"Placate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had the proposed dinner with Mrs. Almar deteriorated) and go afterward to the opera. Nancy of course would not have dreamed of crowding three women into her box, so the party consisted of herself and Christine, Riatt, Roland Almar—a pale, eager, little man, trying to placate the world with smiles, and once again Linburne, whose handsome dark head, and curved mouth, half cynical, half sensuous, began ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... principle and purpose they enjoyed the abundant sympathy of the Pierce Administration; but as the presidential election of 1856 was at hand, the success of the Democratic party could not at the moment be endangered by so open and defiant an act of partisanship. It was still essential to placate the wounded anti-slavery sensibilities of the Northern States, and to this end John W. Geary, of Pennsylvania, was nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. He was a man of character and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... creed, and I, approving, faintly smiled. That stirred them to talk again, and they told me that the expeditions had been settled on, and that they would have to go, too. Orders had come from home that they must not fall out with Waldersee. It was highly important to placate the Germans because of South Africa. But the Americans would not go, neither would the Russians, nor yet the Japanese. It was to be a new arrangement. They went on talking in this wise for a long time, and I heard these scraps of conversation vaguely as in a dream. Cynically I thought that, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... no answer. The attitude of hostility and defiance had gone. She looked at him silently, pleadingly, like some helpless dumb animal trying to placate its master's wrath. Brockton glanced at his watch, walked over to the window and then came back to where she stood. Shaking his fist at ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... the end gradually and unwillingly sacrificed, owing to our desire to placate the United States. If we had made a clean sweep of it, once and for all, after the Lusitania incident, or, at any rate, after the sinking of the Arabic, as we actually did after the torpedoing of the Sussex, considerable advantages would have been ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... time to put questions to so distant an authority. She had Wong to placate—Wong with his wash-day face on, grim, ill-tempered, hurried, defying the world to put even the smallest additional burden on his shoulders on Monday. And Miles ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... "could not be established." Rutledge opposed the new bill as defective and impracticable: the former act, he said, was enough; the States had stopped the trade, and in addition the United States had sought to placate philanthropists by stopping the use of our ships in the trade. "This was going very far indeed." New England first began the trade, and why not let them enjoy its profits now as well as the English? The trade ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to accomplish the desired end by an expedition from Fort Pitt. Pontiac, however, was known to be still plotting vengeance at that time, and it seemed advisable to break the way for the proposed expedition by a special mission to placate the Indians. For this delicate task Sir William Johnson selected a trader of long experience and of good standing among the western tribes, George Croghan. Notwithstanding many mishaps, the plan was carried out. With two boats and a considerable party of ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... that they should pay the king L20,000 (supposed to be the value of a third of the total crop of Virginia tobacco) and import at least forty thousand pounds weight of Spanish tobacco. Though this last was a condition demanded by the king doubtless to placate the Spanish court, with whom he was negotiating for the marriage of his son Charles to the infanta, the contract on the whole was displeasing to Count Gondomar, the Spanish minister. He fomented dissensions in ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... account which impresses people as being true. The letter was, in fact, the first direct evidence the Government got about what Conroy and McNeice and Bob were doing. I dare say there were suspicions abroad before. The offer of a peerage to Conroy showed that there was good reason to placate him. But it was Godfrey's absurd letter which first suggested to the minds of the Cabinet that Conroy was using his yacht, the Finola, for importing arms into Ulster. Even then I do not think that anybody in authority suspected how thoroughly ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... becomes the tutelary deity or protector of his tribe, or locality over which he ruled. Other chieftains are added to him in course of time, and soon we have a veritable pantheon of gods, good and evil, whom it is necessary to placate by certain offices and functions, very much as it is necessary to covet the favour of powerful men on earth. Whose duty shall it be to perform such rites? Naturally, it falls to the head of the family and the head of the State. They are the born officers of religious functions, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... plot and plan and starve. You spend your life hoping to live to-morrow, while the Tausigs are living high to-day. The thing to do is to be humble if you can't be arrogant. If they've got you in the door, don't curse, but placate them. Think of Gaffney herding sheep out in Nevada; of Iringer ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... influence in Vienna to that effect. It was also due mainly to Magyar influence that all attempts of the Czechs to weaken German influence in Austria were frustrated. Francis Joseph always promised to be crowned King of Bohemia when he wished to placate the Czechs in times of stress for Austria: in 1861, 1865, 1870 and 1871. But he never carried out his promises. In this he was guided not only by considerations of dynastic interest, but also by the advice of ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... control every pictured expression of nature and to which every eye and hand must submit if even a semblance of expression is to be sought for. One of them is truth. In this all schools concur, each one demanding the truth, or at least enough of it to placate their consciences when they add to it a sufficient number of lies of their own manufacture to make the subject interesting to their special line of constituents. Among these I do not class the lunatics who are to-day wandering loose outside of charitable asylums especially designed ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... of a thousand men was made from three Massachusetts regiments, to which, in order to placate General Putnam, two hundred Connecticut soldiers were added under his friend, Captain Knowlton. This small body of militia, with a few field pieces as artillery, was to sally forth to rouse the British lion in his lair. The detachment was placed under Colonel ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... unintentionally overlooking Hamilton Fish, declared that E. Rockwood Hoar and Jacob D. Cox were "the only really strong men in the Cabinet."[1349] After the latter's forced resignation and the former's sudden exit to make room for a Southern Republican in order to placate carpet-bag senators for the removal of Sumner, the great critics of the Administration again cut loose. "How long," asked Bowles, "does the President suppose the people will patiently endure this dealing with high office as if it were a presidential perquisite, to be given away upon his ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Wemyss Reid; and once a week I would set myself, assailing his good nature, to cajole him into printing some piece of youthful extravagance which he well knew—and I knew—and he knew that I knew—would infuriate a hundred staid readers of The Speaker and oblige him to placate in private a dozen puzzled and indignant correspondents. For those were days before the beards had stiffened on the chins of some of us who assembled to reform politics, art, literature, and the world in general from a somewhat frowsy upstairs ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... desperately lucky chances. Not having attained as yet to a conception of the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of communication with the supernatural, sacrifice ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... make a good guess. The conscientious medical practitioner has to postpone actual treatment until the symptoms are well defined. Meanwhile he applies expectant treatment as it is called in medical parlance, that is, he gives a purgative or a placebo, something or other to placate, or to make the patient and his friends believe ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... the use?" she pleaded. "You are acting like a child. You love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love him! Richard is such a dear boy!" She said this fawningly, with evident intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with flattery and fresh promises. "Now be a darling child and say that we'll have the wedding next week without any ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... are soiled from falling, his face is bruised, his eyes are dull. Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him. Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate pitiless, ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... again he would discuss business worries with her, which established a community of interest between them. His friendship gave Mavis confidence in her endeavours to placate the female Devitts. This latter was uphill work: Mrs Devitt and her sister entrenched themselves in a civil reserve which resisted Mavis's most strenuous assaults. With Victoria, Mavis believed, at first, that she ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... does beat walkin'," commented Washington White, who, after his first fright, appeared to take it all as a matter of course. "But I hopes dat dey's got suffin' t' placate mah inner conscientiousness wid, 'case ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... pleaded. "People are different—different as day and night. You belong to your mother's kind, and she was good and pure." Every trace of the man's nerve was gone. But one instinct was active—to placate this relentless being, his captor. He fairly grovelled. "I swear she was ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Bruce and Bannockburn it had been their clan privilege to hold the post of honour on the right. The blundering Irishman assigned this position to the Athole men in forming the line of battle, and stubbornly refused to reform his line. The Duke of Perth, who commanded on the left wing, endeavoured to placate the clan by vowing that they would that day make a right of the left and promising to change his name to Macdonald after the victory. Riding to the Duke with a message from the Prince I chanced on a man lying face down ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... to Christ, to San Jose and to the Virgin. Imperiously turning to her acolyte, she seized the censer filled with copal, and, having lighted it, incensed the figures. Turning to the presidente, she asked whether he were going to placate the saint for invasion by giving aguardiente and candles, both of which appeared, as if by magic, when she was given money. Pouring aguardiente from the bottle into a glass, she poured into the four basins in the ground before ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... parents are entitled to the high esteem and reciprocation of their offspring. It demands of each one of us all that we are capable of producing, exacting the highest order of service as well. The paying of taxes does not placate the demands which society makes upon you. It demands yourself—body, mind, and soul—not in a passive sense, but in active relationship to your environment. And every man is morally bound to respect the claims thus ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... I had hoped at the Congress at Amritsar—I am speaking God's truth before you—when I pleaded on bended knees before some of you for co-operation with the Government. I had full hope that the British ministers who are wise, as a rule, would placate the Mussalman sentiment that they would do full justice in the matter of the Punjab atrocities; and therefore, I said:—let us return good-will to the hand of fellowship that has been extended to us, which I then believed ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... from this source remained indefinite. In the spring the students who had paid their dues were not given back the caution money they had deposited because "no funds were available." There is a record of one student, more persistent than the others, who was difficult to placate. He was finally promised that his "caution money would be refunded when possible," and he was assured that "funds would soon be available because the Statutes would soon ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... that through her an evil man might be reclaimed. His allusion to what he called her blindness terrified her. Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter, fatal mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man; she knew the die was cast, and that if Lassiter did not soften to a woman's grace and beauty and wiles, then it would be because ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... desk of his schoolboy days which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cities in the face of poverty and starvation; the dread of savage and civilized races alike of the incomprehensible factor in the universe which wreaks destruction, that original and ultimate evil which all the world's religions recognize, interpret, and offer to placate—the force that is hostile to man ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... against him; he was so much the successful executive that she did not want him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called "parlor socialists" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly new) had a power which made her wish to placate his company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he demanded, "Would you like to associate with nothing but a lot of turkey-necked, horn-spectacled nuts that have adenoids and need a hair-cut, and that spend all ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... encountered them under commonplace conditions and his over-stimulated brain had supplied the incongruities? However that might be, a sudden, elating thought caused him an intense joy. Nearly all of us have, at some point in our lives—either to excuse our own stupidity or to placate our consciences—promulgated some theory of fatalism. We have set up an intelligent Fate that works by codes and signals. Tansey had done likewise; and now he read, through the night's incidents, the finger-prints of destiny. Each excursion that he had made had led to the one paramount finale—to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... from the editorship of the Washington Union upon the issue of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, to which he was opposed, refusing the appointment of Governor of Oregon, with which the President sought to placate him, though it meant his return to the Senate of the United States in a year or two, when he and Oregon's delegate in Congress, Gen. Joseph Lane—the Lane of the Breckenridge and Lane ticket of 1860—had brought the territory of Oregon in as ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... saying that it wasn't convincing." He thought it time to placate. "It was neat. I've gave you credit. Sure! You looked great. You looked like a world-beater, in there against Fanchette. But that's just what I'm trying to get at. Oh, Dunham and I talked it over before anybody in this burg knew you were ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... located a man called Robinson working upon a farm close by. I ventured to ask him if he had any marks upon him by which he could be recognized. He adopted a threatening attitude, and replied that if I wanted any he could give me some. With the aid of half-a-crown I managed to placate him. Putting my inquiry in another form, I asked if he had any moles. A regrettable misunderstanding, which led to a fruitless journey to another part of the village, was eventually cleared up, and on my return I satisfied ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... to mail a letter, they'd get curious; you couldn't tell but what they might wrastle with him and grab the letter. In a day or two maybe he could get into Mormons Landing, where he wasn't so well known, and mail it there. To placate Garland he promised him a paper; the man at the store would ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... in chivalry. He hadn't shown himself altogether considerate or even kind. But she challenged him—perhaps unconsciously—and once or twice had come near making him feel small.—Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant—such at least was his experience—where a personable youth is concerned. It only needed a trifle of refined cajolery to make everything smooth ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... up his mind to do all he properly could to placate the South. None knew better than he, the history of this Secession movement, as herein described. None knew better than he, the fell purpose and spirit of the Conspirators. Yet still, his kindly heart refused to ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... a great Spartan festival held at the full moon in the month Carneios (August-September). Who the ancient hero Carnos or Carneios was is not very clearly stated by the tradition; but at any rate he was killed, and the feast was meant to placate and perhaps to revive him. Resurrection is apt to be a feature of ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... efforts to placate him she had touched upon his sorest spot. His defeat by the American fishermen had been hard ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... gallery and with the representatives of the Press as an integral part of the conference, they would have accomplished nothing. The probability is that the convention would not have lasted a month if their immediate purpose had been to placate current opinion. It may be doubted whether such a convention, if called to-day, either in your country or mine, could achieve like results, for in this day of unlimited publicity, when men divide not as individuals but in powerful and organized groups, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... went over Migul's head and fell short of our cage. Migul turned, and a rain of arrows thudded harmlessly against its metal body. I heard the Robot's contemptuous laugh. It made no answering attack, but stood motionless. And suddenly, thinking it a god whom now they must placate, the savages ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... days he would work terrifically, then, his weight besetting, he would placate himself with long tissue-feeding sports. I told him that he had everything to build upon; that true strength really begins where physical strength ends; that all that he had in equipment must be set in order and integrated with ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... recognized him sooner—the contractor who had questioned us near the railway encampment along the way, and had offered us directions; but his manner was as different now from then as a bully's in and out of school. Then he had sought to placate, and had almost cringed to Monty. Everything about him now proclaimed the ungloved ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... obtaining the endorsement of a great Democratic meeting which was held in New York. It looked, therefore, as if the party of political evasion had an anchor to windward, and that, in the event of their losing in Kansas, they intended to placate their Southern wing ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... was even now about to migrate, her pinions fluttered and her gaze was toward Fairyland. Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those pagan gods whose spite and vengeance he had most reason to fear. It seems that it was too late or a prayer too small to placate them, for there and then the stroke of midwinter came and the eggs hatched out in the roar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird was gone with her difficult eye and it was a bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I haven't the heart to tell ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... came in. For some moments I was busy protesting my health. But it was useless; it wasn't until I had partaken of a few of the old nostrums that I could placate her. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... outside power, something uncorrelated, is to invite fear, apprehension, uncertainty and terror. This undissolved residuum is the nest-egg of superstition. The man who believes that God is the Whole, and that every man is a necessary part of the Whole, has no need to placate or please an intangible Something. All he has to do is to be true to his own nature, to live his own life, to understand himself. This takes us back to the Socratic maxim, "Know Thyself." No man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... warned Berlin, would aggravate the situation beyond his control. That Germany recognized the danger was shown by a further declaration from her Imperial Chancellor on August 26, 1915, wherein he endeavored to placate American feeling by declaring that the sinking of the Arabic, if caused by a German submarine, was not a "deliberately unfriendly act," but, if the accepted version of the disaster proved to be true, was "the arbitrary deed of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Engines were more essential than anything else, and to obtain them in sufficient number the Port Elizabeth lines had to be swept almost bare, although the supply of the troops round Naauwpoort junction and Colesberg largely depended on that railway. It may, therefore, be imagined how hard it was to placate the zealous civil officials, who, without understanding why it was done, found themselves deprived of the very instruments needed for their work, and had as best they could to make bricks without straw. All the organisation of this fell upon Colonel ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... Declaration. It was too forceful for him. He would tone it down, that it might soothe the king, placate the Duke of Monmouth, condone the Indulged ministers, and restore Weir to the ranks. He presented a new Declaration as a substitute for the one already in force. For two weeks, even till the enemy was lining up ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... powerful Viceroy and the auditors, and rendered himself inaccessible to any possible overtures from the more reasonable and moderate men of the opposition, whom it should have been his first duty to placate by ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... words of the Duc d'Aumale, as a 'pur sang,' a straightforward, dashing young French prince demanding the right of performing his military duty to the State, had him condemned, tardily resolved to pardon him, and wound up finally by sending him to Clairvaux to placate the criminal ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... pretense. From this I infer that sin is natural, and remorse partially so. In Burns' moral poems the author tries to win back the favor of respectable people, which he had forfeited. In them there is a violence of direction; and all violence of direction—all endeavors to please and placate certain people—is fatal to an artist. You must work to please ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... darkness is peopled with hosts of spirits. On the desolate rocks, in the untrodden jungle, on the dark mountain tops, in gloomy caves, by mad torrents, in deep pools, dwell invisible powers whose enmity he must avoid or whose good will he must court, or whose anger he must placate. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the protest, as we well knew, was merely his way of saying that the Indians were no longer dependent on what the government offered but could now hunt their own meat. Our commanding officer endeavored to placate the old chief, who went back for a conference with his men. Then he re-appeared, threw down his rations, the others doing the same, and in a few minutes the entire encampment of ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... good). Following this precept let you act kindly towards the miller and that charity of yours will move him to charity towards you and ye shall yet be steadfast friends." Things went on thus for three days—the monk doing all he could to placate the miller. Nevertheless the miller did not cease his persecution, nor the brother his hate of the miller. On the third day Mochuda directed the brother to confess to him again. The brother said: —"This is my confession, Father, I do not yet ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... feeling. They argued, at first, that no Congressional legislation was necessary, and that while the Government should retain the fee of these lands, the miners should have the entire control of them under regulations prescribed by themselves. This, it was believed, would placate the miners and settle the question; but the introduction of the measure referred to, and the agitation of the question, had made some form of legislation inevitable, and the question now was to determine what that legislation should be. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... up from her chair and went to him. Her desire to placate her brother supported her determination to know his precise attitude toward her husband. She placed her hand on his arm and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... anything in the people. God is not asked to forgive because of their repentance or their faith. True, these are the conditions on which His pardon is received by us, but they are not the reasons why it is given by Him. Nor does Moses appeal to any sacrifices that had been offered and were conceived to placate God. But he goes deeper than all such pleas, and lays hold, with sublime confidence, on God's own nature as his all-powerful plea. 'The greatness of Thy mercy' is the ground of the divine forgiveness, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... across the table as she addressed her father, offering him not the ingratiating and seductive smile which he was accustomed to see women—his wife among the rest—employ when they wished to placate him. Kate's was the bright smile of a comradely fellow creature who asked him to play a straight game. It made him take fresh stock of his girl. He noted her high oval brow around which the dark hair clustered engagingly; her flexible, rather ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... all was, that the king was in an unmistakably angry mood. He not only talked fast but he talked loud, sure evidence of his excited feelings. It sounded as if Ziffak was striving to placate him, but his royal brother grew more ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... in every quarter of the city, there must he public sacrifices of cattle, sheep and swine, there must be solemn and gorgeous processions; every sort of ceremonial traditionally supposed to mitigate the wrath of the gods, to placate them, to win their favor, must be carried out with every detail of care, with ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... are your cattle. I don't care. We're using them to make motion pictures. Get outa the way so we can go on with our work." Had he not spoiled several feet of film because of their coming he might have been more inclined to placate them. As it was, he did not welcome their interference, he did not like their looks, and their tones were to his temper as tow would be to a fire. Their half Mexican, half American dress irritated him; the interruption exasperated ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... wickedness of the suspension of habeas corpus; was halted by a point of parliamentary law; and when the Senate sustained an appeal from his decision, left the chamber in a pique. Hunter, now a Senator, became an envoy to placate him and succeeded in bringing him back. Thereupon Stephens poured out his soul in a furious attack upon the Administration. He ended by submitting resolutions which were just what he might have submitted four years earlier ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... fulfilled the omen which portended that the wolves would be provided with a meal, and hence averted the necessity of one of the band being really devoured. In somewhat analogous fashion the Gonds and Baigas placate or drive away a tiger who has killed a man in order to prevent him from obtaining further victims. Some similar idea apparently underlay the omen of the dog running away with food. Perhaps the portent of hearing the kite scream on a tree also meant that he looked on them with ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... side were von Bissing and his German governing staff in Belgium, together with most of the men of the military General Staff at Great Headquarters. Von Bissing tried, in his heavy, stupid way, to placate the Belgians; that was part of his policy. So he would offer them food—always for work—with one hand, while he gave them a slap with the other. He wanted Belgium to be tranquil. He did not want to have openly to machine-gun ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... court or the Spanish authorities at New Orleans either relaxed their vigilant severity against the river smugglers, or for the time being lowered the duties; whether this was done to encourage the Westerners in their hostilities to the East, or to placate them when their exasperation reached a pitch that threatened actual invasion. Wilkinson, in his protests, insisted that to show favors to the Westerners was merely to make them contented with the Union; and that the only way to force them to break the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... by special train yesterday. This was the man who offered his service as Mediator and was accepted by both Uitlander and Boer. To placate the Boer he refrained from visiting Dr. Jameson and his men imprisoned at Pretoria, nor did he permit Sir Jacobus de Wet to visit them. He never acquainted himself with the terms of Dr. Jameson's surrender. He commanded Johannesburg ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... thinks that there was a thunderstorm, but he wants to placate Dering. 'I suppose I just thought there was one. Perhaps it was some thunderstorm of long ago that I heard. They do come ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... and his manhood. He would not release what he loved. He would not allow his class to separate him from his choice. But the women! Ah, he could not fight them! So I have hated women, and made war on them all my life. My father could not placate his Emperor. So, in short, that scientific experiment ended ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... accounting for defeat which saved the honour of the fugitives, and satisfied the denizens of Cabul, as well as the wild clans en route thither, that a retreat was wisdom. The government of Cabul became uneasy for the consequences, and Dost Mohammed Khan took measures to placate the British government, whose policy was not to pursue the war into Affghanistan. The government of Calcutta annexed the Punjaub to British India, and thus terminated the Sikh war. The governor-general issued, on the 29th ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was still in mourning, a filmy and diaphanous kind of mourning, beautiful enough to placate the angel Azrael himself. A filmy and diaphanous creature was Mrs. Patton also—one could never have dreamed of so exquisite a black butterfly. She was very sweet and sympathetic, and told Thyrsis how much she had liked his book—so that Thyrsis concluded she was not ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... point Abe interrupted his partner long enough to relate his visit to Moe Griesman, but the information entirely failed to placate Morris. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... aside.) And then you plan this masquerade. You plan to make me care for you so greatly that even when I know you to be Count Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to leave them—in your huckster's phrase—no longer unbought. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me as a stepping-stone to safety. But was it ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... O'Shea v. O'Shea and Parnell. On November 24th, Gladstone, in a letter to John Morley, stated that Parnell's retention of the Irish leadership would be fatal to his own continued advocacy of the Irish cause. In December, the majority of the Irish Party threw over Parnell in order to placate the "Nonconformist conscience," and retain the co-operation of the Liberal Party under Gladstone's leadership. During the months following, Parnell and his adherents suffered a series of defeats at by-elections in Ireland. In June 1891, ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... again the heavy whip fell on the yelling pack. They were pulling for all they were worth, their heads down, their shoulders squared. Their breath came pantingly, their tongues gleamed redly, their white teeth shone. They were fighting, fighting for life, fighting to placate a cruel master in a world where all was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... with a "Number Two" Company, so to placate his pride and to give distinction to the enterprise, Daniel put Georgia Cayvan, leading lady of the Madison Square Theater, at the head of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... suitors all bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defended themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But if they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another. The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... of laughter at this impassioned speech, evidently annoying Mrs. Valentine, who expected sympathy. I tried to placate her with reference to the poet of the name which had none ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ingenuity inveigling men of letters to his house on another evening every week, to make them his aides, or at least keep them from openly attacking him, so soon as his candidacy—an entirely clerical affair—should be announced. It was probably to attract and placate his adversaries that he had contrived these baroque gatherings to which, out of curiosity as a matter of fact, the most utterly different kinds ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... to catch the speaker's expression in the darkness. "I should hardly venture to give an opinion," he said, after a pause. "Miss Dows' relations with her neighbors are so very peculiar. And from what you tell me of her cousin it would seem that her desire to placate them is not always to ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... abstained from giving that consecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of making the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. He was driven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the desire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the Platonic soul, which had ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... wrote to Archbishop King in Dublin, and there is no reason to doubt it. Even Oldmixon grudgingly reports that Swift had promised "the Whigs that they shall come in if they will." However violent his partisanship at times, Swift could and did respect merit; and Harley was always ready to placate individual members of the Opposition. There is therefore no need to take seriously, as Oldmixon and the authors of The British Academy pretend to do, the list of potential members of the Academy printed first in the Amsterdam Gazette and quoted in The British Academy. It will be seen at ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... if he left Utah, his recession might tend to placate the government and soften the severity of the prosecutions of the Mormons; and accordingly, on the night of February 12, 1886, he boarded a west-bound Central Pacific train at Willard. The Federal officers in some way learned of it; he was arrested, on ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... permitted his ire to find expression in threats, but it cannot be denied that there was provocation for the resentment which he exhibited. The President has been blamed for not having sought more constantly to placate the opponents of the Covenant and to meet them on a common ground of compromise, especially during his visit to the United States in February, 1919. From the point of view of policy there is justice in blaming him, but, when one ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... ranger! The imaginary savage with ready knife, the infuriated giant with blazing eyes, gave place to the actuality of this gentle, stricken; melancholy little sheepherder, who had no insane desire to avenge himself on any one, much less on Hanscom. Helen's resolution to meet and placate the dreaded Basque gave place to pity and a ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... happened to them. It began in the time of Egbert and Canute, and earlier, in the days of the Druids, when they used peacefully to allow themselves to be burned by the score, enclosed in wicker idols, as natural offerings to placate the gods. The modern acceptance of things is only a somewhat attenuated remnant of the ancient idea. And this is what I have to deal with and understand. When I begin to do the things I am going to do, with the aid of your practical advice, if I have your approval, the people will ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hair and eyes, who, with padding feet, would track her round and round a room from which there was no escape. Hamlet, being one of the wisest of dogs, very quickly discovered that Mary hated him. He was not a sentimental dog, and he did not devote his time to inventing ways in which he might placate his enemy, he simply avoided her. But he could not hinder a certain cynical and ironic pleasure that he had of, so to speak, flaunting his master in her face. He clung to Jeremy more resolutely than ever, would ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... Chief Vngngn's personality taboo. And, among what was left of these that had passed, he encountered what was left of one who had not yet passed. Truly had the bush-folk named themselves into the name of the Red One, seeing in him their own image which they strove to placate and ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... be caused by evil spirits, or it may be due to a desire on the part of the kalaloa to leave its present abode. In either case the man becomes ill and it behooves him to take immediate steps to placate the evil spirits or to convince his kalaloa to remain with him. This last can best be accomplished by bathing the sick person with water which has been heated in a good agong. A fine dish would do equally well, ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... being pointed out by the people as the father of the wicked Esau.[74] And, again, if his power of vision had been unimpaired, he would not have blessed Jacob. As it was, God treated him as a physician treats a sick man who is forbidden to drink wine, for which, however, he has a strong desire. To placate him, the physician orders that warm water be given him in the dark, and he be told ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... lacking. What is needed is such a clear seeing of conditions, and such an approach, as manifested themselves in the Constitutional Convention of the United States, for in spite of the many compromises that were in the end necessary to placate a public opinion not untouched by prejudice, superstition and selfishness, the great document—and even more the records of the debates—still brilliantly set forth both the clear-seeing and the lofty attitude ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... himself. At all costs he must placate this worm. Mr Blatherwick was an austere man. He would not overlook ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... so much deliberation, were unreasonable, and enacted that to entitle a company to demand them, it should not be sufficient that the charge was within any limit fixed by an Act of Parliament." Thus Parliament, yielding to popular clamour, stultified itself, and in feverish haste to placate an angry and noisy public tied the hands of the railway companies, doing, I believe, more harm than good. This legislation naturally made the companies very cautious in reducing a rate because of the difficulties to be encountered should circumstances require them to raise it again, and railway ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... heal the breach; but, being something of an ass, genus priceless, he finds it almost beyond his powers to placate "the man-eating fish" whom Providence has ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Queen, not long after, brought the Elector of Hanover to England, to succeed her as George I. It was not likely that King George would look with favor on his former Capellmeister, who had so long deserted his post. But an opportunity soon came to placate his Majesty. A royal entertainment, with decorated barges on the Thames was arranged. An orchestra was to furnish the music, and the Lord Chamberlain commissioned Handel to compose music for the fete. He wrote a series of pieces, since known as "Water Music." The king was greatly delighted ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... peoples before this, and a Japanese colony had been driven out of Ningpo by force and not without bloodshed a few years previously. Kia-tsing (d. 1567) was not equal to such emergencies, and his son Lung-king (1567-1573)sought to placate the Tatar Yen-ta by making him a prince of the empire and giving him commercial privileges, which were supplemented by the succeeding emperor Wan-li (1573-1620) by the grant of land in Shen-si. During the reign of this sovereign, in the year 1592, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... red face peering cautiously around her ample waist line made me wish to laugh, but an earnest desire to placate the irate female, who was evidently the real head of this household, enabled me to conquer the ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... that Lucien thought it time to come forward to support Joseph, but that he also wished to placate the rising wrath of the Consul. So he spoke ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... much, Marm—not so much," admitted her husband evidently anxious to placate her, for Marm Parraday was her old ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... perfectly natural for the prehistoric potters to have desired to placate the presiding divinity, not so much perhaps out of gratitude for the clay as to avert his displeasure and fend off bad luck in baking pottery. It is well known that the best pottery of the Incas was extremely fine in texture. Students of ceramics are well ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... of the Chinese, fully sanctioned it. The leaders in the massacre have not been brought to justice. The Government has readily given life for life—a very easy matter in China—but it has so highly rewarded the families of the victims thus sacrificed to placate the barbarians, and put so much honor on the corpses of these martyrs to foreign demands, that it has encouraged similar atrocities whenever a suitable time shall arrive for their perpetration. The Imperial ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... do no wrong, Father, even if you tried; and now good-night. Sleep soundly and fear nothing. On the rare occasions when the good Archbishop was angry with me, I have always managed to placate him, and I shall not ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... meeting with Evelyn? Does he wish to placate me before I am joined to that pathetic shade? He shall not be disappointed. I forgive you, John Poindexter! I forgive you my daughter's shame, my blighted life. I am dying; but I leave one behind who will not ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... and heretical notions of Berlioz made him no favorite with the dons of the Conservatoire, and by the irritable and autocratic Cherubini he was positively hated. The young man took no pains to placate this resentment, but on the other hand elaborated methods of making himself doubly offensive. His power of stinging repartee stood him in good stead, and he never put a button on his foil. Had ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... excelled. These aroused all to penitence, and there was frequent petition for the holy sacraments. The air was filled with sighing, and the people mortified themselves with fastings and severe penances, in order to placate the divine wrath, so manifest in fearful acts of vengeance. The priests were continually employed in exorcisms against the wicked spirits. Cavite resembled an afflicted Nineveh. God willed to let the punishment end with threats. The spirits left their obsessions ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... placate his nervous questioner: "I'm just leavin' 'em here, Belle, while I go down 'n' get a load o' feed," he explained ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... Agnani, but were subsequently expelled with great loss of life. The Pope was reinstated, but died shortly afterward from brain fever; he was succeeded by Benedict XI, whom the King of France sought to placate, but unsuccessfully. Within nine months Benedict died, presumably from poison, and Philip, by his intrigues, was enabled to secure the election to the pontificate of Bertrand de Goth, who became pope as Clement V, and was pledged to the service ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... happen, and was on the verge of hysterics. Every one was moved and strove to coax her into quietness, while an officer even accompanied her off the boat with her husband. On the quay efforts were repeated to placate her and to induce her to allow her husband to proceed. But all in vain. At last, drawing the lady forcibly away, though with no greater force than was necessary, the officer himself ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... said anything particularly dreadful, the old lady craned her neck to see how the policeman was taking it. When Ernestine fell to drubbing the Government, the old lady, in her agitation greatly daring, squeezed up a little nearer as if half of a mind to try to placate that august image of the Power that was being flouted. But it ended only in trembling and furtive watching, till Ernestine's reckless scorn at the idea of chivalry moved the ancient dame faintly to admonish ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... must away to placate Kali, the Goddess of Destruction. There is not long now to wait for the great sacrifice for which she has waited all these weary years; and then, and only then, shall the plague, and the pestilence, and the famine be ended, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... anxiety and physical hardship, when, in bitter weather, he had often gone hungry and insufficiently clothed, and of his present arduous duties, concluded there was a fine balance in his affairs which doubtless would placate the gods. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Legation, a score of scallywags rushed into the courtyard, shouting "Long live the King! Down with France and England!" fired a few revolver shots in the air, and bolted. Immediately M. Zaimis hastened to the Legation and expressed his regrets. But that did not suffice to placate the outraged honour of the French Republic. Despite the objections of his colleagues, M. Guillemin had a detachment of bluejackets landed to guard the Legation; and next day a Note was presented to the Greek Premier demanding that the perpetrators of this grave breach of International ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... sense and common decency alike dictate the futility of appeasement, we shall never try to placate an aggressor by the false and wicked bargain of trading honor for security. Americans, indeed all free men, remember that in the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... on every one in the Administration. The prospect of Arthur's succession called attention to the fact that the Vice-President is rarely nominated for fitness, but is chosen at the end of a hot convention, in carelessness, or to placate a losing side. It led soon to the passage of an adequate Presidential Succession Act. The death of Garfield threw the control to the Republican faction that disliked ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson |
