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More "Placidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to conquer, everybody knows—or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing, mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... there was another crack of little more than two feet across. Meetuck stretched his neck and took a steady look at this as they approached it at full gallop. Being apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, he resumed his look of self-satisfied placidity. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... her placidity, a quiet domestic fowl whose feathers were only to be ruffled when some terrifying ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Rest-cures for people who've broken down under stress of too much worry and strenuous living; well, you're suffering from overmuch repose and placidity, and you need ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... languidly upon the bridegroom, who bent over her enamoured; and then, as if beguiled from some painful contemplation by the sweet accents of the man she loved, she became calm, and her quivering features resumed their wonted placidity. But these moments of tranquillity were of short duration; she started at every shadow; the flash of one of the jewels which broidered her satin robe would cause a fit of trembling; and at length, when seated at the banquet opposite her brother and his bride, a richly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... is pretty. Her mouth is very small, almost disproportionately so, and her eyes are very large and blue and very wide open. She was intended for a placed woman, but Hermione and Modern Thought have made complete placidity impossible. She has a fondness for rich brocades and pretty fans are chocolate candy and big bowls of roses and comfortable chairs. When she was Hermione's age she used to do water color sketches; the outlines were penciled in by her drawing teacher, and she washed on ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... no response, and for a time the only sound upon the dark veranda was the creaking of the wicker rocking-chair in which Fanny sat—a creaking which seemed to denote content and placidity on the part of the chair's occupant, though at this juncture a series of human shrieks could have been little more eloquent of emotional disturbance. However, the creaking gave its hearer one great ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... next week the office of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. had its usual aspect of prosperous placidity. The routine work was done in the routine way; the porter opened the office every morning, and the office-boy arrived a few minutes after it was opened; the clerks came at nine, and a little later the ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... now and then, she glanced at Bonbright, she felt the contrast. All that was present in the landscape was absent from his soul. There was no peace there, no placidity, but unrest, bitterness, unhappiness—grimness. Yes, grimness. When the word came into her mind she knew it was the one she had been searching for.... Why ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... good-humor and generosity. He envied no man his gifts from Nature or Fortune. He was not only glad to let live, but painstakingly energetic in making the living of people a pleasure to them, and he received with amused placidity adverse ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... startled one day, however, out of her usual placidity. Sister Martin, one of her neighbours, dropped in and settling herself with a sigh announced the important news, "Well, bless Gawd, ol' Sis' Pease is gone ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... his way rejoicing in the possession of that peace of mind which comes to some men who let neither the joys nor woes of others break through the armament of their own comfortable placidity. Every night of his life was crowded with curious, sad and ridiculous incidents; had he let them linger long in his mind his hand and temperament would have suffered a loss of accumulative skill. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... can catch up," said Emmy Lou's Aunt Cordelia, a plump and cheery lady, beaming with optimistic placidity upon the infant populace seated in parallel rows at ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... little blue indefatigable figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows, late for every meal. She has reached a sort of tragic placidity. Whenever she plants anything new the boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep anything for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has reached that pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she would almost say she did not mind. Anyway, her cabbages have succeeded. Talolo (our native ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Viscount, beginning to stride up and down the room, with his usual placidity quite gone, "I mean about—about the button you found, it was that devil Chichester's it seems, and—and—Beverley, give me your hand! She told me how you confronted the fellow. Ha! I'll swear you had him shaking in his villain's shoes, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... violence, another in periods, increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the emotional ruin of some, and in the subconscious volcanic state ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... happened that Grandma woke up first. And whereas Grandpa, when the avenging pin pierced his shins, recovered himself with a start and an air of guilty confusion, Grandma opened her eyes at regular intervals, with the utmost calm and placidity, as though she had merely been closing them to engage in a few ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... and triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until—perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sketched and figured on operations at the claims. Their domestic affairs moved with the smoothness of a perfectly balanced machine. To the very uttermost Hazel enjoyed the well-appointed orderliness of it all, the unruffled placidity of an existence where the unexpected, the disagreeable, the uncouth, was wholly eliminated, where all the strange shifts and struggles of her two years beyond the Rockies were altogether absent and impossible. Bill's views he ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Midlands you may have enjoyment of another kind. Some men prefer the sleepy settled villages, the sweeping fens with their bickering windmills, the hush and placidity of old market-towns that brood under the looming majesty of the castle. The truth is that you cannot go anywhere in England outside of the blighted hideous manufacturing districts without finding beauty ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... do not usually disturb the placidity of the bullock, but if he once gets frightened and loses his head, he gives way to unmitigated panic. The first appearance of the motor-car, which is now almost as common in parts of India as it is in England, reduced many bullocks to a state of abject terror. Fortunately most ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... pedreria—an accumulation of rocks—extending almost right across the stream, and which was the cause of the placidity of the waters above it. There were two channels—one to bearings magnetic 330 deg., the other to 360 deg.—on either side of a central island. We followed the first and larger channel. The island, which had a most luxuriant growth of trees upon it, was subdivided into two by ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... shocked, but her placidity was too deep-rooted to be altogether destroyed. And so Albert found himself looking into two large eyes the persistency of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... which he referred to as 'she.' Marguerite had remained in the studio. She was wonderful. She admired her husband too simply, and she was too content, but she had marvellous qualities of naturalness, common sense in demeanour, realism, and placidity. Thanks to her remarkable instinct for taking things for granted, the interview had been totally immune from constraint. It was difficult, and she had made it seem easy. No fuss, no false sentiment! And she looked very nice, very interesting, quite attractive, in ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... weird groups being crowded together, piled up and overturned on one another. We tried to hold on with our hands and feet, but we slid on their slippery asperities. The cliff was so very high that it quite frightened us to look up at it. Although it crushed us by its formidable placidity, still it fascinated us, for we could not help looking at it and it did not ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... his wheel-chair for a period of ten years, and otherwise debarred many of the comforts to which, in more prosperous circumstances, he had been accustomed, Alexander Balfour retained to the close of life his native placidity and gentleness. His countenance wore a perpetual smile. He joined in the amusements of the young, and took delight in the recital of the merry tale and humorous anecdote. His speech, somewhat affected by his complaint, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... relations between them were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the girl's reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... great day, and the babe, who was on her very best six-months-old behavior, listened with admirable placidity to the "sermon of grace," on which at a future time she might, perhaps, found a genealogy. Her only offence against perfect church decorum was a sometimes rather explosive "Agoo!" as she tried to reach the ever-swaying black feather fan that was waved ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... security by her mother's placidity and Bela's apparent simple friendship, hardly was conscious of the precise moment when the siege against her passive resistance was once more resumed. It was all so gradual, so kind, so persuasive: and she had so little to look forward to in the future. What did it matter what became of her?—whom ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, and was engaged. He found it an arduous and not too profitable post. He has described it as "a dreary town, where the pupils studied music with true German placidity." They procured all their music from a circulating library, where the choice of novelties was limited to late editions of the classics and a good deal of sheer trash, poor dance music and the like. His work, which was unmitigated drudgery, consumed forty ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... with the billiard-tables as if there had been not a soul staying in the hotel. His placidity was so genuine that he was not unduly, fretting himself over the absence of Heyst, or the mysterious manners Schomberg had treated him to. He was considering these things in his own fairly shrewd ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... had," assented the sacrifice, upon whose countenance sat a placidity that had not been there since the night of the "matching." "'Specially if the turkey was like the one we tried to cook last ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the merciless continuity of nature, and the resolution of body and soul into the elements from which they came; and the uselessness of Death's impatience, and the bitter cry of a life gone like spilt water; and again, comfort out of the grave, perpetual placidity, "holy sleep," and earth's gratitude to her children, and beyond all, dimly and lightly drawn, the flowery meadows of Persephone, the great simplicity and rest of the other world, and far away a shadowy and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... was saying. Same thing," he muttered with strange placidity. She looked at him searchingly. He had a large simplicity that filled one's vision. She found herself slowly invaded by this masterful figure. He was not mediocre. Whatever he might have been he was not mediocre. The glamour of a lawless life stretched over him like the sky over the sea down on ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... raking together testimony which would bear in the slightest degree upon the interests which they represented. All the relatives of Mr. Slapman had testified that he was a gentleman uniformly kind and courteous, possessing a singular placidity of temper, and indulgent to his wife to a degree where indulgence became a fault. Those relatives, and they were numerous—particularly in the country branch—who had passed anniversary weeks at Mr. Slapman's ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... water seems at first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava, it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous antecedents. The winds never reach it and its surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you fancy it in communication with the capricious and treacherous forces of nature. Its very colour is of a joyless beauty, a blue as cold and opaque as a solidified sheet of lava. Streaked and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Merrithew, a dry smile twinkling in the placidity of her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then you ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... the saints at the camp-meeting. He was a thickset fellow of only medium height, and was called, somewhat invidiously, "a chunky man." His face was broad, prosaic, good-natured, incapable of any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an elementary rage or a sluggish placidity. He had a ragged beard of a reddish hue, and hair a shade lighter. He wore blue jeans trousers and an unbleached cotton shirt, and the whole system depended on one suspender. He was engaged in skimming a great kettle of boiling sorghum with a perforated gourd, ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the aberrations of individual assertion and feeling. By studying together in clubs, by conversing in monotone and by rule, by thinking the same things and exchanging ideas until we have none left, we shall come into that social placidity which is one dream of the nationalists—one long step towards what may be called a prairie mental condition—the slope of Kansas, where those who are five thousand feet above the sea-level seem to be no higher than those who dwell ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it would be hard to say what they thought. Jacky went about her duties with a placidity that was almost worthy of the great money-lender himself. She showed no outward sign, and very little interest. Her thoughts she kept severely to herself. But she had thoughts on the subject, thoughts which teemed through ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stem, was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon getting into better condition, he fell into that state of repose becoming a good smoker; but sat with his eyes fixed on Florence, and, with a beaming placidity not to be described, and stopping every now and then to discharge a little cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as if it were a scroll coming out of his mouth, bearing the legend 'Poor Wal'r, ay, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sipped a mouthful of the clear water. He was in a more reasonable state than he had shown for long, though it was now close on the moon's final quarter, a period that should have marked a more general tenor of placidity in him. The summer solstice, was, however, at hand, and the weather sultry to a degree—as it had been, I did not fail to remember, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... and placidity, conveying the impression of fate, death, repose, or immortality, which render sculpture so congenial as commemorative of the departed. Even quaint wooden effigies, like those in St. Mary's Church at Chester, with the obsolete peaked beards, ruffs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of which the remainder was considerably grizzled; plus a degree of corpulence such as I should never have thought the slender lieutenant of artillery capable of acquiring; his heated, sun-burnt complexion, and dissipated look, exchanged for a fresh colour and benevolent placidity; the Dutchman I had left on the Rhine stood beside me in the lobby of the French theatre. I turned to the lady: she was less changed than her companion, and now that I was upon the track, I recognised Emilie Sendel. By ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice—and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sailed the stout bark of Russian idealism, rising, falling, never overwhelmed, always bravely confident, never seeking for calm waters, refusing them indeed for their very placidity. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... saw that Red Rooney had not been disturbed. He slept through it all with the placidity of an infant. Much relieved, the little woman got up, and moved about more freely. She replenished the lamp with oil, and kindled it. Then she proceeded to roast and fry and grill bear ribs, seal chops, and walrus steaks with a dexterity that was quite marvellous, considering the ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman said as was looking for her needle in the bundle of hay," observed old Bob, with provoking placidity. "On course she is, and we is looking for her: but it's quite a different thing whether we finds her or not, 'specially when it gets dark; and if, as I suspects, it comes on to blow freshish there'll be a pretty bobble of a sea here at the turn of ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... observing him. Her hands were crossed on her lap and her eyes were fixed absently on the distant mountains: she was evidently unconscious of anything around her. An eager life had left its marks upon her: the finely-moulded cheek had sunk a little, the golden crown was less massive; but there was a placidity in Romola's face which had never belonged to it in youth. It is but once that we can know our worst sorrows, and Romola had known them while life ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to understand its meaning. But after pillaging temples, and seeing numbers of nations and slaughters, many ultimately ceased to believe in anything but destiny and death;—and every evening these would fall asleep with the placidity of wild beasts. Spendius had spit upon the images of Jupiter Olympius; nevertheless he dreaded to speak aloud in the dark, nor did he fail every day to put ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... which was milk-white and rose-red after an old-fashioned rule of colour, too crude perhaps for modern artistic taste. Sometimes these delightful tints go with a placid soul which never varies, but in Elinor's case there was a demon in the hazel of the eyes, not dark enough for placidity, all fire at the best of times, and ready in a moment to burst into flame. She it was who had to be in the forefront of the interest, and not her mother, though for metaphysical, or what I suppose should now be called psychological interests, the elder lady was probably the most interesting ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... for some months that we have had the pleasure of seeing Comrade Norwood," said "Wild Bill", with venomous placidity. "Perhaps he knew that we were to be asked to raise a regiment ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... though not similar, signs of mental disturbance; for, womanlike, she clothed her worry in placidity and silence. Her kindly face became drawn and lined; she laughed less frequently. She never went "neighboring" or "buggy-riding" with old Bill now. But the trim farmhouse was just as spotless, just as beautifully kept, the cooking just as wholesome ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... humour is assailed at Marseilles. His placidity and stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers, like rapacious bats, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... an interesting study, for, with the exception of the Chinese, I know of few nations who can control the movements of their features so well as do the Coreans. They are trained from their infancy to show neither pain, nor pleasure, grief nor excitement; so that a wonderful placidity is always depicted on their faces. None the less, however, though slightly, different expressions can be remarked. For instance, an attitude peculiar to them is to be noticed when they happen to ponder deeply on any subject; they then slightly frown, and with a sudden movement incline the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... eye of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in, and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero, game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried to bend him over, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... he walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess. The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himself placid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power of commonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... underbrush had so injured my clothes that the count was obliged to lend me linen. On the present occasion, two years' residence in Paris, constant intercourse with the king, the habits of a life at ease, my completed growth, a youthful countenance, which derived a lustre from the placidity of the soul within magnetically united with the pure soul that beamed on me from Clochegourde,—all these things combined had transformed me. I was self-possessed without conceit, inwardly pleased ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... till the water is calm again," said he, seating himself a little below her on the bank, and watching the water-rings subside. Then when the pool had regained its old placidity, with the flecked sky pictured on it, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... a torturing placidity, then opened her mouth; but nothing came of it. She watched Guida moving about the kitchen abstractedly. Her eye wandered to the racllyi, with its flitches of bacon, to the dreschiaux and the sanded floor, to the great Elizabethan oak chair, and at last back to Guida, as though through her the lost ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... who with a thought besmirch Blood over all our soul, How should we see our task But through his blunt and lashless eyes? Alive, he is not vital overmuch; Dying, not mortal overmuch; Nor sad, nor proud, Nor curious at all. He cannot tell Old men's placidity ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... restoration to home and friends and property and fame and position, was as great as the excess of his grief in his short exile. But this is a defect in temperament, in his mental constitution, rather than a flaw in his character. We could have wished more placidity and equanimity; but to condemn him because he was not great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... shivering between the icy sheets of his bed. It seemed to him they never would get warm and cosy, as he had so confidently expected. Hawkins, being a bank clerk, was a patient and enduring man. Years of training had made him tolerant even to placidity. As he cuddled in the bed, his head almost buried in the covers, he resignedly convinced himself that warmth would come sooner or later and even as the chills ran up and down his back he was philosophic. So much for system and a ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... as I never remember to have seen a figure so powerful and muscular; but he was evidently slow to anger, and long-suffering; not a resentful word escaped him, and his features retained their usual expression of benignant placidity. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... with an intelligence both lucid and penetrating, and a sense of form and symmetry almost Greek in its fastidiousness. The sweet, vague, passionate aspiration^, the sensibility that quivers with every breath of movement from the external world, he could not understand. Placidity, grace, and repose he had in perfection. Yet he was very highly appreciated by those who had little in common with his artistic nature. As, for example, Robert Schumann writes of Thalberg and his playing, on the occasion of a charity concert, given in Leipzig in 1841: "In his passing ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... made me turn my head. Father Antonio was mopping his brow in the doorway. Though a heavy man, he was noiseless of foot. A wheezing would be heard along the dark galleries some time before his black bulk approached you with a gliding motion. He had the outward placidity of corpulent people, a natural artlessness of demeanour which was amusing and attractive, and there was something shrewd in his simplicity. Indeed, he must have displayed much tact and shrewdness to have defeated all O'Brien's efforts to oust him from his position of confessor to the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... death Sir Horace Fewbanks was 58 years of age, but since death the grey bristles had grown so rapidly through his clean-shaven face that he looked much older. The face showed none of the wonted placidity of death. The mouth was twisted in an ugly fashion, as though the murdered man had endeavoured to cry for help and had been attacked and killed while doing so. One of Sir Horace's arms—the right one—was thrust forward diagonally across ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... dramatic intensity, and here the figures in their movements depart but slightly from the equilibrium of repose. As a religious artist, the New Testament was more within his sphere than the Old. Thus the outrage committed against Joseph by his brethren is toned down into a calm, orderly transaction; placidity reigns throughout; all is brought into keeping with the ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... fervently asking of the Almighty. Then he gazed into the face of his mother again; hoping to catch a gleam of some expression and recognition, that denoted more of reason. It was in vain; the usual placidity, the usual mild affection were there; but both were blended with the unnatural halo of a mind excited to disease, if not to madness. A slight exclamation, which sounded like alarm, came from Beulah; and turning towards his sister, Willoughby ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... waters, under my windows. But an hour from that glare, confusion, din, riot, and insanity, to the soothing sights and sounds of this rural paradise! And after looking at it till my spirits have subsided into something like kindred composure and placidity, I open my letter-case, and find your last unanswered epistle lying on the top of it. "If Cunard and Harnden have proved true," you must have received by this time our reply to your proposition touching ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... like an old woman, to urge the steady white horse that plodded along as unmindful of his master's suggestions as of the silver-mounted harnesses that passed them by. Both horse and driver appeared to be conscious of sufficient wisdom, and even worth, for the duties of life; but all this placidity and self-assurance were in sharp contrast to the eager excitement of a pretty, red-cheeked girl who sat at the driver's side. She was as sensitive to every new impression as they were dull. Her face bloomed out of a round white hood in such charming fashion that those who began to ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the Sunday morning routine of a country house began. She and Arthur walked together over the fields to church. The whole country breathed a lazy atmosphere of early summer. Its beauty and its placidity mocked her. Before them went the Considines. He wore a long cassock that swept the grass, as they went, while Gabrielle walked in silence at his side. Never once in their journey did she look back. It struck ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... turning to express my sentiment to my companion, I observed that she had folded her hands in an attitude of sorrowful resignation, which showed her thoughts were far from the scene which lay before her. When she saw that her abstraction was observed, she resumed her former placidity of manner; and having given me sufficient time to admire this termination of our sober and secluded walk, proposed that me should return to the house through her brother's farm. 'Even we Quakers, as we are called, have our little pride,' she said; 'and my brother Joshua ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Apostles forget all their cares. The Blessed Virgin also, as she sat at table with the other women, looked most placid and calm. When the other women came up, and took hold of her veil to make her turn round and speak to them, her every movement expressed the sweetest self-control and placidity of spirit. ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... unreserved, quick, fiery or humorous, cheerful, even unrestrainedly gay manner, winning him by his hearty open advances where he felt himself attracted and encouraged to confidence; at other times he was all seriousness, placidity, self-possession, cool circumspection, methodical consideration, prudence, criticism, even irony and scepticism." Such is not the portrait which imagination paints of the demeanour of a court favourite. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will be the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... as in a cradle, what looked like a monkey, then like a doll, but on closer inspection turned into a tiny live child, flaxen-haired, staring with wide gray eyes from under a blue cap, and sucking at a milk-bottle with preternatural placidity, regardless of the music throbbing through ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a dainty little cow of most placid disposition. Nothing disturbs her placidity, incites her to hurry, or bewilders her. Cure the dove of its timidity and shrinking and you will have a good prototype of Parilla, who, taking life easily and affably, is fat and amiable. When she brought home her firstborn, mooing plaintively, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... scream, and of course I hurried to the front. There on the back porch of her house stood Mrs. Carson. She was a woman of middle age, and, as I glanced at her, I saw where her daughter got her good looks. But the placidity and cheerfulness of the younger face were entirely wanting in the mother. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were red, her mouth was partly opened, and it seemed to me that I could almost see that her breath ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... the pavilion, and in that I regaled myself gladly, though there was some paltry scent added to the water that took away half its refreshing power; and then I set myself to wait with all outward composure and placidity. The chamberlains were too well-bred to break into my calm, and I did not condescend to small talk. So there we remained, the four of us, I sitting, they standing, with our Lord the Sun smiting heavily on the scarlet ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Maldon had, it transpired, her "ways"; for example, in the matter of blinds and in the matter of tapers. She would actually insist on the gas being lighted with a taper; a paper spill, which was just as good and better, seemed to ruffle her benign placidity: and she was funnily economical with matches. Rachel had never seen a taper before, and could not conceive where the old lady managed ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... them in different ways according to their characters, but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly so serious. Lady Richard's alarm was the most outspoken, and her dismay the most clamorous; yet perhaps ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... whistle Mr. Carville's face cleared and assumed its wonted placidity. The deck trembled as the screw began to revolve, and imperceptibly we moved out towards Governor's Island. It was just here, I think, as we began our little six-mile journey to St. George, that a sudden illumination came to me. I understood Mr. Carville's reason for waiting instead ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... white-browed man of many years and few enough inches. His weather-stained face, creased like parchment, was lit by a pair of piercing eyes, which were full of fire and mental energy. But, for the moment, no one had eyes for anything but the stoic placidity of the expressionless features of the Indian. The man's forehead was bound with a blood-stained bandage ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... He paid a flying visit to Richmond to visit the death-bed of his mother, and he took a trip to the Sandwich Islands to recover from a severe cold on the chest. Moreover, his former placidity had left him, for one thing and another delayed the financing of his newspaper. One of its founders was temporarily embarrassed for ready money, another awaited an opportune moment to realize on some valuable stock. There was no doubt ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... which the green light filters so softly through a lattice of clipped twigs. Beyond this is a garden, and beyond the garden are the other buildings of the convent, where the placid sisters keep a school—a test, doubtless, of placidity. The imperfect arcade, which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century (I know nothing of it but what is related in Mrs. Pattison's "Renaissance in France"), is a truly enchanting piece of work; the cornice and the angles of the arches being covered with the daintiest sculpture of arabesques, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... noble mansion, and he strode hastily on, that he might effervesce in the old woman's presence, for he wished to convince her of his interest and displeasure, and a sober pace would have brought back the habitual placidity to the old man's heart. It was not natural for him to cherish the slightest degree of malice or resentment, and the very consciousness that he was out of his usual way distressed and vexed him, so ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... brow, as if by an effort; but the trouble was too deep-seated that its placidity should at once return. He said, however, that which fitted the occasion, that "he could not have the happiness of forgiving, because she who commanded him to do so could commit no ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness for the "coming of God"), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is DISHONOURING—that it vulgarizes body and soul—is not ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... gentleness of a child, ignorant of sin, and, in virtue of her infancy, confident of her inheritance. I could discover no evidence of a creature alarmed with a sense of guilt, loathing itself, conscious of its worthlessness. Her nature, in truth, seemed to have usurped a sweetness and placidity, the possession of which, as Mr Clayton afterwards observed, was justifiable only in those who could find nothing but vileness and depravity in every thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... hours and days and weeks, even months have to elapse before he can make up his mind what to do. Our haste, and what we consider smartness in business, are looked upon by the Persian as quite an acute form of lunacy,—and really, when one is thrown much in contact with such delightful placidity, almost torpor, and looks back upon one's hard race for a living and one's struggle and competition in every department, one almost begins to fancy that we are lunatics ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... behind his desk at one side of the hall, had seen men walking up and down in that way, and he thought that the colonel had probably been speculating in tobacco or wheat; but he knew he was good for the amount of his bill, and he retained his placidity. ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the effect was extremely touching." Was Madame de Fondege speaking sincerely? There could be no doubt of it. Her features, which had been distorted with anger when the General took it into his head to order the bottle of Bordeaux, had regained their usual placidity of expression, and had even brightened a little. "I am entirely at your service, my dear, if you wish any shopping done," she continued. "And if you are not quite pleased with your dressmaker, I will take you to mine, who works like an angel. But how absurd ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... quarrelsome stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen, they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better halves until they dropped down to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... long speech for Mellony. A large moon had risen, and from the low horizon sent golden shafts of light almost into the room; it was as if the placidity of the night were suddenly penetrated by something more glowing. Mellony stood looking down at her mother, like a judge. Mrs. Pember gazed at ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... threw plates occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... long in discovering that if he had improved his fortune by marriage he had not improved his temper, or increased his happiness. Fortunately for his wife, her imperturbable placidity and want of acute feeling prevented her from appropriating many hard hits from her husband that ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... criminal and the criminal by passion,—and transformed the basis of the penal code by asking if it were more just to make laws obey facts instead of altering facts to suit the laws, solely in order to avoid troubling the placidity of those who refused to consider this new element in the scientific field. Therefore, putting aside those abstract formulae for which high talents have panted in vain, like the thirsty traveller at the sight of the desert ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... little patch of rock where we lay, made an island in that white sea. Between us and the black spaces among the stars there was nothing. How eternally quiet it was! I can feel that isolation now coming over my soul like the stealthy fog, until I lay there, unconscious of my body, in a wondering placidity, watching the stars burn and fade. I could seem to feel them whirl in their way through the heavens. And then a thought detached itself from me, the conception of an eternity passed in placidity like that without ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... inches, when young, and of very light make. But he was now bent by age, and walked with a staff. His hazel eyes still sparkled in a head of no striking development, and with a peculiarity of expression of his lips, gave him a striking expression of placidity in cunning. Hence his name, which was given by the Indians from some fancied resemblance to this animal, when jutting its head above water. He had, for forty years, made jeesuckawin (prophecying) for his people, when he was converted to Christianity ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... maintained that the animals were more sagacious. He asserted vigorously that this somewhat singular regimen would pull him through, talked about his plans, and appeared cheerful. Gradually, however, the talking became more infrequent, the cheerfulness passed into a kind of placidity; and without any particular crisis or sign of the end, Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889. The body was taken on board ship by the Venice Municipal Guard, and received by the Royal Italian marines. He was buried ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... increasing in tired abstraction and dreaminess. Gradually overtaken by slumber, his flaxen head drooped, his whole lamb-like figure relaxed, and, half reclining against the ladder's foot, lay motionless, as some sugar-snow in March, which, softly stealing down over night, with its white placidity startles the brown farmer peering out from his ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... history, he worked daily. It was an era of great hope and activity among the nations and industries. Though Hipcroft was, in his small way, a central man in the movement, he plodded on with his usual outward placidity. Yet for him, too, the year was destined to have its surprises, for when the bustle of getting the building ready for the opening day was past, the ceremonies had been witnessed, and people were flocking thither from all parts of the globe, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... there expressly and solely for the purpose of being caught! A little further down, the river took a slight bend, and immediately after, recurring to its straight course, it dashed down, for a distance of fifty yards, in a tumultuous rapid, which swept into sudden placidity a few hundred yards below. Having taken all this in at a glance, Frank dropped the fly into the water and raised his rod to make a cast. In this act he almost broke the rod, to his amazement; for, instead of whipping the fly lightly out ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... water is what you want." Sophia Antonovna glanced up the grounds at the house and shook her head, then out of the gate at the brimful placidity of the lake. With a half-comical shrug of the shoulders, she gave the remedy up in the face ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Beautiful; especially in women. His manner towards the sex was remarkable for its insinuating character. It is recorded of him in another part of these pages, that he embraced Mrs Todgers on the smallest provocation; and it was a way he had; it was a part of the gentle placidity of his disposition. Before any thought of matrimony was in his mind, he had bestowed on Mary many little tokens of his spiritual admiration. They had been indignantly received, but that was nothing. True, as the idea expanded within him, these had become too ardent to escape ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Sometimes could be seen two or three signal lights at one time, twisting off in some new direction. Minus the lights and some yards of glistening rails, Scotland was only a blend of black and weird shapes. Forests which one could hardly imagine as weltering in the dewy placidity of evening sank to the rear as if the gods had bade them. The dark loom of a house quickly dissolved before the eyes. A station with its lamps became a broad yellow band that, to a deficient sense, was only a few yards in length. Below, in a deep valley, a silver glare on the waters of a river ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... times, the river was overhung by dark and stupendous rocks, rising like gigantic walls and battlements; these would be rent by wide and yawning chasms, that seemed to speak of past convulsions of nature. Sometimes the river was of a glassy smoothness and placidity; at other times it roared along in impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here, the rocks were piled in the most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another place, they were succeeded by delightful valleys carpeted with green-award. The whole of this wild and varied scenery was dominated ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... father, saw the advantages that might result as well to the health of her mind as that of her body. They had waited—a vain waiting—for the wearing out of the traces of the obdurate image; and when they thought they might take placidity as the sign of what they waited for, they first hinted, and then expressed in plain terms, the wishes of their hearts. For a time all their efforts were fruitless; but John Carr getting old and weak, wished to be succeeded in his business by George; and the wife, when she became a widow, would ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... representation of Mr. Wragg's shipwreck at the base. Next to it is the large monument of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, which I think Addison ridicules,—the Admiral, in a full-bottomed wig and Roman dress, but with a broad English face, reclining with his head on his hand, and looking at you with great placidity. I stood at either end of the nave, and endeavored to take in the full beauty and majesty of the edifice; but apparently was not in a proper state of mind, for nothing came of it. It is singular how like an avenue of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... What was distressing him? The purloining of the son of the poet-tyrant by the daughter of the financier-convict. Or only, if I may say so, the wind of their flight disturbing the solemn placidity of the Fynes' domestic atmosphere. My incertitude did not last ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... there are many, who in no true sense can be called seekers after truth, who do not trouble themselves with questions about the Unseen. They chew the cud of custom with all the placidity of good-natured oxen. They do not live,—they simply exist. It is possible for any man to shut his eyes to the light, but that does not banish the light. It envelops him, and pours its splendors around him, regardless of his wilful blindness. Millions are so engrossed with selfishness, ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... out, Lyly was not very successful in the matter of character drawing. Never, even for a moment, is passion allowed to disturb the cultured placidity of the dialogue. The conditions under which his plays were produced may in part account for this. The children of Paul's could hardly be expected to display much light and shade of emotion in their acting, certainly depth of passion was ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... in this placidity and ease they were suddenly aware of a slight buzzing in the air. Herr Schwankmacher raised himself on his elbow, and looked around for the insect that had dared to intrude into this peaceful cabbage-patch. There was no insect in sight of such a size as to account for the deep-toned hum, which ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... looks to appear of his own age. She was slightly taller than he—though he was now his full height (five feet ten and one-half inches)—and, despite her height, shapely, artistic in form and feature, and with a certain unconscious placidity of soul, which came more from lack of understanding than from force of character. Her hair was the color of a dried English walnut, rich and plentiful, and her complexion waxen—cream wax—-with lips of faint pink, and eyes that varied from gray to blue and from gray to brown, according to the light ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... happy, with all her blessings? She was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happiness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in diamonds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Thus with the man F., who has quick imagination, and whose ability to forecast is inextricably mixed with a liability to fear. It is true that some do not fear because they do not foresee, and that placidity and calmness are less often due to courage than ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... unselfish life had left none of those rude traces upon her countenance which are the outward emblems of internal conflict and an unquiet soul. A chaste melancholy had refined and softened her expression, and her loss of sight had been compensated for by that placidity which comes upon the faces of the blind. With her silvery hair peeping out beneath her snow-white cap, and a bright smile upon her sympathetic face, she was the old Mary improved and developed, with something ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his enthusiasm are perhaps too continuous, too seldom relieved by spaces of repose. It is all too much of a Mazeppa ride; there are times when we pray for a good quarter of an hour of comfortable dulness, or at least of wholesome bovine placidity. The laws of such a poem are wholly determined from within. The only question we have a right to ask is this—Has the poet adequately dealt with his subject, adequately expressed his idea? The division of the whole into five parts may seem to have some correspondency ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the room, in which he broke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by the hearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiry concerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; the serene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angry voices of elements without, answered to the peace—the strange peace—that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of such uncongenial memories as now rose up ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... whom she denominated inferiors—to impress them with an overwhelming idea of her importance. But on the simple-minded literal Cary, this honour was lost, she received it with such composure and unconscious placidity: on Bab it produced, indeed, the desired effect; but whether it was Mrs Combermere's loud talking and boasting, or Mr Newton's easy negligence and patronising airs, that caused her to colour and hesitate, it is not possible to define. Bab was not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who fears no open fight and never thinks ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the place from Sam after the judge's death. Don't you remember I wrote you about it, Betty dear?" she answered, with the gentle placidity with which she has always met all my tragic moments. Mother raised seven boys before she produced me, and her capacity for any sort of responsive excitement gave out long before I needed it. After her sons ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Brown's face expressed such placidity that the master asked him to stand and give out the answer, and he gave it gladly enough—999.009—which sounded particularly learned to a class ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... Ulysses felt the friendly placidity that a landscape contemplated in childhood always inspires. Many a time he had seen this same panorama with its dancing girls and its volcano there in his old home at Valencia; he had seen it on the fans called "Roman Style" that his ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... human being, can endure. Everything is on the stir. Every creature, however paltry and insignificant, whether moth, mote, or atom, seems busy. Whereas, one serene soft gaze of the moon appears to allay nature's universal disquiet. The calm and mellow placidity of her look, so heavenly and undisturbed, lulls the soul, and subdues ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... little lady in Martha's strong arms, between the matronly coaxing of the fat hostess and the kind soothings of the two young ladies, had been restored to something of equanimity, Mistress Martha laid her down and said with the utmost good humour and placidity to the young husband, "Now I'll go, sir. She is better now, but the sight of my face might set ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... figure took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which life has but recently and painlessly departed. The limbs grew stiff and rigid—the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,—the closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised ... there was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of returning animation,—and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in the afternoon, waking the torpid town into semblance of interested activity during the brief duration of its stay. But before she had disappeared over the horizon native Davao had relapsed into stupid placidity, and the Chinos had stored the meager cargoes dropped for them—print goods, cigarettes, matches, rice, a few small agongs, and, probably, a little opium. The lethargy of the tropics during the hot hours is ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... weight of inevitable sorrow were weighing him to the ground. Julia's quiet assurance, her regretful firmness, seemed to be breaking his heart. She was in white to-day, and in the thin September sunlight, among the blossoming roses, she somehow suggested the calm placidity of a nun who looks back at her days in the world with a tender, smiling pity. The child had left her play, and stood close to her mother's side, one of Julia's hands ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Hamoud-bin-Said paced to and fro, sometimes standing before the picture by Bronzino, and seeming to stare clear through it. He was serene, as water is serene that has been lashed by tempests, and that holds in the depths of its placidity secrets that none can discern. He was always near nowadays, on the fringe of their lives, just beyond the radius of their preoccupations, the silent witness of this strange love affair, in the humble station that Allah, for some inscrutable reason, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... calm, as though her knowledge of Italian was fair the Neapolitan dialect was beyond her. Mr Marvel, of course, knew not a syllable of any language but his own, and the slang of Southern gutters was as Greek to Olive. Their placidity amused the Marchese, and so did the thought of the little scene that he knew was being enacted in ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... silence of Treasury Bench. Well there was someone at that temperature. Committee, take it all together, in volcanic mood. Peculiarity of situation, as SAUNDERSON put it, with some mixing of metaphor, was that "it was the cucumber that kept the pot a-boiling." Whenever any sign of placidity was visible, JOSEPH sure to appear on scene, rub someone's hair the wrong way, or stir up some slumbering lion with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... finished our tea in silence. Suzee came back presently with cigarettes for us and sat down on the floor herself, rolling one up between supple fingers. She had an air of extraordinary unruffled placidity. The dragging about of the child had not disturbed her dress nor heated her face. In cool, tranquil, placid beauty she sat and rolled cigarettes while the child's cries dimly echoed in ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... dropped from her fingers; she sat up. Then he saw that she too was agitated. There was an unusual spot of colour in her cheeks, her breathing was certainly less regular. The variance from her habitual placidity encouraged him. He ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... with all the placidity of her age suddenly broken up; and a curious hard excitement, dignified but dogged, ladylike but implacable—the manner of the Old Guard of the Women's Rights movement—coming upon her). Phil: take care. Remember what I have always ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... had had his love story, or that which in the life of such a man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote to her every week a long letter, and spent ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... of life amused these votaries of fashion—nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity, except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena—one of those unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which have for ever disgraced the glorious pages of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice—and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... windows are screened against the flies. Here the white-clad, smooth-shaven milkers do their work with scrubbed and manicured hands. You will note that all these men are studiously low-voiced and gentle in movement; for a cow, notwithstanding her outward placidity, is the most sensitive creature on earth, and there is an old superstition that if you speak roughly to your cow she will earn no money ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... palate its disgust at ditch-water like the Thames, within a more recent period. Honestly dirty, and robustly indifferent to what mortally offends our squeamish senses, our happy ancestors fattened on carbonic acid gas, and took the exhalations of graveyards and gutters with a placidity of stomach that excites our physiological admiration. If they died, it was not for want of air. The pestilence carried, them off,—and that was a providential enemy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... clasped his hands on his stomach with exemplary resignation. I admired the placidity of his impudence. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... experienced during their labour and long walk. I got the story from one of the guards who had accompanied them. But even these thick-skinned disciples of "kultur" and brutality were not disposed to be communicative. The stoicism, grim determination and placidity of the Reverend Fathers constituted something which their square heads and addled brains failed to understand. They ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... before the mirror till it resumed its normal round-eyed placidity, she locked the letter and its contents in a safe place, and sought out ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... be so immune from timidity Never a spectre could fill them with fright, Men who could keep their accustomed placidity Were they to meet in the gloom of the night Lady Hermione tramping the corridor, Wicked Sir Guy with his fetters adrag, Or a plebeian who shrieked something horrid or Carried his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... the whistle Mr. Carville's face cleared and assumed its wonted placidity. The deck trembled as the screw began to revolve, and imperceptibly we moved out towards Governor's Island. It was just here, I think, as we began our little six-mile journey to St. George, that a sudden illumination came to me. I understood Mr. Carville's reason ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... hair and clear-cut features; and Elisabeth adored her with the adoration that is freely given, as a rule, to the girl who has beauty by the girl who has not. She was, moreover, gifted with a sweet and calm placidity, which was very restful to Elisabeth's volatile spirit; and the latter consequently greeted her with that passionate and thrilling friendship which is so satisfying to the immature female soul, but which is never again experienced by the woman who has once been taught by a man the nature ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... through the fringe of onlookers, none of whom heeded me, and found Apporo and Exploding Eggs holding torches. The madness of play was upon them. The sad placidity of every day was gone; as in the throes of the dance they kept their gleaming eyes upon the fluctuations of fortune before them. Twice I spoke sharply before they heard me, and then in a frenzy of supplication ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the castle he started, and lost placidity. It was not at her presence as such, but at the new condition, which seemed to have something sinister in it. On the other hand, the most abrupt encounter with him moved her to no emotion as it had moved her prototype in the old days. She was ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... are perhaps too continuous, too seldom relieved by spaces of repose. It is all too much of a Mazeppa ride; there are times when we pray for a good quarter of an hour of comfortable dulness, or at least of wholesome bovine placidity. The laws of such a poem are wholly determined from within. The only question we have a right to ask is this—Has the poet adequately dealt with his subject, adequately expressed his idea? The division of the whole into five ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... made Brent—and how her own laughter and jests aggravated his uneasiness to the point where he was almost showing it. She glanced round that brilliant room filled with men and women, each of them carrying underneath the placidity of stiff evening shirt or the scantiness of audacious evening gown the most fascinating emotions and secrets—love and hate and jealousy, cold and monstrous habits and desires, ruin impending or stealthily advancing, fortune giddying to a gorgeous climax, disease and shame and fear—yet only signs ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... at this point, by the procession of cars occasioning a stoppage of about three-quarters of a mile in length, as nearly as I could judge. His Majesty, however, entreating me not to be discomposed by the contingent uproar, smoked with great placidity, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Inscrutable, and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven?" Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment: and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. "Look what a little vain dust we are;" he says, smiling over the tombstones, and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks in words of inspiration almost, of "the Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... (rising, with all the placidity of her age suddenly broken up; and a curious hard excitement, dignified but dogged, ladylike but implacable—the manner of the Old Guard of the Women's Rights movement—coming upon her). Phil: take care. Remember what I have always taught you. There are two sorts of family life, Phil; ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who fears no open fight and ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... was a thickset fellow of only medium height, and was called, somewhat invidiously, "a chunky man." His face was broad, prosaic, good-natured, incapable of any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an elementary rage or a sluggish placidity. He had a ragged beard of a reddish hue, and hair a shade lighter. He wore blue jeans trousers and an unbleached cotton shirt, and the whole system depended on one suspender. He was engaged in skimming ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... since the two young men had startled Lady Merceron by their unexpected arrival, and since then the good lady had been doing her best to entertain them; for, as she could not help noticing-, they seemed a little dull. It was a great change from the whirl of London to the deep placidity of the Court, and Lady Merceron could not quite understand why Charlie had tired so soon of his excursion, or why his friend persisted with so much fervor that anything was better than London, and the Court was the most charming place he had ever seen. Of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... for a period of ten years, and otherwise debarred many of the comforts to which, in more prosperous circumstances, he had been accustomed, Alexander Balfour retained to the close of life his native placidity and gentleness. His countenance wore a perpetual smile. He joined in the amusements of the young, and took delight in the recital of the merry tale and humorous anecdote. His speech, somewhat affected by his complaint, became pleasant ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... respect to Chris." Was there a hint of sternness underlying the placidity of the rejoinder? There might have been, but Aunt Philippa was too intent upon the matter she had taken in ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... such as I should never have thought the slender lieutenant of artillery capable of acquiring; his heated, sun-burnt complexion, and dissipated look, exchanged for a fresh colour and benevolent placidity; the Dutchman I had left on the Rhine stood beside me in the lobby of the French theatre. I turned to the lady: she was less changed than her companion, and now that I was upon the track, I recognised Emilie Sendel. By this time we were in the street. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... at a pedreria—an accumulation of rocks—extending almost right across the stream, and which was the cause of the placidity of the waters above it. There were two channels—one to bearings magnetic 330 deg., the other to 360 deg.—on either side of a central island. We followed the first and larger channel. The island, which had a most luxuriant ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... pretty. Her mouth is very small, almost disproportionately so, and her eyes are very large and blue and very wide open. She was intended for a placed woman, but Hermione and Modern Thought have made complete placidity impossible. She has a fondness for rich brocades and pretty fans are chocolate candy and big bowls of roses and comfortable chairs. When she was Hermione's age she used to do water color sketches; the outlines were penciled in by her ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... all came down together with the little one, and Flora put her down within the arm her father stretched out for her. He gazed into the baby face, which, in its expressionless placidity, almost recalled her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the slower placidity of Pansy; while there was still another sort, more vigorous in being, who consciously discussed riding academies, the bridle-paths of Central Park, and the international tennis. Their dress held a greater restraint ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he encouraged a taste for the bizarre, it was with an effort. He was naturally of an orderly mind, and to touch the eerie or inhuman caused him a physical discomfort. So now he marvelled in a great uneasiness at the calm placidity with which Wethermill had talked, his arm in his, while the load of so dark a crime to be committed within the hour lay upon his mind. Each minute he must have been thinking, with a swift spasm of the heart, "Should such a precaution fail—should ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... the jeers of an untemperamental world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby, who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of La Tosca, Camille or Manon, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought, "It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal! Whatever should I do ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... out of the stem, was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon getting into better condition, he fell into that state of repose becoming a good smoker; but sat with his eyes fixed on Florence, and, with a beaming placidity not to be described, and stopping every now and then to discharge a little cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as if it were a scroll coming out of his mouth, bearing the legend 'Poor Wal'r, ay, ay. Drownded, ain't he?' after which ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... without the faintest tinge of color, in spite of her golden hair. More than one artist, looking at the pure brow, the discreet, composed mouth, the delicate nose, the small ears, the long lashes, and the dark-blue eyes filled with tenderness,—in short, at the whole countenance expressive of placidity,—has asked the great artist, "Is that a copy of a Raphael?" No man ever acted under a truer inspiration than the minister's secretary when he married this young girl. Agathe was an embodiment of the ideal housekeeper brought up in the provinces ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... had been, his placidity that caused her most despair. But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... no longer. She knew that Hope expected to hear that she was engaged. And not with less placidity ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... modest fashion on a small annuity, had brought with her from Plassans a plump, pretty child, whom she treated as her own daughter. Lisa, as the young one was called, attended upon her with much placidity and serenity of disposition. Somewhat seriously inclined, she looked quite beautiful when she smiled. Indeed, her great charm came from the exquisite manner in which she allowed this infrequent smile of hers to escape her. Her eyes then became most ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... years and few enough inches. His weather-stained face, creased like parchment, was lit by a pair of piercing eyes, which were full of fire and mental energy. But, for the moment, no one had eyes for anything but the stoic placidity of the expressionless features of the Indian. The man's forehead was bound with a blood-stained ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... or four languages, and read all the books either here or at the parsonage. When, however, she is in society, one would fancy her a very ignorant person, so little does she say and so anxious does she appear to conceal her information. Her modesty is disturbed by no vanity, and the placidity of her meditations is interrupted by no vulgar commotion. One might almost fancy her a stranger to this world, indifferent to its calculations, lost to its joys, and submitting without effort to its sorrows. I have never seen her smile, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... was left of his principle of popular sovereignty, he remonstrated angrily with the President for breaking faith with Walker and the Kansans. At the end of a stormy interview, Buchanan, stirred out of his wonted placidity, threateningly reminded the senator that no Democrat ever broke with a Democratic administration without being crushed. Douglas scornfully retorted: "Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead." The new Congress was ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... is filled with the idea or notion of producing brilliant or sensational results, he will in all probability so disturb the placidity of the receiving surface of his mind that the latter will fail to register or record the impressions being made upon it by the spirit vibrations. It is similar to the case of a placid bosom of a deep lake which, normally, will reflect clearly and distinctly ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... the pushing of bolts and bars, Marguerite thought that she was the prey of hallucinations. The Abbe Foucquet was sitting in the remote and darkest corner of the room, quietly telling his beads. His serene philosophy and gentle placidity could in no way be disturbed by the opening of shutting of a door, or by the bearer ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... by a year's drought. Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick, troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time. The wild river had been tamed; the spirit of the falls, whose hoarse ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... conscious of its passage. Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country; and while the body is borne forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar alley that leads toward the town; they are left behind with the signalman ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Mrs. Merrithew, a dry smile twinkling in the placidity of her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then you can explain ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... all right. I'll tell them all they must call you My Lady. [She takes her tray out with undisturbed placidity]. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... likely to suffer from ennui. Nor is Fanny any less active. Ill or well, rain or shine, a little blue indefatigable figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows, late for every meal. She has reached a sort of tragic placidity. Whenever she plants anything new the boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep anything for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has reached that pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she would almost say she did not mind. Anyway, her cabbages have succeeded. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... was about, and was on tolerable terms with himself, and on still better with his neighbor. The heart under his ribs was larger even than indicated by the benevolence of his countenance and the humor hovering over his mouth. Upon the countenance of his wife rested a placidity sinking almost into fatuity. Its features were rather indications than completions, but there was a consciousness of comfort about the mouth, and the eyes ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Brisport quay. Her calm, eventless, unselfish life had left none of those rude traces upon her countenance which are the outward emblems of internal conflict and an unquiet soul. A chaste melancholy had refined and softened her expression, and her loss of sight had been compensated for by that placidity which comes upon the faces of the blind. With her silvery hair peeping out beneath her snow-white cap, and a bright smile upon her sympathetic face, she was the old Mary improved and developed, with something ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... up the cigar which he had laid aside to get the drink, with his thick fingers, one of them ornamented by a gold ring, Schomberg smoked with moody composure. Facing him, Ricardo blinked slowly for a time, then closed his eyes altogether, with the placidity of the domestic cat dozing on the hearth-rug. In another moment he opened them very wide, and seemed surprised to ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... that this race, which makes so little account of physical beauty, is itself a singularly handsome one. This is owing doubtless in part to the absolute compatibility of temperaments in all the marriages, and partly also to the reaction upon the body of a state of ideal mental and moral health and placidity. ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... by the placidity of the other's tone, "if you had been wiser, you wouldn't have lost your pulp-wood holdings. Oh, there's no use beating about the bush—I knew the minute Jean told me you had come in by the tote-road, that you had seen the Eureka trucks hauling in Eureka material. We put one ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... bidding; and after pouring some into a glass, and slowly swallowing its contents, the abbe, resuming his usual placidity of manner, said, as he placed his empty glass on the table,—"Where ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and silently, but politely, rose and bowed, I said, "M. de Talleyrand m'a oubli: mais on n'oublie pas M. de Talleyrand."(287) I left the room with quickness, but saw a movement of surprise by no means unpleasant break over the habitual placidity, the nearly imperturbable composure of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... good description of Mary's own behavior in England after Shelley's death, of the surface placidity which concealed stormy emotion. See Nitchie, Mary Shelley, ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... assumed its cheerful placidity—"if his marrying of Jude and Joyce would hold in ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... succeeding twenty-four hours was but that which precedes the storm, and the glassy placidity of Steve's life for that one day proved to be the deceitful stillness of deep waters. Upon his return from the city he was again greeted with the welcome intelligence that Sarah Maria had raised her head, adjusted her hind legs, whose ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... wage combat over this. You're right, Doubtless, as usual, Brander. I have not Your fortunate placidity of mind, And ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... bridegroom, who bent over her enamoured; and then, as if beguiled from some painful contemplation by the sweet accents of the man she loved, she became calm, and her quivering features resumed their wonted placidity. But these moments of tranquillity were of short duration; she started at every shadow; the flash of one of the jewels which broidered her satin robe would cause a fit of trembling; and at length, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... them with admiration and astonishment. At times, the river was overhung by dark and stupendous rocks, rising like gigantic walls and battlements; these would be rent by wide and yawning chasms, that seemed to speak of past convulsions of nature. Sometimes the river was of a glassy smoothness and placidity; at other times it roared along in impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here, the rocks were piled in the most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another place, they were succeeded by delightful valleys carpeted with green-award. The whole of this wild and varied scenery was dominated ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... any foreign reader, simply means that he is not always where we can get at him; and therefore his venerable visage is missing from our celestial portrait gallery. One fact we have found out, which we fear will ripple the pure water placidity of some of our best friends; but the truth ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... to the energetic animal, with its various reflex movements and pulsating organs, stands the plant, in its apparent placidity and immobility. Yet that same environment which with its changing influences affects the animal is playing upon it also. Storm and sunshine, the warmth of summer and the frost of winter, drought and rain, all these come and go about it. What coercion do they exercise ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... from my infancy, to consider twenty summers, instead of threescore years and ten, as the allotted space of my existence, I looked forward to my exit from this world, by the new drop, with the same placidity as the nobleman awaits the time appointed for the entrance of his body into the vault containing the dust of his ancestors. At the age of eleven years, I considered myself a full-grown man, dared all that man could do, and was a ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... two great noises grew deafening together, the noise of the peril of England and the louder noise of the placidity of England. It is their fault if the last verse was written a ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... is assailed at Marseilles. His placidity and stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers, like rapacious ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Mr. Blackstone. "My chief, almost sole, attraction to the regions of the grave is the sexton, and not the placidity of the inhabitants; though perhaps Miss Clare might value that more highly if she had more experience of how ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... argue in favour of virtue by offering as a motive that sense of pleasure which follows the deliberate performance of a virtuous act. This emotion is a distinct and isolated gratification following a distinct action, and may therefore be easily separated from that habitual placidity of temper which results from the extinction of vicious and perturbing impulses. It is this theory which is implied in the common exhortations to enjoy "the luxury of doing good," and though especially strong in acts of benevolence, in which case sympathy ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... woods travel, was nothing to bite on save monotony. Dick Herron resented the monotony, resented the deliberation necessary to so delicate a mission, resented the unvarying tug of his tump-line or the unchanging yield of the water to his paddle, resented the placidity of the older man, above all resented the meek and pathetic submissiveness of the girl. His narrow eyes concentrated their gaze ominously. He muttered to himself. The untrained, instinctive strength of the man's spirit ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... long he walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess. The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himself placid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power of commonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice say: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we lay, made an island in that white sea. Between us and the black spaces among the stars there was nothing. How eternally quiet it was! I can feel that isolation now coming over my soul like the stealthy fog, until I lay there, unconscious of my body, in a wondering placidity, watching the stars burn and fade. I could seem to feel them whirl in their way through the heavens. And then a thought detached itself from me, the conception of an eternity passed in placidity like that without the pains of sense, the obligations of action; I loved it then—that ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... between the matronly coaxing of the fat hostess and the kind soothings of the two young ladies, had been restored to something of equanimity, Mistress Martha laid her down and said with the utmost good humour and placidity to the young husband, "Now I'll go, sir. She is better now, but the sight of my face might set ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... families, with a boundless belief in themselves, a sincere desire to do their duty, as far as they understood it, and a habit of impressing their virtues upon others which was quite beyond all human endurance. Placidity was their note; provoking placidity. I felt sure it must have been of a woman of this type that the famous phrase was coined—"Elle a toutes les vertus—et elle ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... my lord's alarm. He, too, had seen a little company below by the grand entry, and among them one of singular grace, a rare nobility of form and feature, a strange placidity. There was no forgetting, no mistaking him. It was the gentleman of the bogged coach, the Old Corporal, the Duke of Marlborough.. Marlborough, who was in disgrace, who should be in exile, back at the palace when the Tories were staking ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... against wrong, and had an iron grip for the throat of him who trampled on the helpless. Better meet a lion robbed of her whelps than him, if you had been stealing the bread from the mouth of the fatherless. It required all the placidity of my mother's voice to calm him when once the mountain storm of his righteous wrath was in full blast; while as for himself, he would submit to more imposition, and say nothing, than any man I ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... martyr, though I found the market at the foot of the statue given over, not to flowers, as the name of the place might imply, but to such homely fruits of the earth as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above all, onions. There was a placidity in the simple scene that pleased me: I liked the quiet gossiping of the old market-women over their baskets of vegetables; the confidential fashion in which a gentle crone came to my elbow and begged ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course. From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing, and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a corps of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... speech for Mellony. A large moon had risen, and from the low horizon sent golden shafts of light almost into the room; it was as if the placidity of the night were suddenly penetrated by something more glowing. Mellony stood looking down at her mother, like a judge. Mrs. Pember gazed ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... energetic steps, an alert and suggestive figure amidst a scene of placidity. Up the uneven plank walk he went, noting with a swift, sidelong glance the neat white house of Dibbott, the Indian agent, a house that thrust its snowy, wooden walls and luxuriant little garden close up to the street. On his left, still further west, was the home ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with the aching sense of "loss in all familiar things." ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... its ordinary placidity, after the passage of the hurricane, when they borrowed a boat of one of their neighbors, in order to go in search of him. Mr. Malarius insisted upon accompanying the young men upon their expedition, and they all three set out, anxiously watched by ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... began to think of matrimony. A family of Godfreys lived in the same house with him, and now Mrs. Godfrey undertook to make a match between him and the daughter of a relative of hers. Franklin's account of this affair for its coolness and placidity may almost be compared with Gibbon's "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." On learning that the girl's parents could not or would not give with her enough money to pay off his debts, the gallant suitor ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... children strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superiority—my ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... speaking of his quarrels with the Chapter; the placidity of mind produced by the quiet of the garden disappeared as he thought of his hostile subordinates. He felt obliged as at other times to confide his troubles to the gardener's widow with that instinctive kindly feeling which often causes highly-placed ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... flat smooth face, her hair, entirely negative in colour and arrangement, offered no clue whatever to her unsuspected sharpnesses. Smooth, broad, flat and motionless she carried, like the Wooden Horse of Troy, a thousand dangers in the depths of her placidity. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... these mats Lo Ong, gaunt, curious, even hostile, retreated, squatting with his delicately thin hands folded over his abdomen. A look of recognition disturbed only for the instant the placidity of the ochre features. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... any annoyance, to interfere with his usual manner,—a man who could always come to table with a smile, and meet either his friend or his enemy with a properly civil greeting. Not that he was especially a false man. There was nothing of deceit in his placidity of demeanour. It arose from true equanimity; but it was the equanimity of a cold disposition rather than of one well ordered by discipline. The squire was aware that he had been unreasonably petulant ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... never slopped over, no matter how he felt. If ever a mortal had a firm grip on his emotions, MacRae had, and yet there was a sleeping devil within him that was never hard to wake. But his looks gave no hint of the real man under the surface placidity; you'd never have guessed what possibilities lay behind that immobile face, with its heavy-lashed hazel eyes and plain, thin-lipped mouth that tilted up just a bit at the corners. We had parted in the Texas Panhandle five years before—an unexpected, involuntary separation ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... calmness, n. tranquillity, serenity, placidity, stillness, composure, imperturbability, dispassion, imperturbation, unconcern, equanimity, collectedness, self-possession. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... him in astonishment. The boatman, losing his placidity, turned a deep red. "Take care, young fellow," he said, in a voice of anger; "there's not a man in Tennessee who dares to call Ned Jackson ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change goes far to explain the ghastly unfeelingness of many a Turkish and Chinese despot whose ingeniously cruel tortures we shudder to read of scarcely more than the placidity with which he sees them inflicted. If he was originally so sensitive to the boundaries between Meum and Tuum that the least invasion of another's property hurt him more than any loss of his own, this ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... been permitted to ruffle this placidity. Gold! Our ears were tickled by the tale that good folks had actually thrilled when we slunk away to our Island. Rumour wagged her tongue, abusing God's great gift of speech, until scared Truth fled. She said—how cheap is notoriety!—that secret knowledge of hidden wealth ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... and the babe, who was on her very best six-months-old behavior, listened with admirable placidity to the "sermon of grace," on which at a future time she might, perhaps, found a genealogy. Her only offence against perfect church decorum was a sometimes rather explosive "Agoo!" as she tried to reach the ever-swaying black feather fan that was waved by her parents in turn for her ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... was soon shivering between the icy sheets of his bed. It seemed to him they never would get warm and cosy, as he had so confidently expected. Hawkins, being a bank clerk, was a patient and enduring man. Years of training had made him tolerant even to placidity. As he cuddled in the bed, his head almost buried in the covers, he resignedly convinced himself that warmth would come sooner or later and even as the chills ran up and down his back he was philosophic. So much for system and ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... before the quarrelsome stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen, they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better halves until they dropped down to sleep off ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... she received was the notification that Mr. Calton's rooms would be vacated the next day. When the servant, who, like most of her class, was devoted to the good-natured, good-looking, liberal Chris, asked with some concern if the young gentleman was no better, Miss Trotter, with equal placidity, answered that it was his intention to put himself under the care of a specialist in San Francisco, and that she, Miss Trotter, fully approved of his course. She finished her letter,—the servant noticed that it was addressed to Mr. Bilson ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... old woman said as was looking for her needle in the bundle of hay," observed old Bob, with provoking placidity. "On course she is, and we is looking for her: but it's quite a different thing whether we finds her or not, 'specially when it gets dark; and if, as I suspects, it comes on to blow freshish there'll be a pretty bobble of a sea here at the turn of the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... funny about it. He acts—amused—as if he were years and years older, and we were babies playing in a sand box or making mud pies." It was clear that his amusement amused her, just as her mother's admonition amused her: nothing annoyed or disturbed her,—her serenity was too deep for that. Her fine placidity was lighted now with an inner flame, but she was very quiet about her happiness; she was not very ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... extraordinary depth; and though stone-blue water seems at first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava, it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous antecedents. The winds never reach it and its surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you fancy it in communication with the capricious and treacherous forces of nature. Its very colour is of a joyless beauty, a blue as cold and opaque as a solidified sheet ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... I will tell you now, what I would not tell myself then, that the grief, though true, was not so great as either of the other feelings. I lunch in the great dining-room, with tall full-length Tempests eying me with constant placidity from the walls; with the butler and footman still trying respectfully to ignore my swelled ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Brahmin was watching with the eye of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in, and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero, game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Hence the feeling of balance. Hence (from the lack of unimpeded movement on the short side) the feeling there of 'intensity,' or 'concentration,' or 'greater significance.' Hence, too, the 'ease,' the 'simplicity,' the 'placidity' of the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... and devote themselves to the strained study of books alone. The mere bookman is always more or less a dolt; but the wise reader who learns from the living voice and visible actions of his fellow-creatures as well as from the dead printed pages is on the way to placidity and strength and true wisdom. Thus much I will say—the flippant devourer of books can neither be wise nor strong nor useful; and it is his tribe who have discredited a pursuit which once was noble ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... little squire, who takes business and pleasure alike with imperturbable placidity of temper, and who always uses a double-handed rod for mayfly fishing): The same to you, old blue-bag. I'll back my 14-footer against ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... too well known to be cited:—"The other House," he said, "were not yet perhaps recovered from that extraordinary burst of the pathetic which had been exhibited the other evening; they had not yet dried their eyes, or been restored to their former placidity, and were unqualified to attend, to new business. The tears shed in that House on the occasion to which he alluded, were not the tears of patriots for dying laws, but of Lords for their expiring places. The iron tears, which flowed down Pluto's cheek, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... us. The boy turned out well, entered the navy, and was a post captain when he died. From Halifax we went to New York, the frantic bustle and stir in which place contrasted strangely, in my eyes, with the calm of the Newfoundland deserts and the placidity of the Blue Noses, as the inhabitants of Nova Scotia are nicknamed. We were at New York to do some indispensable revictualling, consequent on the exceptionally rough voyage we had had. Besides much other damage, we had lost all our sails; they had been carried away one after ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... counter of his general store. There was nothing in his appearance to suggest kin to the lean and cadaverous Professor. The Professor always seemed to move with effort, but his brother was alive all over. Though short and fat, he had none of the placidity which we associate with corpulence. As he talked his hands moved restlessly; his bristling red mustache accentuated the play of his lips; his heavy gold watch-chain moved up and down with his breathing; even his ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... rushing stream merely means a force making itself felt without a counterbalancing force—but that isn't nearly as strong as the pressure in a reservoir exerted by the water which is trying to get out, and the resistance of the dam which is trying to keep it in. You must not be taken in by apparent placidity: it often means two forces at work instead of one. Peace, as opposed to war, is a tremendous counterpoising of forces, and it simply means an organised resistance. In old days, there was no cohesion of the forces which desire peace, and violence ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... size and the fertility of the domestic rabbit. In consciously selecting the largest and most flourishing individuals and the best and most prolific mothers, he must have unconsciously selected those rabbits whose relative tameness or placidity of disposition rendered it possible for them to flourish and to produce and rear large and thriving families, instead of fretting and pining as the wilder captives would do. When we consider how exceedingly delicate ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship's bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... unhooked the fo'c'sle door and entered. A globe-lamp that hung above him shed its light upon his silver head as he bent over his work of patching a pair of dungaree overalls, and he looked up in mild welcome of the other's return. His placidity, his venerable and friendly aspect, gave somehow to the bare forecastle, with its vacant bunks like empty coffin-shelves in a vault, an air of domesticity, the comfortable quality of a home. Save for brief intervals between voyages, in sailors' boarding-houses, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the billiard-tables as if there had been not a soul staying in the hotel. His placidity was so genuine that he was not unduly, fretting himself over the absence of Heyst, or the mysterious manners Schomberg had treated him to. He was considering these things in his own fairly shrewd way. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... sit here for a few minutes. My Master always asked me to meditate whenever I saw an expanse of water. Here its placidity reminds us of the vast calmness of God. As all things can be reflected in water, so the whole universe is mirrored in the lake of the Cosmic Mind. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... went off to another part of the room. From Jane's countenance the look of amusement which she had perforce summoned soon passed; it was succeeded by a shadow almost of pain, and not till she had been at work again for nearly an hour was the former placidity ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... ever since their marriage, excitedly entered the parlor ten minutes after the events narrated, it was empty. Mary was a comely maiden of forty-three, of comfortable proportions and goodly to look upon. Her cheeks were still attractively round; her glossy black hair was, with much placidity, smoothed over her temples, cunningly brought above her ears, and twisted in an alluring knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were of that deep peculiar blue which generally is such a menace to the peace of the sterner sex, and over which lovers are wont to expatiate ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor must the sage live only for himself, but for others; he is a member of the whole body of mankind; he ought to marry, and to take part in public affairs, but he will never give way to compassion or forgiveness, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... everybody knows—or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing, mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend without ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... to her companion the unusual and most menacing aspect of the sky in the western horizon. It appeared as if a fiery heat was glowing there, behind a curtain of black vapour; and what rendered it more remarkable, was the circumstance that an extraordinary degree of placidity prevailed in all other parts of the heavens. Mulford scarce knew what to make of it; his experience not going so far as to enable him to explain the novel and alarming appearance. He stepped on a gun, and gazed around ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... The placidity of existence had been agreeably disturbed (yes, agreeably, in spite of horror at the attack on Mr. Scales's elbow) by an adventure. Moreover, Mr. Scales proved to be in evening- dress. And nobody had ever worn evening-dress ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the lady, with unalterable placidity, "business is not one of your strong points. You really are not fit to manage any important matter alone. At Dudleigh you have your papa to advise with, at London your papa's solicitors, and here ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... morning in a state of shivering nervousness. I do not know what she expected me to do or say, but toward the end of the sermon it became clear that I had not justified her fears. The look of intense apprehension left her eyes, her features relaxed into placidity, and later in the day she paid me the highest compliment I had yet received from ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... everything happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed placidity, said: "Nurse... Nurse..." Jeremy cried: "It's all right, he wouldn't touch anything, he's only friendly." Mary and Helen together moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be heard in a confused ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
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