whose yelps and howls resounded through the church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of meditation—keeping ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of the dining-room was enough to upset the nerves of anyone, especially a sensitive young woman who prided herself on her housekeeping. All around was chaos and confusion. The usually sedate, orderly dining-room was littered with trunks, grips, umbrellas and canes enveloped in rugs—all the confusion ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... attract; in some of the fine private coaches, no one but indian nurses or favored servants rode. Even here, few of the parties were really dashing, lively or beautiful. The whole thing was constrained, artificial and sedate. An occasional group seemed to really enjoy the occasion. One bony horse dragged an ancient buggy or cart, which might well be that of some country doctor, and in it was the gentleman himself, commonly dressed, but with a whole family of little people, who were bubbling over ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... true!" she exclaimed, gazing happily from one girl to another, as the seven of them lounged about the living-room, three on the broad couch and the rest distributed impartially between the floor and the window-seat. Such complete informality had never seemed permissible in the sedate Clyde mansion; but somehow these surroundings seemed to invite one to be as comfortable and ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... a holiday," said Nan, when tea was fairly begun, and her new friend was acknowledging an uncommon attack of hunger, and they were all merry in a sedate way to suit Miss Prince's ideas and preferences. "I have been quite the drudge this winter over my studies, and I feel young and idle again, now that I am making all these pleasant plans." For Mr. Gerry had been talking enthusiastically about some excursions he should arrange ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a tall, silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a master of figures. Never once during that time had his father written to him, or otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his whereabouts from the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles. Then one day a letter ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... the cracks of the floors. In the room where I slept a nightingale had made herself a nest between the window and the shutter, and while I was there little naked nightingales, looking like undressed Jew babies, hatched out from the eggs. Sedate storks live on the barn. At the beehouse there is an old grandsire who remembers the King Goroh [Translator's Note: The equivalent of Old King ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... opposite natures rolled into one, than just one ordinary boy. When quite a little chap, he would at one time be as full of noise, action, and enterprise as the captain of an ocean steamer in a gale, and at another time be as sedate, thoughtful, and absentminded as the ancient philosopher who made himself famous by walking into a ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... kind of the van der Luydens—they've sent their man over from Skuytercliff to meet us," Archer exclaimed, as a sedate person out of livery approached them and relieved ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... child, James Harrington was studious, and so sedate that it was said playfully of him he rather kept his parents and teachers in awe than needed correction; but in after-life his quick wit made him full of playfulness in conversation. In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. There he had for tutor William Chillingworth, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... sedate observer beside me, "is a bookworm,—one of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas; and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do not see what is to become of the ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... precious metals and stones had all been located; and very few surprises could be expected in that direction. It was time for the pioneers to retire upon their laurels and to give to themselves, as well as to their fortunes, the sedate appearance which they required in order to be able to take a place amid the most elegant and exclusive society of Europe. Had Rhodes remained alive he would have proved the one great obstacle which the magnates of the Rand would have to take into consideration, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... a young man coming out of the woods at a little distance before her. She recognized him, immediately, as a young man whom she called Albert, who had often been employed by Mrs. Bell, at work about the farm and garden. Albert was a very sedate and industrious young man, of frank and open and manly countenance, and of an erect and athletic form. Mary Erskine liked Albert very well, and yet the first impulse was, when she saw him coming, to cross over to the other side of the road, and ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... partly in the public schools of Boston, and subsequently as a private pupil residing in the family of his teacher, the Rev. Joseph Richardson, for many years Pastor of the First Church in Hingham. He is spoken of as "a quietly behaved and rather sedate boy" by a gentleman now living who remembers ...
— Fifty years with the Revere Copper Co. - A Paper Read at the Stockholders' Meeting held on Monday 24 March 1890 • S. T. Snow
... to see rank succeeding rank, of the old and the young, all calm and all devout, seated before the tent of the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence, or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, and such as these, the poet has poured his satire; and since this desirable reprehension the Holy Fairs, east as well as west, have ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... their sedate way across a great plain of grass, stretching without a break from the avenue up to a belt of palms, before which they stopped, swayed a moment, grunting disapprovingly in chorus, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... turned away from him, and leaned against the window frame, staring out at the gravel walk, the lawn, the paddock, all the sedate, intolerable scene. Her breast heaved; she was shaken by a tumult ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... young man in the vault, on the other hand, wears a loose paletot, buttoned to the throat (vaults are chilly places), and the coat falls so as to cover the knees; at least, partially. The young man is not, like Helena, "very dark, and fierce of look, . . . of almost the gipsy type." He is blonde, sedate, and of the classic type, as Drood was. He is no more like Helena than Crisparkle is like Durdles. Mr. Cuming Walters says that Mr. Proctor was "unable to allude to the prophetic picture by Collins." As a fact, this picture is fully described by Mr. Proctor, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... Athenians was a man in the meridian of manhood, of a calm, sedate, but somewhat haughty aspect; the other was in the full bloom of youth, of lofty stature, and with a certain majesty of bearing; down his shoulders flowed a profusion of long curled hair, divided in the centre of the forehead, and ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... as we had decided the momentous question of our route, we gave ourselves up to the unrestrained enjoyment of the few pleasures which the small and sedate village of Kluchei afforded. There was no afternoon promenade where we could, as the Russians say, "show ourselves and see the people"; nor would an exhibition of our tattered and weather-stained garments on a public promenade ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... cut to pieces," as Ruth said, when Doris stepped from the hall doorway and, glancing about, finally discovered Pete in the far corner of the veranda—deeply absorbed in searching for the hind leg of a noble horse to which little Ruth had insisted upon attaching the sedate and ignoble hind quarters of a maternal cow. So intent were they upon their game that neither of them saw Doris as she moved toward them, nodding brightly to many convalescents seated ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... ribbon. Accompanying her was a pretty maid of honor dressed as a milk maid with a pail in her hand and a three-legged stool under her arm. The Count d'Artois, gay, handsome, debonair, met them and held them in conversation, then the grave, sedate Monsieur, as the elder of the two brothers of King Louis XVI was styled, approached, and with him was our own Benjamin Franklin, dressed ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... supporter of his bitterest enemy, a Tory and a Democrat, a recognized opponent of Caesar and his trusted agent and adviser. His dramatic career stirs Lucan to one of his finest passages, gives a touch of vigor to the prosaic narrative of Velleius, and even leads the sedate Pliny to drop into satire.[116] Friend and foe have helped to paint the picture. Cicero, the counsellor of his youth, writes of him and to him; Caelius, his bosom friend, analyzes his character; Caesar leaves us a record of his military campaigns and death, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... Mr. Sartoris, who, taking Jim's advice, had followed at a more sedate pace, this was soon done; and Sylla, having rectified her toilette as far as circumstances permitted, was once more in the saddle. That she presented a rather dilapidated and woebegone appearance, nobody could be more conscious than herself; but, as a woman always does under such affliction, she ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... affairs of the Reich. For these reasons and others he likewise, probably with more study than in the Bielfeld case, despatches Colonel Camas to make his compliment at the French Court, and in an expert way take soundings there. Camas, a fat sedate military gentleman, of advanced years, full of observation, experience and sound sense,—"with one arm, which he makes do the work of two, and nobody can notice that the other arm resting in his coat-breast is of cork, so expert is he,"—will do ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... accommodation were all full. Our common room was quite choked up with sturdy forms in white loose coats; broad country faces, flushed with good humour, or beer, shone upon us from all sides. Our driver, who had been very sedate and reserved during the whole of the day, soon joined a cluster of congenial spirits in one corner, and was the thirstiest and most uproarious of mortals. As for ourselves, we seemed to be made doubly strangers, for there was not a word of German spoken in our hearing. Hours wore on, and the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... A plain, sedate youth of sixteen was called from his home in Flanders to assume the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Silent, reserved, and speaking the Spanish language very imperfectly, the impression produced by the young King was very unpromising. No one suspected ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... jacknives in the backs of the seats years ago arrested my attention, and brought to mind how weary I used to get; but as I always sat with my father, I dared not try my hand at carving. Then, the thought came: Where are those boys now? Some of them were sober, sedate men sitting before me with their broad-brimmed hats shadowing their faces; others were sleeping in the yard outside; and others had left the neighbourhood years ago. Then I thought of the great Quaker preacher and author, Joseph John Gurney, whom I had heard in this room, and ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... splendor; Henry arrogant, ostentatious, vain, and Charles silent, inscrutable, cold-blooded, and false, whispering to Woolsey that he might make him pope at the next election. From that moment the powerful influence of the Cardinal was used for this sedate youth, this wise youth, who saw that the fitting place for him (Woolsey) was the chair of ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... of age, little acquainted with the world; had never, perhaps, been in either house, and certainly had never conversed with the men whose style and sentiments he took upon himself to imitate. But so well and skilfully did he assume, not merely the sedate and stately dignity of the lords, and the undaunted freedom of the commons, but also the tone of the respective parties, that the public imagined they recognised the individual manner of the different speakers. Voltaire, and other foreigners of distinction, compared British with Greek and Roman ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted with the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the sides of his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to victory. Our usually sedate captain yelled—actually yelled!—in an agony of excitement, and tried to execute a war dance of his own on the floor of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the chains clanked and jangled, the howdahs rocked and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Catholic congregation was turning into their retired chapel, every one crossing himself with a finger dipped in holy water, as he went in. The opposite side of the street was covered with a train of Quakers, distinguished by their plain and neat attire and sedate aspect, who walked without ceremony into a room as plain as themselves, and took their seats, the men on one side, and the women on the other, in silence. A spacious building was filled with an overflowing crowd of Methodists, most of them meanly habited, but decent and serious ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... nature in the spring thrilled through his heart. His mind was filled with a vision of her gracious young loveliness, so soon to be present before him at their meeting.... Their meeting—their parting! At thought of that corollary, a cold despair clutched the lad, a despair that was nothing like the sedate sorrow over leaving his mother, a despair that was physical sickness, wrenching, nauseating, but passed beyond the physical to rack the deeps of being. For the first time, jealousy surged hideous in him, born of the realization that she must be left exposed to the wooing ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... has become such a leading light in Parliament, his speeches have taken a much more solid, sedate, and serious tone than they had in his early Birmingham days. They have become considerably more weighty—perhaps some of his unfriendly critics would say more heavy—than they were in bygone times. Without being open to the charge of levity or flippancy, Mr. Chamberlain's speeches ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... gentlemanly in his practice to contend with the trickery of Scarlett.—Mr. Common-Serjeant Denman is a man fitted by nature for the law. I never saw a more judicial-looking countenance in my life; there is a sedate gravity about it, both "stern and mild," firm without fierceness, and severe without austerity:—he appears thoughtful, penetrating, and serene, yet not by any means devoid of feeling and expression:—deeply ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a sigh in saying it. She was a warm-hearted little creature with all her vagaries, and he was less inclined to reject her unobtrusive sympathy than if a more sedate or prudent person ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... rafters, whence depended the flaming banners of the red pepper, harbored no cobwebs; the grave faces of the white-haired children bore no more dirt than was consistent with their recent occupation of making mudpies; and the sedate, bald-headed baby, lying silent but wide-awake in an uncouth wooden cradle, was as clean as clear spring water and yellow soap could make it. Mrs. Hollis herself, seen through the vista of opposite open doors, energetically rubbing the coarse wet clothes upon ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... see at play. They romp and sport all through the day, But sometimes they are most sedate And try to ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... or the Academy, and which never failed to interest and fix the attention of the beholders. The leader of one of these singular parties was the venerable Niccolo Poussin! The air of antiquity which breathed over all his works seemed to have infected even his person and his features; and his cold, sedate, and passionless countenance, his measured pace and sober deportment, spoke that phlegmatic temperament and regulated feeling, which had led him to study monuments rather than men, and to declare that the result of all his experience was "to teach him to live well with all ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... perils?—Do you bring much news to us from the Spanish Main? We have missed you sadly at the assemblies; but there must be a dance in your honour. And your wife; is she not overjoyed at the sight of you? I think you have grown old and sedate since you went away. You do not look the gay ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... offered his services, unless he was too stern and sedate. This caused a laugh, as Peter was renowned ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... or whatever the high-necked filmy white garment was, fell away, revealing a rounded forearm clasped in a band of gold. And resting her chin on her thumb, she regarded the young prince thoughtfully. In her look there may have been a sedate twinkle of amusement, but ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Freake's chair on to the hearth and then turned and took a peep at him. As soon as he had done so he gave a great shout, and then, recovering himself, burst into a roar of laughter. He clapped his hands on his knees and fairly swayed with merriment. Master Freake looked at him with a sedate half-smile, and said, "How d'ye ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Daffydowndilly, and began his rambles about the world, with only some bread and cheese for his breakfast, and very little pocket-money to pay his expenses. But he had gone only a short distance when he overtook a man of grave and sedate appearance, who was trudging at a moderate pace along ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... with yourself!" Vanderborn, who is sedate in the ordinary, cries, "It's not me yet, you see! Here I am!" With a mad gesticulation he serves me a thump on the shoulder. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... countenance that one thought to look at her a second time with close attention. She was not handsome, or even pretty, although not by any means homely; but her face was almost transfigured by its expression of earnest piety and goodness, remarkable in one so young. Quiet and sedate as was her habit, she was ever ready to enter freely into the fun and play of the other children; but even in the most absorbing frolic, if any one became hurt from too much roughness, she was the first to be on the spot ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... little princess you must have been, weeping and pouting and going to sleep," he laughed. "And how sedate and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... gentleman. However, being Ruth Kenway, she would not have shown this in any way to ruffle his feelings; for, despite her own youth, Ruth had mothered her three orphaned sisters for so long that she was more sedate and thoughtful than most girls of ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... noticed, yet so far from insignificant, where was she? Could it be that the Contessa had left her behind, or that Lucy had objected to her, or that she was ill, or that—Jock did not know what to think. The company was a strange one. Those sedate, political friends of Sir Tom found themselves with a little dismay in the society of the lady who wrote for what she called the Press, and the gentlemen from the clubs. One of the guests was the young Marquis Montjoie, who had quite lately come into his title and the world. He had been at school ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... had no desire to be left alone with someone who might prove dangerous. But his long legs took him quickly out of sight before I could catch him, even by running, and so I fell into a more sedate pace. All Miss Francis' metaphysical talk was beyond me, but what little I could make of it was pure nonsense. Guilty. Why, I had never done anything illegal in my life, unless taking a glass of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... they presented and recommended to the people the plan produced by their joint and very unanimous councils. Admit, for so is the fact, that this plan is only RECOMMENDED, not imposed, yet let it be remembered that it is neither recommended to BLIND approbation, nor to BLIND reprobation; but to that sedate and candid consideration which the magnitude and importance of the subject demand, and which it certainly ought to receive. But this (as was remarked in the foregoing number of this paper) is more to be wished than expected, that it may be so considered and examined. Experience on a former occasion ...
— The Federalist Papers
... half a nutshell and also in the colour of her dark varnished planks. The man's shoulders and head rose high above her gunwales; loaded with Lingard's heavy frame she would climb sturdily the steep ridges, slide squatting into the hollows of the sea, or, now and then, take a sedate leap over a short wave. Her behaviour had a stout trustworthiness about it, and she reminded one of a surefooted mountain-pony carrying over difficult ground a rider ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... sudden remorse for his thoughtlessness. Whilst he was chatting away, might not the Blessed Virgin be noticing one of his neighbours, more fervent, more sedate than himself? Feeling anxious on the point, he reverted to his customary modesty and patience, and with dull, expressionless eyes again began waiting for the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... incurring the censure of a mere English critic." The translator ought to endeavor to "copy him in all the variations of his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve, in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches a fullness and perspicuity; in the sentences a shortness and gravity: not to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound any rites ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... breathes sustenance To nations; a majestic charity! No marble symbol cold, in suppliant glance Deceitful smiling; strenuous her advance, Yet calm; while holy ardors, fancy-free, Direct her measured steps: in every chance Sedate—as Una 'neath the forest tree Encompassed by the lions. Why, alas! Must her perverse and thoughtless children turn From her example? Why must the sulky breath Of Bigotry stain Charity's pure glass? Poison the springs of Art ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... on a lass wi' a bonny face, Wi' a twinkle ov fun in her ee;— An aw like a lass 'at's some style an grace, An aw'm fond o' one winnin an shy. An ther's one 'at's a lot o' curly hair, An a temptinly dimpled chin, An one 'at's sedate an cold tho' fair, But shoo wod'nt be easy ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... in the round head—in the whiteness and width of the forehead, or the breadth of the shoulders. All these I went over one by one as I watched him every now and then lean across the table and speak to some of the distinguished guests that surrounded him. The thing which puzzled me was his grave, sedate demeanor, dignified, almost austere at times. A man, I thought, might grow a beard and dye it, but how could he grow a different set of manners, how smother his jollity, how wipe ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... at last. A tall inlaid clock in the gallery mentioned the hour by one sedate stroke; the church clock told the village the time of day a second later. They had nearly finished the pictures. Never mind. She could take half an hour to put on her hat, and surely any beech-avenue, even on ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... athletic, free and graceful; her slender form well poised and dignified. Patsy, the "plug-ugly," as she called herself, was so bright and animated and her blue eyes sparkled so constantly with fun and good humor, that she attracted fully as much attention as her more sedate and more beautiful cousin, and wherever she went was sure to make a host ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... of which Farmer Green's sheep never seemed to tire. They called it "Follow My Leader." And even the oldest members of the flock played it every day. Though they had grand-children—many of them—and were quite solemn and sedate, they still continued to run anywhere whenever somebody happened ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... the little stone house that night. What with cooking and feasting and making candy and laughing and "pretending," it is quite true that Miss Lavendar and Anne comported themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the dignity of a spinster of forty-five and a sedate schoolma'am. Then, when they were tired, they sat down on the rug before the grate in the parlor, lighted only by the soft fireshine and perfumed deliciously by Miss Lavendar's open rose-jar on the mantel. The wind had risen and was sighing and wailing around the eaves and the snow was ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... day the young mouse, Which was given to roam, Having made an excursion Some way from her home, On a sudden returned, With such joy in her eyes, That her grey, sedate parent ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... what we wish to know further is what are the most powerful desires in the particular human mind with which we are dealing. Obviously, the automobile salesman who vividly pictures to the timid person the thrills of speeding around curves would be as far wrong as if he were picturing the sedate, quiet luxury of his car to a speed maniac. What he wants to know and what we all want to know in substance is how to tell, at a glance, which is the timid, sedate person ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... can shake. Whether cheering the forlorn Carlos into new activity; whether lifting up his voice in the ear of tyrants and inquisitors, or taking leave of life amid his vast unexecuted schemes, there is the same sedate magnanimity, the same fearless composure: when the fatal bullet strikes him, he dies with the concerns of others, not his own, upon his lips. He is a reformer, the perfection of reformers; not a revolutionist, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... shivering from top to toe,—it was Angus searching for his cap; and it was so long since I had suffered him to exchange a word with me! I know not what change was wrought in my bewildered lineaments, what light was in my glance; but, seeing me, all that sedate sadness that weighed upon his manner fell aside, he hastily strode toward me, took my hands as he was wont, and drew me in, gazing the while down my dazzled, happy eyes till ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... us of his good company. He went out of my chamber, and I thought seemed to have a little heaviness upon him, which gave me some disquiet. Soon after my sister came to me with a very matron-like air, and most sedate satisfaction in her looks, which spoke her very much at ease; but the traces of her countenance seemed to discover that she had lately been in a passion, and that air of content to flow from a certain ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... down just below my nook, and began to count the petals of a chicory flower, and slowly she nestled in to him, and he put his arm round her. Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, so trusting on her part, so guardianlike on his. They were like, in miniature—-though more dewy,—those sober couples who have long lived together, yet whom one still catches looking at each other with confidential tenderness, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Pompadour, the company of the "small cabinets;" the Due de la Valliere is the director of them; when the piece contains a ballet the Marquis de Courtenvaux, the Duc de Beuvron, the Comtes de Melfort and de Langeron are the titular dancers.[2272] "Those who are accustomed to such spectacles," writes the sedate and pious Duc de Luynes, "agree in the opinion that it would be difficult for professional comedians to play better and more intelligently." The passion reaches at last still higher, even to the royal family. At Trianon, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... black man, very sober and sedate who for years had carried the mail twice a week from a station farther up the railroad to the village. But he was not a mail-carrier now. His employer, a white man, who had the contract for carrying the mails, had also gone into another business ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... realize it's only ten days to half-term? Oh, do, for goodness' sake, look less like a statue of melancholy! Do you know, child, that you're getting permanent wrinkles along that forehead of yours, and it makes you more like fifty than fifteen. You're too sedate. That's what's the matter with you, Lorna Carson! It's a fault that ought to be overcome. Copy Delia and me. We know how to enjoy ourselves. There—my lecture is over and now ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... girls pronounced "a darling." But Jess was no less pleased with her little animal, a bright bay with a white star on its forehead. For the boys similar animals had been provided, while Miss Prescott's mount was a rather raw-boned gray of sedate appearance. In her youth Miss Prescott had done a good deal of horseback riding, and the manner in which she sat her mount showed that she had not forgotten her horsemanship. Mr. Bell and his brother bestrode rather heavier animals than the rest of the party, while Juan, the guide, contented ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... sedate tranquillity of the neighborhood had been broken by an astonishing series of burglaries, which had occurred in rapid succession. Half a dozen houses were entered; valuables, chiefly jewelry, worth many thousands ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the numbers of the Syrians?" inquired Simon, whose quiet, sedate manner formed a strong contrast to that of ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... Prints, too, know him: here a gallant, eagle-featured little gentleman, brisk in the smiles of youth, with plumes, with truncheon, caprioling on his war-charger, view of tents in the distance;—there a sedate, ponderous, wrinkly old man, eyes slightly puckered (eyes BUSIER than mouth); a face well-ploughed by Time, and not found unfruitful; one of the largest, most laborious, potent faces (in an ocean of circumambient periwig) ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... he had passed in one step from one of the best-class quarters of the town to one of the worst. One minute he was passing through a sedate square, lined with the houses of the well-to-do, another minute he was in ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... wondering now, more than ever, what she had to say. She had barely touched his hand in salutation, and bore herself in a sedate manner that was all but awkward. They soon reached a shaded spot quite out of sight of any of the scattered residences in the vicinity, and she sat down on the grass, leaving him the option of standing or seating ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... him better than the insipidity of pink and white, and the absence of jewelry—she wore neither bracelet nor rings gave her an added touch of distinction, which restless youth finds something so much harder to wear than sedate middle age. The admiration grew in his eyes. She ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... war was on, except that people were a trifle more animated and cheerful. The next day was Sunday, and we motored round Hampstead Heath. The Heath was as usual, gay with pleasure-seekers and the streets sedate with church-goers. On Monday, when we tried to transact business and exchange money, we found that there were hitches and difficulties; it was more as though a window had been left open and a certain untidiness had resulted. "It will be all right tomorrow," ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... Chung had noticed Pao-y's unusual appearance, his sedate deportment, and what is more, his hat ornamented with gold, and his dress full of embroidery, attended by beautiful maids and handsome youths, he did not indeed think it a matter of surprise that every one ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... river were highly satisfied and jovial. Laughter and jokes were heard on all sides. The captain and the head of the village entered the mud hut to regale themselves. Lukashka, vainly striving to impart a sedate expression to his merry face, sat down with his elbows on his knees beside Olenin and ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... and where all soon seated themselves on the grass in front of the treaty tent—a large marquee—the Indians being separated by a small space from the half-breeds, who ranged themselves behind them, all conducting themselves in the most sedate and orderly manner. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... the Chancellor and Bishop walked the King with steps sedate, Chamberlains and grooms came after, silversticks and goldsticks great, Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages,—all ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... through the mindful regard of some former sponsor, by reason of the nearness of its location to the former Bunhill residence of the great epic poet. But modern Fleet Street exists to-day as the street of journalists and journalism, from the humble penny-a-liner and his product to the more sedate and verbose political paragrapher whose reputation ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... upon us," he said, with a certain sedate pomposity which, like the black crest on his head, might be ludicrous in itself, but seemed fitting enough in him. "I speak for my people who are in camp upon the island. We have been upon strange rivers, and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... curved front of her elegant dressing-table with its oval mirror became distinct. Helen's clothes lay like a patch of moonlight on a chair, the tallboy and the little stool by which she reached the topmost drawers changed from their semblances of beasts to sedate and beautiful furniture. By the bedside, soft slippers waited with an invitation, and into them Helen soon slipped her feet, for it seemed to her that the trouble thickened with each minute and that Notya must be in ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... better could be asked of her; but since she has become sensible the house is silent. The songs, the tumult, all the boisterousness of the past have disappeared. The good nurse, who is enchanted to see her so quiet, so silent, so sedate, yet misses the noisy gayety that formerly filled the house; and if the choice had been given to her, she would hardly have ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... which was, that, as would-be-clever Miss Malliver phrased it, the house was very much B. Wyldered. Nor was that the first house the little lady had bewildered, for she was indeed an importation from a new colony rather startling to sedate old England. Her father, a younger son, had unexpectedly succeeded to the family-property, a few miles from Mortgrange. He was supposed to have made a fortune in New Zealand, where Barbara was born and brought up. They had been home nearly two years, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... high strung for me; but, my king, I must have you; you don't know how jolly I can make life for my pets; Blanche won't look at Sir Peter Tedril and I know it is you she wants, you may have her and her million, you will be near me then; the Colonel, poor sedate old fellow, would not like it, but that don't signify, because he wishes (now that your secret marriage to Fanny Clarmont has become public talk) that there were a thousand miles between your handsome person and Miss Vernon; I wish you had some of ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... and I heard four sonorous clangs which summoned the "Ministerial" committee. At once its members, in their sedate and portly attitudes, surged ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... great in their maturer years are thoughtful, grave, and sedate when young. It was not so, however, with Caesar. He was of a very gay and lively disposition. He was tall and handsome in his person, fascinating in his manners, and fond of society, as people always are ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott |
