"Unruffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had deepened a little on his prominent cheek bones, and his eyes were less bright than usual. But his red hair, growing sandy with grey, was brushed smoothly back, and his evening dress was unruffled. He and Griggs were so evidently gentlemen, that some of the Italians at the other tables glanced at them occasionally in quiet surprise, not that they should be there, but that they should remain so long, and so constantly renew their order ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... "See how thou art shaken into thyself, man. What! No phrase of lackadaisical rapture! Why, I looked to see thee invert thine incorporate satin in an airy rhapsody—upheld and kept unruffled by some fantastical twist of thine imagination. Oh, Fancy—Fancy! Couldst not e'en sustain thy knight cap-a-pie!" and she laughed the harder as she saw her lover's face ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the glorious Alps, clothed in dazzling robes of light by the setting sun. And, as if the world's wonders were never to be exhausted, their vast immensities, their jagged crags, and roseate painting, appeared again in the lake below, dipping their proud heights beneath the unruffled waves—palaces for the Naiads of the placid waters. Towns and villages lay scattered at the foot of Jura, which, with dark ravine, and black promontories, stretched its roots into the watery expanse beneath. Carried away by wonder, I forgot the death of man, and the living and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Hicks, with unruffled humility, "but I'd rather stop at Messina. I'm going to get home as soon as I ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Cooper was tall and angular of frame. His face was thin and severe, wearing continually an unsmiling, mask-like expression of continent and unruffled sobriety. His manner was dry and taciturn, and his conduct and life were measured to the most absolute accord with the teachings of ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... first year of their marriage he used to consult her about all his schemes, and value her keen understanding. She wondered why he did not now. Did he distrust even her, as he did everybody else? Tonight she asked no questions. She was unruffled by his short responses to her conversational attempts; by her subtle, wifely manner she simply put herself on his side, whatever the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... This unruffled confidence in one's possession of an adequate supply of indubitable moral truth may be found in men who differ widely in their degree of intelligence and in the extent of their information. Some individuals ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... early world. They did not make the hard and self-conscious imaginative effort of the prig to hurl themselves into an historic past. They just let the land and its memories take them. As, sitting on the warm ground among the wild myrtle bushes, they looked across the emerald green unruffled waters to Salamis, that very long isle with its calm gray and orange hills and its indented shores, perhaps for a moment they talked of the Queen of Halicarnassus, and of the deception of Xerxes watching from his throne on Mount Aegaleos. But the waters were now so solitary, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... and defence from the crowd; but before he had time to consider how he should best pilot her through the pushing and scrambling throng, a way was made for him by Manuel, who,—with a quiet step and unruffled bearing,—walked through the thickest centre of the crowd, which parted easily on either side of him, as though commanded to do so by some unheard but absolute authority. Admiring and wondering glances ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil smile which I knew so well. A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled as a judge upon the bench. In truth and in justice I am compelled to say ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... he observed, quite unruffled by her demand. And then he ate a whole slice of toast and drank his coffee and handed his cup for more ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... and yet she consumed the whole day in a battle with the ink, and came out with a blotted page at the last. Tom had disappeared; no one knew where he was. Sibyl came down to dinner in her usual unruffled state, but Bessie's curly hair stood on end, and there was a deep wrinkle between her eyes. "Well, Sibyl, have you made a commencement?" she asked, as her cousin took her ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... pleasing or hideous shape. In the immediate vicinity, the country was uneven; rocky, and covered with cedars; but far off to the right could be discerned the even surface of the cane-brake, previously mentioned, now stretching away in the distance like the unruffled bosom of some beautiful lake. A light breeze slightly rustled the leaves of the trees, among whose branches an occasional songster piped forth his morning lay ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... the sofa, and tore those curtains down—crushing them with his hands—- stamping on them till the flames were extinguished, finally emerging from the smoking curtain with singed hair and beard, and shaking his scorched fingers, but otherwise calm and unruffled. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Outwardly Psmith was unruffled, but inwardly he was not feeling so composed. An ordinary turn-up before an impartial crowd which could be relied upon to preserve the etiquette of these matters was one thing. As regards the actual little ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... learnt; and will never again write in novel or story the lie that the hero with the picture of his lady-love in his mind can pass unruffled through wind and rain. No one could keep any face in mind, however lovely, in such a storm,—he has enough to do to keep the ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... brows contracted and he shut his lips tightly so that his stiff mustache gave to his mouth a sinister look that Dan had never seen before. The disagreeable expression vanished and he was his usual calm, unruffled self. "And," he concluded, smiling, "I might have some ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... that in which one moves among the shadows." Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to regret that the meeting with Goethe did not take place. Goethe, then in all the pregnancy of his wonderful youth, still unruffled by the press and storm of his earlier manhood, was awaiting Winckelmann with a curiosity of the worthiest kind. As it was, Winckelmann became to him something like what Virgil was to Dante. And Winckelmann, with his fiery friendships, had reached that age and that period of culture at which emotions ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... had not been gone very long when George came in, his usually calm, unruffled brow puckered, and his face wearing a worried look. 'I say, Sarah, I'm afraid I've been very presumptuous in undertaking to carry on my ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... to use a similar comparison, is furnished with shelves, like his library. Each book knows its place in the brain as well as against the wall or in the alcove. His consciousness is doubled by the books which encircle him, as the trees that surround a lake repeat themselves in its unruffled waters. Men talk of the nerve that runs to the pocket, but one who loves his books, and has lived long with them, has a nervous filament which runs from his sensorium to every one of them. Or, if I may still let my fancy draw its pictures, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... crisp breeze blew, and all the living sea Beneath the flower-soft colours of the sky, Now like a myriad-petalled rose and now Innumerably scalloped into shells Of rosy fire, with dwindling wrinkles edged Fainter and fainter to the unruffled glow And soft white pallor of the distant deep, Shone with a mystic beauty for those twain Who watched the gathering glory; and, in an hour, Drake and sweet Bess, attended by a guard Of four swart seamen, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... I replied, unruffled, "hits the point squarely when it says that whether the plans were of immediate importance or not, the real point is that if they could be stolen, really important things could be taken also. For instance, 'The thought of what the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... abruptly in his walk, and looked at the girl with astonishment. She, her hands still coquettishly thrust in her jacket-pockets, returned his gaze with unruffled serenity. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... true," the Queen said, "and, unpleasant as it may be, we must learn to face the truth. That's the path of sanity." Lady Barbara made a strangled noise but Her Majesty continued, unruffled. "Nearly everybody suffers from the silly delusion that he's possibly equal to, but very probably superior to, everybody else ... my goodness, where would we be ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... beyond the sea: His left hand held his book of might; A silver cross was in his right; The lamp was placed beside his knee: High and majestic was his look, At which, the fellest fiends had shook, And all unruffled, was his face: They trusted his soul ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... effected this salutary reform. The fact has since been disclosed that he had made up his mind to resign the Speakership and retire from public life had his party failed to support him. For three days, the House was a bedlam, but the Speaker bore himself throughout with unflinching courage and unruffled composure. Eventually he had his way. New rules were adopted, and the power to count a quorum was established.* When in later Congresses a Democratic majority returned to the former practice, Reed gave them such a dose of their own medicine ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Bostwick had rasped all the finer feelings of the captain of the Seamew. He was happy to be able to get her out of his mind. In fact, he had put aside thought of any girl. Romance no longer enmeshed his cogitations. He was utterly calm, unruffled, serene, as he descended by the twists and turns of certain streets beyond the State House and came out finally upon the now lighted ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... night I was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains. I could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells which danced multitudinously before the ear as fireflies come and go before the eyes; for all through a fine summer's night the cattle will feed as though ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... paddle deeply into the water, Brandon, brought the head of the canoe round for the ship, the faint outlines of whose canvas was just showing ghostly white half a mile away through the thin morning haze which mantled the still unruffled surface ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... said Pomona, in an entirely unruffled tone. "Your old boarder is there, with his ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... of the narrow limits of the power of death. Love lives through death, memory lives through it. Christ has lived through it and comes up from the grave, serene and tender, with unruffled peace, with all the old tones of tenderness in the voice that said 'Mary!' So may we be sure that through death and after it we shall live and be ourselves. We, too, shall show ourselves alive after we have experienced the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... master requires to "make his horse trot"? You will blush over the memory of that question next year, although now you feel that you have been very ladylike, even very Christian, in putting it, for have you not shown that your temper is unruffled and that you are thinking ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... wild cries, spring into the air; at the same instant the native raises his right hand high over his shoulder, and, bounding forward with his utmost speed for a few paces to give impetus to his blow, the kiley quits his hand as if it would strike the water, but when it has almost touched the unruffled surface of the lake it spins upwards with inconceivable velocity, and with the strangest contortions. In vain the terrified cockatoos strive to avoid it; it sweeps wildly and uncertainly through the air, and so eccentric are its motions that it requires but a slight stretch of the imagination ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... searchingly, but for all that he was a man of almost twice her years, her wits were more than a match for his, and his scrutiny can have told him nothing. She preserved a calm, unruffled front. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... artist and his ape, to teach and tell How well his connoisseurship understands The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: Let these describe the undescribable: I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that image shall for ever dwell; The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... dinners are a great bore." Her Highness came forward, caught the dark head of the English girl between her gloved hands, pressed it against her heart, bent and kissed it. "What a lovely girl you are, Betty! always unruffled, always even-tempered. You will grow ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... was a conservative of the old school in politics. In later days Gustavo always voted against Camillo. In politics the brothers were in admirable agreement to differ; in fact, after the first trifling jars, they dwelt to the end in unruffled harmony in the family palace, Via dell' Arcivescovado. At the time when Gustavo was much better known at Turin than Camillo the suspicious radical could not persuade himself that one brother was not as much of an aristocrat as the other. When ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... quite true," she replied, calmly, looking, in her exquisite morning dress, calm, sweet and unruffled as ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... another;—then a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon us,— the breath of the Orinoco.... It grows dark before we pass through the Ape's Mouth, to anchor in one of the calmest harbors in the world,—never disturbed by hurricanes. Over unruffled water the lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long still yellow beams. The night grows chill;—the air is made frigid by the breath of the enormous river and the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian, always unruffled, "if you wouldn't moralize. I asked you to tell me what I could do with ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... He emphasized his words with angry sweeps of his arms. He clenched his fists, and his face grew red. He was not like the old, shrewd, indomitable Brokaw, completely master of himself, never revealing himself beyond the unruffled veil of his self-possession, and Philip was surprised. He had expected that Brokaw's wily brain would bring with it half a dozen schemes for the quiet undoing of their enemies. And now here was Brokaw, the man who always hedged himself ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was solely of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never forsook him; but he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and told them he had lived long enough. The fever increased, and his strength diminished, and he died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended by ten or twelve thousand people, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... but remark, what I have often meditated over, how trifling, how apparently insignificant, are the circumstances which determine the felicity or misery of human beings. I was possessed of an ample estate; I was, in most difficult conditions, in unruffled amity with all my neighbors, on both sides of the great feud, except only my hereditary enemy; I was high in the favor of the Emperor; I was in a fair way to marry the youngest, the most lovely and the richest widow in Rome. In the twinkling of an eye I was cast down from the pinnacle of good ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and flung it wide. Juan Catheron stood and looked at him, his admirable good-humor unruffled, something like genuine ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... about from one side of the lagoon to the other; then about ten o'clock, when the breeze came, I would paddle over to the lee of the weather side of the island (the land in places not being much wider than the Palisadoes of Port Royal in Jamaica) and fish in unruffled water in some deep pool among a number of sand banks, or rather round-topped hillocks, which even at high water were some feet above ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... words had given her strength to move, she turned back, gliding again through the narrow hall, and down the steep stairway, out into the open air; and when, that night, as she often did, Dora looked for her mother's beautiful hair, it lay in its accustomed place, unruffled and unharmed; and the orphan child, as she pressed it to her lips, dreamed not of the danger which had threatened it, or of the snare about to be laid for herself by Eugenia, who could not yet give up ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... in the very narrowest part of the channel, still some ten miles below the fort. No sign of human presence had been discovered by those on board, no sound came from the solemn forests. Shy water-fowl swam fearlessly on the unruffled current that gurgled against the schooner's bow, and for aught their senses could discover, her people might have been the sole occupants ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... but I did not feel the least afraid, as I saw at a glance that he was exceedingly dexterous in the bushman's art of handling a stock-whip, and knew, if I kept perfectly still, I was quite safe. It was thanks to uncle Jay-Jay that I was able to bear the operation with unruffled equanimity, as he was in the habit of testing ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... friends and country, an adventurer in the pathless wilderness? can I look upon your face, and not curse the wretch, who won from me its smiles, who burst our love asunder, in all its purity and fervor, while yet unruffled by one shade of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... on apace, but evidently without much show of enthusiasm. Addison assisted, probably dispirited and nervous but outwardly unruffled, for he always presented a well-starched front to the watching-world. Honest Dick Steele looked on, and in that frank, ingenuous way he told his friends, with perhaps a suspicious flush on his winsome face and a swimming gleam in his eyes, that he was ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... crags, by toppling convent crowned,[az] The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep, The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrowned, The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep, The tender azure[46] of the unruffled deep, The orange tints that gild the greenest bough, The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,[ba] The vine on high, the willow branch below, Mixed in one mighty scene, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... this shallow belt that the villages were built. The sites of twenty-four settlements are known. We are told that on "calm days, when the surface of the water is unruffled, the piles are plainly visible. Few of them now project more than two feet from the bottom, eaten away by the incessant action of the water. Lying among them are objects of bone, horn, pottery, and frequently even of bronze. So fresh are they, and so unaltered, they look as if they were only ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... I said," drawled the Older Man with unruffled suavity. "But what's the use?" he added a trifle more briskly. "Though you searched a thousand years! A 'real girl'? Bah! You wouldn't know a 'real girl' if ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... afternoon. From where they sat he could behold the line of shore on either side with its background of dark green woods. Below the wavelets lapped the shingle with melodious rhythm. As far as the eye could see lay the bosom of the ocean unruffled, and lustrous with the sheen of the dying day. Accustomed to prevail in buying his way, he could not resist saying, after ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... having to carry it in buckets from the creek for the house, and to obviate such drudgery he shrewdly exercised his wit. A thoughtful, designing person is Tom—ever ready to accept the inevitable, with unruffled aboriginal calm, and just as willing—and as competent, too—to assist weary Nature by any of the little arts which he, by close observation of her moods, has acquired, or the knowledge which has been handed down from generation to generation. As it was the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the Tread of Ben Venue. It is wonderful how many aspects a mountain has,—how many mountains there are in every single mountain!—-how they vary too, in apparent attitude and bulk. When we reached the lake its surface was almost unruffled, except by now and then the narrow pathway of a breeze, as if the wing of an unseen spirit had just grazed it in flitting across. The scene was very beautiful, and, on the whole, I do not know that Walter Scott has overcharged his description, although he has symbolized the reality by types and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... torch on the hearth, and waited. Three strides brought him into the middle of the room, but the look of her stopped him there. She was rather pale, very grave, looked taller than her height; her eyes seemed like twin lakes of dark water, unruffled and unwinking. Neither of them spoke, though there was fine disorder in two hearts, and one was crying inwardly to Love and the Virgin. Isoult spoke first in ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... however, was quite unruffled, and went about for some hours lamenting the loss of the huge antarctic bird. He consoled himself later, however, by shooting a beautiful little snow petrel, which he stuffed and mounted and presented to Ben Stubbs, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... would meet with no difficulty. Accordingly Pitt inserted in the King's Speech for the ensuing session a passage expressing confidence that Parliament would seek to improve the benefits already secured by the Act of Union. The phrase was smooth enough to leave the King's conscience unruffled, and on 23rd January he assented to the Speech, requesting that no change be made.[579] But while Pitt sapped the approaches to the citadel, Loughborough countermined him. On what day and in what manner ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... rather a large woman, of middle age, with a high forehead unruffled by thought, and a clear skin unmarred by wrinkles. She had a cheerfulness that obtruded itself, like a creditor, at unpropitious moments; and her voice, though not displeasing, gave the impression that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... rejoined, unruffled, "maybe he was there to help me and maybe that was why I never felt really afraid that any beast would burst into my coach and seize me, though several snuffed at its panels and I could see them plain in the clear moonlight. Perhaps, in spirit, he was close ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... it point by point, scanning it closely, viewing it in its full extent, weighing, studying, determined that no detail should be overlooked. Outwardly his serenity was unruffled; his veiled eye showed its customary cool indifference, his manner its ironical suavity. Inwardly he was taut as a racer, his toe to the line, waiting for the starting signal. There were moments, pacing up and down his room, when he felt chilled by freezing air currents, as if icebergs ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... lend a hand for the preservation of the ship," answered the unruffled Pipes, "when there is more sail than ballast aboard, and the pilot quits the helm in despair? What signifies one or two broken voyages, so long as our timbers are strong, and our vessel in good trim? If she ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the spring crops, which cover the surface in one wide sheet unintersected by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have little tendency to dispel; for, though they ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... feverish scurryings for tickets. A young baggage employe, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, that he came from ——. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons born at ——, and never yet encountered one who was not civil beyond the common measure. His native place must be worthy ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... heightened every beauty; the zephyrs whispered softly through the trees, which now began to shed their leafy honours; a solemn silence reigned: and to a happy mind an evening such as this would give serenity, and calm, unruffled pleasure; but to Montraville, while it soothed the turbulence of his passions, it brought increase of melancholy reflections. Julia was leaning on his arm: he took her hand in his, and pressing it tenderly, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... and the entire corps of cadets was as placid and unruffled as ever when the two battalions marched to ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... not more sought after than any one else," Lois returned, unruffled. "Every one has to help in the work ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... over the hills to the Tickle settlement. My uncle's cottage sat respectably, even with some superiority, upon a narrow neck of rock by the Lost Soul, outlooking, westerly, to sea, but in the opposite direction dwelling in a way more intimate and fond upon the unruffled water of Old Wives' Cove, within the harbor, where rode ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... injunctions, threats, and punishments notwithstanding, he contrived every day some perfectly novel, ingenious, and totally unexpected method of accomplishing the same; uniting, in his efforts, the strategy of a Napoleon, with the unruffled composure of a Grant. ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... vin[Fr]. go out like a lamb, "roar you as gently as any sucking dove," [Midsummer-Night's Dream]. Adj. moderate; lenient &c. 740; gentle, mild, mellow; cool, sober, temperate, reasonable, measured; tempered &c. v.; calm, unruffled, quiet, tranquil, still; slow, smooth, untroubled; tame; peaceful, peaceable; pacific, halcyon. unexciting, unirritating[obs3]; soft, bland, oily, demulcent, lenitive, anodyne; hypnotic &c. 683; sedative; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... from within. It is the peace and restfulness of the depths of our nature. The fury of storm and of wind agitate only the surface of the sea; they can penetrate only two or three hundred feet,— below that is the calm, unruffled deep. To be ready for the great crises of life we must learn serenity in our daily living. Calmness ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... move with softer pace; So have ye seen the fowler chase On Grasmere's clear unruffled breast A youngling of the wild-duck's nest ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... putting aside that false explanation, we can see how such darkness may be. If our religious life was in more vigorous exercise, more pure, perfect and continuous, there would be no separation of faith and the joy of faith. But we have not such unruffled, perfect, uninterrupted faith, and hence there may be, and often is, faith without much joy of faith. I would not say that such experience is always the fruit of sin. But certainly we are not to blame Him or to think of Him as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the surface of the water in that pit was as calm and unruffled as ever—not a ripple showed that it had been disturbed. And Pratt made his way out of the wilderness, swearing that he would ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... chambers, leaving the ships of men to flap their idle sails. Then the ocean ceased to fume, though its agitated bosom still continued for some time to heave. Gradually the swell went down and soon the unruffled surface reflected a dimpling smile ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of the window the next morning, on a landscape that was novel, yet somehow familiar. The river, a quarter of a mile away, very clear and unruffled under its groves of cottonwood, wound through low barren hills, as unlike as could be to the cliffs and chasms we knew so well. But the colours—gray, red, and umber, just as Moran has painted them—reassured us. We seemed not so far ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Webb, with unruffled calm, even while uplifting a hand in quiet warning. "We will consider that, if need be, on your return. Meantime, if you desire, I will receipt to you for the post fund or any other ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... absolutely unruffled, while Long was one straight flush from head to foot. "Come—come over to see our brag show?" he stuttered, with an untoward jerk of the body, for he had tried to put his foot on the hub of the wheel and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... captive, and we saw her no more. I now wonder that with our joint instinct for failure we ever got rid of her; but I am sure we did, and few things in life have given me greater relief. When we got back to my house we found the friend we had left there quite unruffled and not much concerned to know the facts of our adventure. My impression is that he had been taking a nap on my lounge; be appeared refreshed and even gay; but if I am inexact in these details he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... confessed it, there existed a secret sentiment, a something very sweet—all the sweeter because no one in the world shared it with them. But she kept her secret with a tranquil mind, her sense of honor quite unruffled, for no thought of evil ever disturbed her. How good he was to his wife and child! She loved him the more when he made Lucien jump or kissed Juliette on the cheek. Since she had seen him in his own home their friendship had greatly increased. She was now as one of the family; she ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... exclaimed Mian, gazing at the brilliant and unruffled water, "greatly would this person esteem a short river journey, such as we often enjoyed together in the days when you ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... the evil bird had not made its nest in madame's breast, that was clear; her smooth, white brow was the sign of a rose-leaf conscience; that dark curtain of hair, looped madonna-wise over each ear, framed a face as unruffled as ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... ocean, creating an undulating surface, even during long-continued calms, excites the wonder of all who, never having been abroad upon the waters, imagine its surface is always smooth and unruffled unless disturbed by a gale of wind. This "tramp of the ocean waves" is beautifully described by Charles H. Brown, one ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... making everything from the waterline up a white blank. Against this blank was superimposed, by running the film through the camera twice, a picture of the New York sky-line as seen from the Jersey shore. The unruffled surface of the water in the tank—so unlike the wavy North River—was almost the only thing to show certain of the spectators that the scene was not the real thing. In another episode of the same ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees into the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those of some graceful Naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the clear, unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated forth with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of religion, then it is well to lay seriously to heart whether sensitiveness on the subject of your banker or your doctor, when he is handled sceptically by another, would not be taken to argue a secret misgiving in your mind about him, in spite of your confident profession, an absence of clear, unruffled certainty in his honesty or ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... one hundred fathoms, but they lie in a sloping manner toward the south-west quarter. The effect of this slope in stormy weather is to increase the swell of the seas to a frightful extent; and even in calm weather, when the sea is to all appearance smooth and unruffled, the ground-swell from the ocean continues, and meeting the slope of these rocks, the waves often break ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... find himself immersed in Fate's gumbo. He recalled, with the bitterness with which one does recall such things, that that morning he had risen from his bed without a care in the world, his happiness unruffled even by the thought that Lucille would be leaving him for a short space. He had sung in his bath. Yes, he had chirruped like a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... right. "I'm going straight down hill. Thank heaven it's an easy slope, coated with English turf and with an English churchyard at the foot." The hysterical emotion produced by our late dire misadventure had given place to an unruffled calm in which the scene about us was reflected as in an old-fashioned mirror. We took an afternoon walk through Christ-Church meadow and at the river-bank procured a boat which I pulled down the stream to Iffley and to the slanting woods of Nuneham—the sweetest flattest reediest ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... be on top again," said her brother, putting the papers back in his pocket. He sat there in front of her quite unruffled. He would let people see that he was not the man to be crushed by a reverse; that there were other things ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... her "Salemina," she knows, and we know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she remains unruffled under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual public comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was given her by ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no wind stirring it is designated flat, dead, or stark, under each of which the surface of the sea is unruffled. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... guests would take these papers, underscore some specially savage attack, and tell the waiter to take it to General Sheridan as he sat at table at his breakfast. The General would glance at it with an unruffled face, and bow and smile toward the sender of the article. The whole thing made little impression on him. No violence toward him personally was ventured upon. The night before I started on my return to Washington, General Sheridan called to take leave. I was much amused ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the puffy face of the speaker. His steely gray eyes fairly snapped with anger, although his voice was unruffled as he replied, "You'd better tell me all you heard, and who ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... cream. In most well-ordered British households Miss Grieve would be requested to do this speeding, but both her mind and her body move too slowly for such domestic crises; and then, too, her temper has to be kept as unruffled as possible, so that she will cut the bread and butter thin. This she generally does if she has not been "fair doun-hadden wi' wark;" but the washing of her own spinster cup and plate, together with the incident sighs and groans, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... except for sacrifice, and Nihama, i.e., purity relative to the use of water after defilement, pleasure in everything whether in prosperity or adversity, renouncing food when hungry, and keeping down the body. Thus delivered from these four enemies of the flesh, he resembled the unruffled flame of the lamp, and by Brahmagnana, or meditating on the Deity, placing his mind on the sun, moon, fire, or any other luminous body, or within his heart, or at the bottom of his throat, or in the centre of his skull, he was enabled to ascend from ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to enjoy this clear, unruffled evening of his days. Neither misfortune nor age had been able to quench in him the fire of passion, nor wholly to obscure the genial humor of his character. In his seventieth year he was still in pursuit of the shadow of a happiness which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he, at last—and his voice was as unruffled as my own; had it been more angry I should have feared it less—"do you fear opposition? I do not think your parents would refuse their consent to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... mark, Fahrenheit, the South Park, a hundred miles long, surrounded by precipitous mountains or green and sloping foot-hills, burst upon us, In the clear, still air, a hundred miles away, at Pueblo, I could hear a promissory note and cut-throat mortgage drawing three per cent a month. So calm and unruffled was the rarified air that I fancied I could hear the thirteenth assessment on a share of stock at Leadville toiling away at the bottom of a two hundred and fifty ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... fearful tide bringing them not the treasure which they sought. Would the sea never give it up? Was the dear form caught and held by the entangling arms of some purple weed in the sea depths? or was it cradled in the calm, unruffled quiet of some crevice ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... unruffled soul, Where no rude passion strove; So mild his soothing accents stole, Upon ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... week or ten days of hotel fare in small Wisconsin towns, would come home to sea-foam biscuits, and real soup, and honest pies and cake. Sometimes, in the midst of an appetizing meal he would lay down his knife and fork and lean back in his chair, and regard the cool and unruffled Terry with a sort of reverence in his eyes. Then he would get up, and come around to the other side of the table, and tip her pretty ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... Frame of Mind, is not only easy in his Thoughts, but a perfect Master of all the Powers and Faculties of his Soul: His Imagination is always clear, and his Judgment undisturbed: His Temper is even and unruffled, whether in Action or in Solitude. He comes with a Relish to all those Goods which Nature has provided for him, tastes all the Pleasures of the Creation which are poured about him, and does not feel the full Weight of those accidental Evils ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 12, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)—It was early on Monday that the unexpected arrival of the German cruiser Emden broke the calm of these isolated little islands, which the distant news of the war had hitherto left unruffled. One of the islands is known as Direction Island, and here the Eastern Telegraph Company has a cable station and a staff engaged in relaying messages between Europe and Australia. Otherwise the inhabitants are all Malays, with the exception of the descendants of June Clunies ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... ordeal of a new scholar's introduction with unruffled temper, though his cousin took care there should be little cessation until afternoon school, when Louis was liberated from his tormentors to his great satisfaction—Frank's business carrying him to a part of the school-room ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... calm the albatross is master of the wind and waves. Sailors, straining every nerve to guide the laboring, struggling ship through tempestuous seas, look up, and see far above their heads the albatross calmly breasting the gale, its majesty unruffled, and its great out-stretched wings as motionless as on a still, sunny day. Its strength of flight is marvellous, and is said to be superior to that of any other bird. Sailors have captured these royal inhabitants of southern polar regions, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by no means wore the unruffled and remotely superior aspect of a few minutes before. It must be frankly confessed, as regards the honorable Justices Goodrich of Pittsfield, Barker of Cheshire, and Whiting of Great Barrington, that ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... to ride, or run a race, Must bear privations with unruffled face, Be called to labour when he thinks to dine, And, harder still, leave wenching and his wine. Ladies who sing, at least who sing at sight, Have followed Music through her farthest flight; [lxxxix] But rhymers tell you neither more nor less, "I've ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of Sunday, November 1st—a dawn of rare perfection, with the spacious Sound unruffled by any stray breeze, the wide blue heaven unbroken by any cloud—saw that purposeful activity among the ships which immediately precedes putting to sea. Smoke drifted upwards from many funnels, some ships were busy clearing their anchors, while others manoeuvred out of tight corners. First came the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... in the afternoon of the 4th of May when the "Samaria" steamed slowly between the capes of Camden and Carlisle, and rounding out into Atlantic turned her head towards the western horizon. The ocean lay unruffled along the rocky headlands of Ireland's southmost shore. A long line of smoke hanging suspended between sky and sea marked the unseen course of another steamship farther away to the south. A hill-top, blue and lonely, rose ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... a thin sheet of the water hung like a transparent curtain over the edge of the rocks. It was so smooth and unruffled that it seemed stationary, like a film of glass, but, after striking the stones below, it broke into foam, whirlpools and eddies, which helped to form as lovely and picturesque a scene as the most devoted lover of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... after the election, melancholy accounts appeared of the havoc wrought upon a frame once so full of animal spirits. He began to drink too freely even for those days of deep drink. His eye lost its lustre; deep lines furrowed the round, sunny face; the unruffled temper became irritable; and, within three months after the close of his second term as Vice President, before he had entered his fifty-second ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... chapel, of every cry of human passion which might break through the well-ordered sweetness of his chants. No; the Renaissance did not exist for him who lived in a world of diaphanous form, colour, and character; unsubstantial and unruffled, dreaming feebly and sweetly of transparent-cheeked Madonnas with no limbs beneath their robes; of smooth-faced saints with well-combed beard and placid, vacant gaze, seated in well-ordered masses, holy with the purity of inanity; of divine dolls with pallid flaxen locks, floating between ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... returned the other, quite unruffled. "You have exactly defined the situation, and ours is by far the more disagreeable and thankless part to play. Oh—I am not going to defend all we have done! I only defend what we mean to do. Change of any sort is execrable ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... gazed in silent admiration, for there lay stretched out before them a vast woodland scene of most exquisite beauty. Just at their feet was the lake of which they were in search; some parts of it bright as the blue sky which its unruffled breast reflected; other parts dark almost to blackness with the images of rocks and trees. Everywhere around lay a primeval wilderness of wood and water which it is beyond the power of mortal pen adequately to describe; and while all was suffused with the golden light of an early summer ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne |
