"Sedate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dances of India, and while the young people execute the fandango, the bolero, the cachucha, or the lascivious movements of the bayaderes, the enterprising half-breed, the indolent Spaniard, and the sedate Chinese, retire to the gaming saloons, to try their fortune at cards and dice. The passion for play is carried to such an extent, that the traders lose or gain in one night sums of 50,000 piasters (L10,000 sterling). The half-breeds, Indians, and Chinese, have also a great ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... his branch of the service, he stood and looked at himself in the glass, experiencing a demoralizing and unworthy excitement. He was every bit as handsome as Comrade Stankewitz! When he walked down the street would the girls giggle, and turn to look at him, as they did at the sedate and proper Comrade Emil? So the meshes of Militarism were being woven about the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... of civilization, in which primitive manners and customs and old-world tradition linger on into an age that has elsewhere forgotten them. In the summer, it is true, a small contingent of visitors, adventurous in spirit, though mostly of sedate and solitary habits, make their appearance to swell its meagre population, and impart to the wide stretches of smooth sand that fringe its shores a fleeting air of life and sober gaiety; but in late September—the season of the year in which I made its ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... dressing in any old thing any which way. Whatever the truth as to Mrs. Norris's domestic life, she carried herself strictly and insisted upon keeping her house as respectable as can reasonably be expected in a large city. That is, everyone in it was quiet, was of steady and sedate habit, was backed by references. Not until Sperry had thoroughly qualified as a responsible person did Mrs. Norris accept his assurances as to the Spensers and consent to receive them. Downtown the apartment houses that admit ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... more sedate, contemplative character. Philosophy becomes the rigid mistress of your life, enchanting enthusiasm the companion of mine. Suppose she lead me now and then in pursuit of a meteor; am not I happy in the chase? When one illusion vanishes, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the wicket-gate, said good-bye and went away. After that she heard his sedate voice the whole day; and on closing her eyes she instantly had a vision of his dark beard. She took a great liking to him. And evidently he had been impressed by her, too; for, not long after, an elderly woman, a distant acquaintance, came in to have a cup of coffee with her. As ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... quietest horse in the world is apt to show annoyance if very great liberties are taken with his person by either man or hound. My experience teaches me to remember this fact and not try a horse, who is not a huntsman's mount, too highly in this respect. The more sedate pup of the two is in fine condition, because he takes no liberties with the horses and therefore he obtains his requisite exercise; but if I wanted a bold, generous, dashing foxhound who can use his nose, swim a river or perform ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... flood could make no "silence in the hills;" for the Pamet, as I saw it, is far too sedate a stream ever to be caught "babbling." It has only some three miles to run, and seems to know perfectly well that it need ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... It was the last luxury he would ever have dreamed of allowing himself, a woman friend; but since life had brought it in the oddest way the boon should be met with no grudging of gratitude. A kind of sedate cheerfulness crept into his manner which was new to him; he went about his duties with the look of a man to whom life had dictated its terms and who found them acceptable. His blood might have received some mysterious chemical complement, so much was his eye ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... be guessed that Ernest was not the chosen friend of the more sedate and well-conducted youths then studying at Roughborough. Some of the less desirable boys used to go to public-houses and drink more beer than was good for them; Ernest's inner self can hardly have told him to ally himself to these young gentlemen, but he did so at an early ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Galeazzo, which began with this coup-de-main (1385-1402), forms a very important chapter in Italian history. We may first see what sort of man he was, and then proceed to trace his aims and achievements. Giovio describes him as having been a remarkably sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond his years that his friends feared he would not grow to man's estate. No pleasures in after-life drew him away from business. Hunting, hawking, women, had alike no charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... known her true name and character, and traveled in ease and safety to Paris. The excitement and the intoxicating joy which Henrietta experienced when she got her darling child once more in her arms, can be imagined, perhaps, even by the most sedate American mother; but the wild and frantic violence of her expressions of it, none but those who are conversant with the French character ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... of brilliant puns. More important merits than this must, no doubt, be attributed to Max Mueller; but, after all, so wayward is he and so whimsical, such a lover of paradox and of digression, that he must perpetually exasperate that sedate race of men whom Philology is supposed to have peculiarly chosen for its own. In this second series of Lectures, especially, "we have been at a great feast of languages, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Friends that would harmonise with his gloves and umbrella he had none as yet. If he ordered an aperitif before the midday meal, it was on the terrace of a cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where he sat devouring newspapers in awful solitude. Sometimes he took Blanquette for a sedate walk; but no longer Blanquette en cheveux. He bought her a mystical headgear composed as far as I could see of three plums and a couple of feathers, which the girl wore with an air of happy martyrdom. He discoursed to her on the weather and the political situation. At this period ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... 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 enforced rule of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... two o'clock in the morning. The lights were out in Robinson's Hall, where there had been dancing and revelry; and the moon, riding high, painted the black windows with silver. The cavalcade, that an hour ago had shocked the sedate pines with song and laughter, were all dispersed. One enamoured swain had ridden east, another west, another north, another south; and the object of their adoration, left within her bower at Chemisal Ridge, was ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to 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 that of the white ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... crag, a lofty stone As ever tempest beat! Out of its head an Oak had grown, A Broom out of its feet. The time was March, a chearful noon— The thaw-wind with the breath of June Breath'd gently from the warm South-west; When in a voice sedate with age This Oak, half giant and half ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... in Polly's dark eyes. They were big lovely eyes that looked at you wistfully from under arched brows. They seldom laughed or twinkled and the nose that kept them company was equally sedate, being purely aquiline, but a mouth with dimpled corners upset the scheme entirely, while ripples of golden brown hair completed the picture of a healthy, happy youngster—not radiantly beautiful but what people like to ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... the time of the war sixty-five years of age, a hard, swarthy man, quiet of manner, fierce of soul, with a reputation among a nation of resolute men for unsurpassed resolution. His dark face was bearded and virile, but sedate and gentle in expression. He spoke little, but what he said was to the point, and he had the gift of those fire-words which brace and strengthen weaker men. In hunting expeditions and in native wars he ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which was in days long gone the residence of the Venetian ambassador. A garden occupies the centre of the square. Everything is neat, orderly and severely dull, the most dissipated tenants of the square being boarding-house keepers of a highly sedate description. The secret of all this tremendous respectability is to be found in the contiguity to the Charter-House itself, a portion of whose buildings abut on the square, which, with many of the streets adjoining, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... set of men, last November (who were really very good too, of course), were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more. They stood out for what might be called ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to each sentence. "I know it all. I know Jim Ratcliffe, and a burly old monster he is. I know Nick of Redlands—also the sedate Mrs. Nick. And, last but not least, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the head office o' the excise that the gauger of Redlintie spent his evenings at a public house, singing 'The De'il's awa' wi' the Exciseman.' Tam drank nows and nans, and it ga'e Mr. Cray a turn to see him come rolling yont the street, just as if it was himsel' in a looking-glass. He was a sedate-living man now, but chiefly because his wife kept him in good control, and this sight brought back auld times so vive to him, that he a kind of mistook which ane he was, and took to dropping, forgetful-like, into public-houses again. It was high time Tam should ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... in Cromwell Road was dark and sombre as I stood with Phrida, who, bright and happy, pulled off her gloves and declared to her mother—that charming, sedate, grey-haired, but wonderfully preserved, woman—that she had had such ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... horses. The squaws each threw an emancipated, sinewy leg across a pony's back and followed Alchise's fluttering shirt up the mountain. Kut-le stood holding the bridle of a sedate little horse on which he had fastened a ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... With smile sedate and patient eye, Thou mark'st the zealots pass thee by To rave and raise a hue and cry Against each other: Thou see'st a Father up on high; In ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... archetypes without patterns, and so having nothing to represent but themselves, cannot but be adequate, everything being so to itself. He that at first put together the idea of danger perceived, absence of disorder from fear, sedate consideration of what was justly to be done, and executing that without disturbance, or being deterred by the danger of it, had certainly in his mind that complex idea made up of that combination: and intending it to be nothing else but what is, nor to have ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... rogue cheated me in that affair; that young fellow's mother used me more like a dog than any woman I ever made advances to.' This way of talking of his very much enlivens the conversation among us of a more sedate turn; and I find there is not one of the company, but myself, who rarely speak at all, but speaks of him as of that sort of man who is usually called a well-bred Fine Gentleman. To conclude ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the girl's grief there grew remembrance of the road leading to the convent. And, though they were still five miles away or more, she saw the gate at the corner of the lane, the porteress too. She saw the quiet sedate nuns hastening down the narrow passages towards their chapel. She saw them playing with their doves like innocent children, she saw them chase the ball down the gravel walks and across the swards. She saw her life from ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... discover, vary tactually according to the age, the sex, and the manners of the walker. It is impossible to mistake a child's patter for the tread of a grown person. The step of the young man, strong and free, differs from the heavy, sedate tread of the middle-aged, and from the step of the old man, whose feet drag along the floor, or beat it with slow, faltering accents. On a bare floor a girl walks with a rapid, elastic rhythm which is quite distinct from the graver step of the elderly woman. I have laughed over ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... that Sanin was simply astonished; her face even wore at times that sedate expression which children sometimes have when they are very ... very ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... a studious sedate boy who took no pleasure in the sports and adventures of his aquatic brother. But Paul's glowing descriptions of the pleasures of plunging and paddling in the cool, clear river, at last induced Michael to join in the watery ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... grave, and there came an instantaneous tenderness into the exchange of looks that would have been worse than uninteresting to you or me. But the next moment she brightened up, pressed herself close to him, and caught step. They had not owned each other long enough to have settled into sedate possession, though they sometimes thought they had done so. There was still a tingling ecstasy in one another's touch and glance that prevented them from quite behaving themselves ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... tolling off the members of the companies which he had led to artistic victories and who had helped plunge him into financial defeat—"Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and Bettini, and Lorini, and Bertucca," and so on. Poor Bertucca! Few of those who in later years saw Mme. Maretzek, portly and sedate, enter the orchestra at the Academy of Music and Metropolitan Opera House, and tune her harp while the audience was gathering in the gilded horseshoes above, recalled that she had been the sprightly and bewitching Bertucca ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... glistened with wet and his face was wind-blown. Tom Cameron's face, too, looked much older than it had—well, say a year before. He, like Ruth herself, had been through much in the war zone calculated to make him more sedate and serious than a college undergraduate is ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... In the impenetrable cell Of the silent heart which Nature Furnishes to every Creature, Whatsoe'er we feel and know Too sedate for outward show, 100 Such a light of gladness breaks, Pretty Kitten! from thy freaks, Spreads with such a living grace O'er my little Laura's face; Yes, the sight so stirs and charms Thee, Baby, laughing in my arms, That ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... little muddy lakes, the whole, crowded, cockneyfied place." In that way jaundiced happiness lies. But the soul of Central Park is not for you. Once upon a time there was a Central Park. The approaches to it were along sedate avenues or by restful side streets. When the Park was reached there were donkeys to ride, and donkey-boys, highly amusing in their cynicism and worldly knowledge, in attendance. The "rock-work" caverns were in fancy of an amazing ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... magnificent and splendid in the world. A court or jury of one hundred matrons occupied the principal and most honourable part of the amphitheatre; they were dressed in flowing robes of sky-blue velvet adorned with festoons of brilliants and diamond stars; grave and sedate-looking matrons, all in uniform, with spectacles upon their noses; and opposite to these were placed one hundred judges, with curly white wigs flowing down on each side of them to their very feet, so that Solomon in all his glory was not so wise in appearance. At the ardent request ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... brushing past the stamens as he finally disappears inside. At the moment when he is forcing his way in, causing the lower lip to spring up and down, the eyeless turtle seems to chew and chew until the most sedate beholder must smile at the paradoxical show. Of course it is the bee that is feeding, though the flower would seem to be masticating the bee with the keenest relish! The counterfeit tortoise soon disgorges its lively mouthful, however, and away flies the bee, carrying pollen on his velvety ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... composed, not sad, turned with placid interest towards the loves of Gretchen and Faust. She sees the eager delight of the meeting; she hears the ardent vow; she feels the rapture of the embrace. With placid interest she watches all—she, and the sedate husband by her side. And yet when her eyes wander it is to see a man in the parquette below her on the other side, who, between the acts, rises with the rest and surveys the house, and looks at her as at all the others. At this distance ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... Miss Tarlingford and I were seldom separated. Her sister, a pale, sedate maiden, of amiable appearance, and her brother, a small, rude boy, of intrusive habits and unguarded speech, I consented to undergo, for the sake of conventional necessity. To the mother of the Tarlingfords additional respect seemed due, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a woman of experience, who had been in service with the gentry, first as a wet-nurse, afterwards as a children's nurse, expressed herself with refinement, and a soft, sedate smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village peasant woman, who had been beaten by her husband, simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing, and she had a strange expression like that ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... It almost overwhelmed him. A wild chuckle of spasmodic delight burst from him, which threatened to end in a convulsion. And though he rallied from this, yet he was quite demoralized, and it was a long time before he settled down into that sedate old darky which was ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... summons Robin and Beryl came to the library, nervously sedate in manner and with fingers intertwined in a ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... 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, ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... a foreman and ten men, and an unlimited credit to draw upon at Marysville! Expeditions of this kind created no surprise at Skinner's. Parties had before this entered the wilderness gayly, none knew where or what for; the sedate and silent woods had kept their secret while there; they had evaporated, none knew when or where—often, alas! with an unpaid account at Skinner's. Consequently, there was nothing in Key's party to challenge curiosity. In another week a rambling, one-storied ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... Nurse's socks were black, and cotton at that, a combination incontestably sedate. And the White Linen Nurse had waded barefoot through too many posied country pastures to experience any ordinary city thrill over the sight of a single blade of grass pushing scarily through a crack in the pavement, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... grew up into excellent and patriotic women. I remember my grandmother saying to me once, "When I was sixteen I had a voice like a cockatoo and the manners of a monkey," but nothing could have been more discreet or sedate than her deportment in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... very well to say; but you are unhappy all the same—one can see it in your mien, and shall I tell you the reason? It is that you are too sedate, Monsieur de Buxieres; you have need of a sweetheart to brighten ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him. Then, suddenly, as I say, he reappeared at Golden Friars—a very black and silent man, sedate and orderly. His mother was dead and buried; but the "prodigal son" was received good-naturedly. The good vicar, Doctor Jenner, reported ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... family buckets and fiber pails. Skinny, who lived farthest from the Silvey's, came up at last with his utensil, and they set off, single file, past Neighborhood Hall and the corner grocery stores, and around to quiet, sedate Southern Avenue, beating a crude marching rhythm on the tins as they went. At the sight of the ten-foot sandhill which the excavations for the apartments had formed, John broke ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer's greatness is that different minds can find in him different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane mind against the onslaughts of the present generation. There was a dramatist whose name of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the winter before one of his plays had been given ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... was very sedate, Yet fond of amusement, too; And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch, While the captain tickled the crew. And the gunner we had was apparently mad, For he sat on the after rail, And fired salutes with the captain's ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... prayers to beg a little, or to pursue some other worldly matter: and then 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 ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the Italian cities, had an undisputed moral claim to primacy. 'As far as I am personally concerned,' he said, 'I shall go to Rome with sorrow; not caring for art, I am sure that among the most splendid monuments of ancient and modern Rome I shall regret the sedate and unpoetic streets of my native town.' It grieved him to think that Turin must resign her most cherished privilege, but he knew his fellow-citizens, and he knew them to be ready to make this last sacrifice to their ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... scenes provided such vivid contrast to what he had hitherto known and seen of life that his soul was greedy for it all. To Mike these scenes were all familiar; his attitude towards them was one of quiet indifference, and he regarded Jim's rapture with the amused tolerance a sedate, elderly gentleman feels for the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... marks the dinner-table appointments in a maison bien montee, gives a homeliness and heartiness to the repast; and even the attendance of two or three ill-dressed garcons hurrying about, instead of half-a-dozen sedate servants in rich liveries, marshalled by a solemn-looking maitre-d'hotel and groom of the chambers, gives a zest to the dinner often ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... concerned, by the vast number of manuscripts existing of it. The "Host" is, so to speak, charged with the constant injunction of this cardinal principle of popularity as to both theme and style. "Tell us," he coolly demands of the most learned and sedate ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... before the thirty days were up Vanna was taken to church by her father, and taken from it by her new master. Within a week she appeared at the doorway of Baldassare's little shop, very pretty, very sedate, quite the housewife—to sit there sewing and singing to herself from ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her years. Miss Harriott was of a languid Spanish type, with black eyes and strongly-marked eyebrows. She had a petite, but well-rounded figure, with curiously small hands and feet. Though only about twenty-four years of age she had the sedate and unemotional look that one sees in doctors and nurses—-people who have looked on death and birth, and sorrow and affliction. For Ellen Harriott had done her three years' course as a nurse; she had a natural faculty for the business, and was in great ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... obscurity of the mangoes or the acacias. One heard the sibilance of kisses, the laughter, and the banter, the half-serious blows and scoldings of the vahines who repelled over-bold sailors. In an hour the sedate and the older took leave; the governor and the procureur turned into the Cercle Militaire for whist or ecarte and a glass of wine, the carriages withdrew, and the band's airs and manner of playing took on ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... 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, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... all public occasions, indeed, she displayed a royal magnificence; [26] but she had no relish for it in private, and she freely gave away her clothes [27] and jewels, [28] as presents to her friends. Naturally of a sedate, though cheerful temper, [29] she had little taste for the frivolous amusements which make up so much of a court life; and, if she encouraged the presence of minstrels and musicians in her palace, it was to wean her young nobility from the coarser and less intellectual pleasures to which ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... man, the sedate youth, the girl, the nurse, remained. Captain Courteney came along the deck and crossed toward the four, eyed from head to foot by the girl even after he had stopped near her. But her gaze drew ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... party resolved to give a ball in her honor at New Tavern. Mrs. Hancock was also in the city, and some fine preparations were made. There was a heated discussion. Some of the more sedate people, who never took part in gayeties, represented that this would be a most inopportune time for such a revel when the country was in the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to clothe even one of the thoughts that crowded through his mind, he saw them moving towards a door he had not hitherto noticed on the other side of the room. A moment later they had opened it and passed out, sedate, mournful, unhurried; and the boy found that in some way he could not understand the light had gone with them, and he was standing with his back against the wall in almost ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... 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, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... with Thorstan's child about to be born—and saw how rich and sedate you walked the ways, and how peace sat upon your forehead like a wreath, then I grudged you." Freydis turned round in the bed and showed her burning face. "And I said, 'This woman has a secret joy, and for all ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... to our hero to be provoking deliberation. In truth the Scotchman, with his national caution, was rather skeptical as to Tom's news, and did not suffer himself to become enthusiastic or excited. Tom had hard work to accommodate his impatient steps to the measured pace of his more sedate companion. When at length they reached the spot they found Russell no ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... continued to come down in small drops, that remained on the hair, the beards, and the fluff of the men's rough coats. The peasants looked at "the master," waiting for him to speak, and he was so abashed that he could not speak. This confused silence was broken by the sedate, self-assured German steward, who considered himself a good judge of the Russian peasant, and who spoke Russian remarkably well. This strong, over-fed man, and Nekhludoff himself, presented a striking contrast to the peasants, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... with a sedate smile, "if that's to be the fun, you better make your will, Ebony, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... In a few minutes the door was opened and the detective sent up his card. Mrs. Krill proved to be at home and consented to receive him, so, shortly, the man found himself in an elegantly-furnished drawing-room bowing before the silent and sedate daughter. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... waltz round the room, but she was afraid of disturbing the occupant of the office below. Gradually she sobered down, and by the time Jack Cameron returned she was quite sedate. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... placid lake in the center and a fringe of tall pines around the edge. At the South, where tower the northern sentries of the Adirondacks, a stream called Little Bill Creek comes splashing and dashing over the rocks to force its way noisily into the lake. When it emerges again it is humble and sedate, and flows smoothly to Hooker's Falls, from whence it soon joins a tributary that leads it to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... he had to encounter and of his resources for the conflict, and then to have worked upon a system steadily and perseveringly, prophetically sure of victory. His life was indeed one continued triumph,—and no conqueror ever mounted to the Capitol with a step more equal and sedate. We find him, at first, slowly and cautiously endeavoring to infuse new life into the traditional compositions, by substituting the heads, attitudes, and drapery of the actual world for the spectral forms and conventional types of the mosaics and the Byzantine painters,—idealizing ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... which we have witnessed during this debate, is not only mortifying, but it renders one almost hopeless of the permanence of our Government if this is to be the example set by one of the Houses of Congress, that which claims to be more sedate and deliberate, if it proposes in this light and perfunctory way to deal with questions of this grave nature and import. Sir, there is no time at present for that preparation which such a subject demands at the hands of any sensible man, mindful of his responsibilities, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... were now joined by the head-steward—a sedate, highly intelligent, respectable-looking Scotchman, who has been in Ireland thirteen years. He told me that the number of persons that had been ejected was about 10,000, of whom one-tenth were employed by Lord Lucan, who had given ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... "The three sedate musicians in the orchestra, totally engrossed by minims and crotchets, are an admirable contrast to the company ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... 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 came written ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... the sitting-room Eileen Meredith could see two men occasionally pass and re-pass the house. They did not go by often, but she knew that even if she could not see them they always held the house in view. They were not journalists—they were more sedate, older men. Nor did they molest any one who entered or left the house. They merely exercised a quiet, unwearying, unobtrusive surveillance, and Eileen knew that Heldon Foyle had taken his own way of preventing her from seeing Sir Ralph Fairfield. She felt certain that were she to leave the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... hall, Oliver passed into the large meeting-room of the club fronting the street, now filled with members, many of whom had dropped in for half an hour on their way back to their offices. Of these some of the older and more sedate men, like Judge Bowman and Mr. Pancoast, were playing chess; others were seated about the small tables, reading, sipping toddies, or chatting together. A few of the younger bloods, men of forty or thereabouts, were standing by the uncurtained ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... do not. Dirl, to vibrate, to ring. Diz'n, dizzen, dozen. Dochter, daughter. Doited, muddled, doting; stupid, bewildered. Donsie, vicious, bad-tempered; restive; testy. Dool, wo, sorrow. Doolfu', doleful, woful. Dorty, pettish. Douce, douse, sedate, sober, prudent. Douce, doucely, dousely, sedately, prudently. Doudl'd, dandled. Dought (pret. of dow), could. Douked, ducked. Doup, the bottom. Doup-skelper, bottom-smacker. Dour-doure, stubborn, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... they started, with an old shoe in her hand, which she delivered with such good (or bad) effect that it hit the horse on the ear, and made it shy. Happily, it was a sedate old quadruped, not given to giddy ways, and quickly ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... our traveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, still undecided whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock. But I forgot all about him and his hurry when, shortly after, we sat at the table-d'hote at the hotel, and the sedate Germans lit their cigars, some of them before they had finished eating, and sat smoking as if there were plenty of leisure ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by a blue 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 ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... any other name all his days. Therefore Sapt let Mr. Rassendyll doubt and struggle, while he himself wrote his story and laid his long-headed plans. And now and then James, the little servant, came in and went out, sedate and smug, but with a quiet satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. He had made a story for a pastime, and it was being translated into history. He at least would bear his part in ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... personally. Her features are delicate, and have been very handsome; and in manner she is very calm, and quiet, and dignified. She looks all that you would expect from what I have told you. The briskness of youth, the sedate firmness of middle-age, have years since given place, as you will see with some pain, to the feebleness produced by ill health and mental suffering—for she mourned grievously after those whom she had lost! Oh! ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... one ankle she wore a silver bangle. It was plain that she was very poor. She was not stout but squarely built and in her prime she must have done without effort the heavy work in which her life had been spent. She walked leisurely, with the sedate tread of an elderly woman, and she carried on her arm a basket. She came down to the harbour; it was crowded with painted junks; her eyes rested for a moment curiously on a man who stood on a narrow bamboo raft, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... I look back upon it, is to me a mystery. While I always possessed a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a hearty appreciation of fun of all sorts, there was a sedate side of my nature that demonstrated itself to the older members of the family, and of which they often spoke. For half days, or whole days, at a time I remember sitting on a small footstool beside an ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... boys with their 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 of J. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... her—" He stopped abruptly, as if fearful of being overheard, and began to brush away some imaginary specks of dust from his sleeve. Drooping his head into its usual pious attitude, his face assumed its former grave expression, and he was again the sedate, ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... elapsed before the due arrival of official permission for X. to leave the jungle, it might have been observed that he was changed. The hitherto sedate individual became fussy and worried, and members of The Community agreed that he was "journey-proud"—a happy expression used by one of the neighbouring Malay potentates when wishing to describe his ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... sedate, attentive aspect, and a clear, slow, emphatical accent, with much demonstration by the hand. It differs from teaching (see Teaching) in that the look of authority is not wanting ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... busied himself with preparations for the guest's supper, it was impossible to avoid observing his quick and energetic movements, spare body, dwarfish stature, and long apish arms, that appeared in greater disproportion when viewed beside the now sedate and elevated carriage, the muscular and finely-developed form of the bulky trooper. And, in good sooth, it seemed that Roupall little relished the extraordinary civility shown to the new comer, both by mother and son. Had ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 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
... yet been the training of his earlier career to suppress himself, and be simply a perfect official. His policy aided the vast progress of the nation, but won no credit by the process. Men saw with wonder the westward march of an expanding people, but forgot to notice the sedate, passionless, orderly administration that held the door open and kept the peace for all. In studying the time of Adams, we think of the nation; in observing that of Jackson, we think of Jackson himself. In him we see the first popular favorite of a nation now ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... striving to be composed, and without daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the gentlemen's appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of resentment ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... young man's tone and smile. First-class humorists are, as is well known, remarkable for the immovable solemnity of their features. Clement promised himself not a little amusement from the curiously sedate drollery of the venerable Deacon, who, it was plain from his conversation, had cultivated a literary taste which would make him a more agreeable companion than the common ecclesiastics of his grade in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... reports, &c., and to take the chief responsibility of the whole. Catherine was quite friendly to me; and I was happy in the thought that there was now one at least who would stand by me, should any difficulties occur. How much I was mistaken in the human heart! This pious, sedate woman, towards whom my heart yearned with friendship, was my greatest enemy; though I did not know it until after my arrival ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if in confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled, as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the main river into one of the many narrow channels amongst the wooded islets, and paddled vigorously over the black and sleepy backwaters towards Sambir. Her canoe brushed the water-palms, skirted the short spaces of muddy bank where sedate alligators looked at her with lazy unconcern, and, just as darkness was setting in, shot out into the broad junction of the two main branches of the river, where the brig was already at anchor with sails furled, yards squared, and decks seemingly untenanted by any human being. Nina had ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Hadria in the capacity of the family consolation, created a shout of laughter. It had always been her function to upset foregone conclusions, overturn orthodox views, and generally disturb the conformity of the family attitude. Now the sedate and established qualities would be expected of her. Hadria must be the stay and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... "is the object of that virginal shame, that sedate coldness, that severe countenance, that pretence of not knowing things which they understand better than we who teach them, except to increase in us the desire to conquer and curb, to trample under ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... scarf across her shoulders, led off the dance; a handsome youth, with one hand holding hers, and the other another girl's, came next, and so a chain was formed of alternately a young man and a maiden. At first the leader advanced with a slow and seemingly sedate pace, all following, in a measured time, to the musician's solemn strain. By degrees, as the music became more lively and animated, so did the movement of the dancers increase in rapidity. First, the foremost ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... than gaiety, but it was all laughed off and everybody seemed to be on the best of terms with everybody else. I looked at this bevy of girls, each attractive in her way, and I became aware of the fact that I was not in the least tempted to flirt with them. "I am a well-behaved, sedate man now, and all because I am engaged," I congratulated myself. "There is only one woman in the world for me, and that is Fanny, my Fanny, the girl that is going to be my wife in a few ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Mademoiselle Therese looked at her sharply, the girl's face was so sedate that the lady supposed she was ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... however, he seemed to be a little better, and had apparently regained his health and cheerfulness. But to his own astonishment he had become, as he says in a letter to Faisst, a quiet, sedate, and silent man, who wished more and more to be alone. He did not compose anything fresh, but revised his Michelangelo Lieder, and had them published. He made plans for the winter, and rejoiced in the ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... tent, Claire reflected, "He won't take advantage of my being friendly, will he? Only thing is—— I sha'n't dare to look at Henry B. when Milt calls me 'Claire' in that sedate Brooklyn Heights presence. The ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... now the landscape fades away, As westward flies the orb of day: See the solemn night appear, With silence her sedate compeer. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... seated on the narrow, steep pulpit stairs, clad in knee-breeches and homespun flapped coats, and with round, cropped heads, miniature likenesses in dress and countenance (if not in deportment) of their grave, stern, God-fearing fathers. Though they were of the sedate Puritan blood, they were boys, and they wriggled and twisted, and scraped their feet noisily on the sanded floor; and I know full well that the square-toed shoes of one in whom "original sin" waxed ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... danced only the more sedate dances, because of that obtrusive tendency of the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... is not as sedate as she looks," added Betty, truthfully. "I'd like her better if she didn't gush. That's the only word that will express it. And it seemed queer for her to take me into her confidence the minute she was introduced. Right away she gave me to understand that she'd had a sort of an affair ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fat hogs, though not so fat as himself, for he was the most corporate, plump fellow we had met with. I found him to be a sedate, sensible man; he viewed the ship and the several new objects with uncommon attention, and asked ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... in a relieved voice, "there is no impropriety in mentioning this to you, though you are still a youth. You have seemed older these last few days, more—ah—sedate, if I may so express it. They—they frequently speak as though you were quite a youth, whereas it appears to me you should be considered the head of the family,—yes, the head of the family. And therefore it seemed to me fitting that I should mention this to ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... great ruby on his own finger as he ceased speaking. The guests had finished dinner, and Miss Heredith, with a watchful eye on the big carved clock which swung a sedate pendulum by the fireplace, beckoned Tufnell to her and directed him to serve coffee and ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... of those sedate and Germanesquely philosophical animals, the pigs, scrambling precipitately under a gate from out a cabbage-patch toward nightfall, may, perhaps, have observed, that, immediately upon emerging from the sacred vegetable preserve, a couple ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... I 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 beer in dry territory be so accounted. All this talk ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... dinner hour ended that evening when the hilarious trio of younger girls, followed by the more sedate, but no less eager older sisters, scurried down the long corridor toward the den where the President had already intrenched himself, waiting for ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... larger species of tern, or sea-swallow; the "parson," so called for his sombre appearance and sedate manner, was a kind of sable gull about the size of an English crow. His colour, however, was not black, but a dusky brownish black, as if the reverend gentleman's coat had got rusty from wear. These birds had ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... brilliancy, or of its remarkable clearness of complexion. Her hair too if it was less rebellious, and more neatly coiled, had retained its glory of profusion, and her big black eyes, though to be sure they were grown a trifle sedate, no doubt could sparkle as of old. Sir Charles set himself to make them sparkle. Old Mr. Mardale prattled of his inventions to his heart's delight—he described the wheel, and also a flying machine and besides ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason |
