"Placid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he came there every day to sit in the shade of the overhanging boulder, where there was a little trickle of cool air down the slope and a little trickle of cool water from a crevice beneath the rock, to despise that placid, unimpressionable ocean and all its works and to wish that it would dry up forthwith, so that he might walk back to the blessed United States of America. In good plain American, the young man was ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a high hill that was such a thicket of woods it hid all indications of the City of the Dead. The placid river, in which there was only a gentle tide up here, lapped the shores with a little murmur as it came up from the bay. The green, irregular shore opposite showed here and there a house. The wood-robins were beginning their vespers already. Hanny thought them ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a lot of cattle may take to go to a market, they should never be overdriven. There is great difference of management in this respect among drovers. Some like to proceed upon the road quietly, slowly, but surely, and to reach the market in a placid, cool state. Others, again, drive smartly along for some distance, and then rest to cool awhile, when the beasts will probably get chilled and have a staring coat when they reach their destination; while others like to enter ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... a fair placid face which she felt sure she should love, for the dark blue eyes reminded her of her father's, though the fair hair and small mouth were strangely unlike his. But there was something familiar in the tone of her voice, and when she called a cab, gave instructions about ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... limits to our conversation, and draws them narrowly down to what can be understood by anybody, and can instruct, interest and inspire nobody, is parlor-mindedness. It does harm enough both in its low ideals of beauty and art, manners and morals, to its placid inmates and its complaisant visitors; it does more harm in its fallacious shallows as a promoter of marriage; it does most in its failure to promote the one thing it ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... out that they were going upon a trading and shooting expedition in the north of the Transvaal. Benita looked back at the pretty little stead and the wooded kloof behind it over which she had nearly fallen, and the placid lake in front of it where the nesting wildfowl wheeled, and sighed. For to her, now that she was leaving it, the place seemed like home, and it came into her mind that she would never see it ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... up a comfortable place in town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in those of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a placid day on the sea and Kippy and I were returning from a ten-mile swim to a neighboring island whither I had been taken to be shown off to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... face was haggard, and showed a mental struggle; but hers placid and quietly beaming, for the very reason that she had made a great sacrifice. She ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards this peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible grounds. After reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful intervals of repose, the generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at the discovery that all the great disasters which had tried his patience and equanimity in early life, had been caused by his having allowed himself to be deluded into imitating ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... combination,—on temper, foresight, solidity, daring,—on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength of character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described Boethius not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire's anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory that he was of sycophantic nature. "Why," ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... began to darken her sunny fields, she had, in early spring, withdrawn again, leaving her maiden aunt to attend to the affairs of the homestead, or to find more luxurious residence in watering-places or cities, as she chose. For Vivia liked the placid life and freedom of the cottage, and here, too, she had oftenest met those dear friends to whom one winter her father, long since dead, had taken her, and half of all that was pleasant in her life had inwoven itself with the simple surroundings of the place. Here, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... implacable business spirit exhibits itself at every turn. In place of the placid millers and quaint refugees of the last century at their doors, we see the shops, the storehouses of manufacturers' supplies, the hotel and the theatre; and, pervading all, the vast throng of artisans, providing such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to roam o'er hill and dale, In calm or storm or windy gale, I love the valley and the hill, The brooklet and the running rill, I love the broad and placid lake——" ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... [151] Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; — [161] Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... a bit. She too, on her part, observed her friend. Fair and handsome she was; very handsome; with the placid luxuriance of nature which has never known shocks or adverse weather. Dolly felt the contrast which Christina had also felt, but Dolly went deeper into it. She and her friend had drifted apart, not in ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... my usual place before the letter, but it was now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... nice!" said Miss Elizabeth; and Madam Pennington walked forward into the sunshine, holding her hand out to Mrs. Holabird, and smiling all the way from her smooth old forehead down to the "seventh beauty" of her dimple-cleft and placid chin. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... small steam-launch or by rowing boat. As there seemed to be some uncertainty about the departure of the launch, and as I had a good deal of luggage, I preferred the latter way. Eight powerful men rowed with all their might at the prospect of a good backshish; and we sped along at a good pace on the placid waters of the lagoon, in big stretches of open water, now skirting small islands, occasionally through narrow canals, the banks of which were covered with high reeds and heavy, tropical, confused, untidy vegetation. The air was still and stifling—absolutely unmoved, screened as it ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... was but a short parting. Into her placid faith had never fallen fear nor doubt. He was waiting for her. In God's good time they would meet again. What need of sorrow! Without him the days passed slowly: the house must ever be a little dull when the good man's away. But that was all. So my mother would speak of him always—of his dear, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... country lass of humble degree, she had sense and intelligence, and personal charms sufficient not only to win and fix the attentions of the poet, but to sanction the praise which he showered on her in song. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, he thus describes her: "The most placid good nature and sweetness of disposition, a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... have forgot." It occurred to him that even the simple and placid Maggie had her personal prejudices, and that one of them might be against this child. For some reason she did not like the child. She positively could not have forgotten the child's visit with Janet. She had merely not troubled to tell him: a touch of that malice which, though it be as rare as radium, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... after dinner, for I confess he struck me as cruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. "The usual twaddle"—my acute little study! That one's admiration should have had a reserve or two could gall him to that point! I had thought him placid, and he was placid enough; such a surface was the hard polished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled, and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... He went out, placid and smiling, and Margaret sobbed plentifully—until it became necessary to go to her room and remove the traces of her grief. So it may be assumed that her tears were not all occasioned by grief for the contemplated loss of ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... leaving home, and Mrs. Murdoch and Mary departed without anxiety; but they had hardly entered the Edwards's house before they found that many other people were very much less placid. ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... present, she would speak of him as if buried in the ocean, and would sit, with clasped hands, looking upon the ground, the picture of despair. As the agitation of her feelings subsided, and her frame recovered from the shock which it had received, she became more placid and coherent. Eugene kept almost continually near her. He formed the real object round which her scattered ideas once more gathered, and which linked them once more with the realities of life. But her ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... after his arrival the Sheikh Burrachee left, but some weeks afterwards he returned with an escort and an easy-paced hygeen to take Harry away with him. He took the announcement of the journey with the placid indifference which now characterised him, only at the moment of starting he showed reluctance to part from his black nurse, Fatima. But whether the sheikh bought her, or only borrowed her, it was arranged that she should go too, and Harry was perfectly reconciled. The hygeen's motions were wonderfully ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... I have others do to me? Pride, interest, adverse contact, all with specious argument may strive to dissipate the comparison, but the pulsations of a common humanity, keeping time with the verities of God never ceased to trouble, and thus the moral pebble thrown on the bosom of the hitherto placid sea of public opinion, like its physical prototype, creating undulations which go on and on to beat against the rock and make sandy shores, so this our earnest but feeble protest contributed its humble share in the rebuilding ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... ready approbation of his brother, the marquis. And it was arranged that both at Beaufort and at Deerhurst the whole of the baronet's family group should be assembled, including Mr. Somerset and his gentle lady, whose placid graces moved round his ever sparkling vivacity with a ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... more cheerful when Celia was seated there in a pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos with a placid satisfaction, while the conversation passed on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... little shadow had fallen across their placid entertainment. The spirit had left their memories; they seemed to have grown shapeless, dusty, as the fresh and comely faces of dead Etruscan kings crumble into mould at the touch of ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... heralded sunrise shot over the sky and stained the placid waters beneath to crimson. In this sea of blood the wreck lay, her decks ruddy with the stain of ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... reproach," I said hastily. "A nectarine requires time, even though the sunlight paints it so prettily in all its unripe, flawless symmetry. And I have—I have lived all my life in sober company. My father was old, my mother placid and saddened by the loss of all her children save myself. I had few companions—none of my own age except when we went to Albany, where I learned to bear myself in company. At Johnson Hall, at Varick's, at Butlersbury, I was but a shy lad, warned by my parents to formality, for they ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... at his eyes—how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so young a people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you understand, is what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... immediately within the door for Sylvia and Molly to go in again, and they accordingly betook themselves to the place where the deep grave was waiting, wide and hungry, to receive its dead. There, leaning against the headstones all around, were many standing—looking over the broad and placid sea, and turned to the soft salt air which blew on their hot eyes and rigid faces; for no one spoke of all that number. They were thinking of the violent death of him over whom the solemn words were now being said in the gray old church, scarcely out ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... who are just entering upon life and its responsibilities. Years ago I thoughtlessly took a false step, which at the time seemed trivial and of little import, but which has since assumed colossal proportions that threaten to overshadow much of the innocent happiness of my otherwise placid existence. What wonder, then, that I try to avert this danger from young and inexperienced minds who in their gay thoughtlessness rush into the very jaws of the disaster, and before they are well aware find they are entrapped for life, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... him, he found out. He peeped in between the curtains of the alcove, and saw at once what was out in the square. It was the major's "regiment." To other people the square might have seemed to be a very quiet place, full of trees and May sunshine, with a few babies and nurses and placid pedestrians as its only occupants. But Uncle Arthur perceived at once, from the aspect of the major, that it was a place of wild carnage, of desperate assault, of the clash and shock ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... That placid dame, The Moon's Celestial Highness; There's not a trace Upon her face Of diffidence or shyness: She borrows light That, through the night, Mankind may all acclaim her! And, truth to tell, She lights up well, So I, for ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... seized him by his thin garment, and held on, checking further descent and gazing wildly at his messmate, whose rugged features upturned to the red glow of light appeared to be singularly calm and placid. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... or the rocky dale, And shun the orange bower, the myrtle vale, Whose gay luxuriance suits my soul no more. I love the ocean's broad expanse, when dress'd In limpid clearness, or when tempests blow. When the smooth currents on its placid breast Flow calm, as my past moments us'd to flow; Or when its troubled waves refuse to rest, And seem the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... o'er the place, And softens ragged edges; The rising moon's great placid face Looks gravely o'er ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... years old, Dorothy lived a very uneventful life; for one week was much the same as another in the placid existence of the village. On Sunday mornings, when the church-bells began to ring, you would meet her walking over the moor with a springy step. Her shawl was gay, and her dress was of the most pronounced colour ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... the loss of money, of home and my home comforts, is dreadful; that to be driven again to find a resting place away from the friends that I loved, and from where I had fondly hoped I was to end my days. And when I had lavished time, money, and everything to make my descent to the grave placid and pleasant, is indeed a severe lesson; but after all I firmly believe it is for the best, and though my heart may break I will not repine. I regret, beyond expression, that any man should be a loser ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... always sat so exactly in the same place that her white cap was to be seen through the same lower window-pane. "Most people would have moved their chairs about until they wore holes in the floor," he told himself, and then remembered how many times he had gone to look over at his placid friend, in her favorite afternoon post of observation. He was strongly attached to her, and he reminded himself that she was growing old and that he must try to see her oftener. He valued her companionship, more because he knew ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that some issue was being decided upon. He ought to speak, to break his word to Mina and speak—or he ought to go. From day to day he meant to go and cease to accept the hospitality which his silence seemed to abuse. But he did not go. These internal struggles were new in his placid and estimable life; this affair of Harry Tristram's had a way of putting people in strange ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Arabella that night,—as to which it may be said that she also was false. But according to her conscience there were two ways of telling such a secret. As a matter of course she told her husband everything. That idle placid dinner-loving man was in truth consulted about each detail of the house and family; but the secret was told to him with injunctions that he was to say nothing about it to any one for twenty-four hours. After that the Duchess was of opinion that he should speak to Lord ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the White City," some one yelled, and the people rose from their seats and looked at the most favored spot of the earth as long as it could be seen. Houses flew by, stations were passed; the placid lake, flecked with many boats, lapped the shore as with some friendly greeting. The great buildings of Chicago's business center appeared in view, and the end of their journey ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Nevertheless, I advise you, just now, to return to England and wait. I have some knowledge of Captain Salt's movements; and when last your lad was heard of he had parted company with his father and was making for the coast. I have some quickness in reading character; and there is a certain placid obstinacy in that young man which persuades me he will reach Harwich in time. Return, therefore, and wait with what patience you may. Moreover, Captain Barker, I perceive that you are recovering ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The process symbolized itself in the legend of the Fall. Man ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes people wonder why knowledge of any kind—and especially the knowledge of good and evil—should have brought a curse. But the reason is obvious. Into, the placid and harmonious life of the animal and human tribes fulfilling their days in obedience to the slow evolutions and age-long mandates of nature, Self-consciousness broke with its inconvenient and impossible query: "How do these arrangements suit ME? Are they good for me, are they evil for me? I ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... at him with alarm. He was fat and generally placid, but his philosophical good humor was not ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... New York, where she tarried for a few days, seeing no one but Anna, for whom she sent at once. The interview had lasted more than an hour, and Anna's eyes were swollen with passionate weeping when at last it ended, but Lucy's face, though white as snow, was very calm and quiet, wearing a peaceful, placid look, which made it like the face of an angel. Two weeks later and the steamer bore her away across the water, where she hoped to outlive the storm which had beaten so piteously upon her. Thornton Hastings and Anna went with her on board ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... his old straw hat in hand, with that placid expression on his smooth features. A man of medium height, shoulders slightly rounded; rather gaunt in the middle where the suspenders hitched onto ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... a man of calm benignity of face, a placid certainty of his power and place in the world; a rugged man, broad-handed, slow. His pleasure was in the distinction of his wealth, and not in any use that he made of it for his own comfort or the advancement of those under his hand. Even so, he was of a type superior to the ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... across the placid ocean through the tall, clean stems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the flat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt which took away his life, and tried to picture ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wander down to the sands. The tide is low. The long billows of the Bay of Biscay roll smugly in, hypocritical and placid, with nothing to betray the unenviable reputation they sustain in mediis aquis. The broad, smooth beach is not notably different in kind from other beaches; but we instantly see the peculiar charm of its location. The shore sweeps off in a long, lazy crescent, rounding up, a ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... already green, and overarching a yard or more of water. Presently it bent sharply, and we turned with it. Ten yards in front of us the growth of willows ceased abruptly, the low, steep banks shelved downwards to a grassy level, and the stream widened into a clear and placid pool, as blue as the sky above. Crouched upon the grass or standing in the shallow water were some fifteen or twenty deer. We had come upon them without noise; the wind blew from them to us, and the willows hid us from their sight. There was no alarm, and we stood a moment watching them before ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... of course. But Catherine's position is certainly unusual; and the strangest part of it all is—she doesn't seem to feel her situation. She's sitting alone in the library, seemingly placid and happy. What I really wish to consult you about is this: shouldn't the card we're going to send out have a narrow black border? [The DOCTOR is now writing.] Doctor, you don't appear to be interested. You might at least answer ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... distress: Before Decay's effacing fingers, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, And mark'd the mild, angelic air, The rapture of repose that's there; The fix'd, yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... rectory at Great Bradley, Lady Constance Dex arose from a sleepless night to confront her placid brother at the breakfast table. The Reverend Jeremiah Bangley, a stout and easy man, who spent as much of his time in London as in his rectory, was frankly nonplussed by the apparition. He was one of those men, common ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... as though, instead of being thirty-three, you were still very small and very young and ignorant of all the things that really mattered. She was vaguer and greyer, more placid than ever, and ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... he was introduced to the Deputy Magistrate's wife and twin baby boys who were splendid specimens of infantile vigour; and his praise and admiration were the passport to their mother's instant regard. She was a devoted wife and mother, placid and easy-going, and carried the air of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... loves her dearly, that she knows, and she has, in the innocent presumption of her young beauty, not questioned that he would enter the song-tournament for her; and until yesterday she rested in placid contentment upon the intention of crowning this affection which never since her birth has failed her. Her narrow eighteen years have no conception of a devotion so generous and deep it would not dream, however fair the opportunity, of laying upon her youth the burden of his ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... finished her work, and was free to enjoy, as she sank into full repose, sunsets, hoar frosts, spring blossoms, the having me with her, her brother's return—everything was a pleasure. I can hardly call it a time of grief, when she was so placid and happy. All the wishing and scheming was over, and each day that I could look at her in her serenity, was ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the astral body is composed of. Also the etheric double. The ever changing clouds of aura coloring. Placid scenes and furious storms of the Aura. Opalescent effects. The pearly color of the etheric substance. The Aura of mental activity. The Aura of reverie or sleep. The Aura of anger and passion. The Aura of hate. The ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... placid river of an old bachelor as I am, through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger longest among the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... enterprise was diverting Mr. Gwynne's attention from the delinquencies of his debtors, namely: the entrance of the National Machine Company into the remote and placid life of Mapleton and its district. The manager of this company, having spent an afternoon with Mr. Gwynne in his store and having been impressed by his charm and power of persuasive talk, made him a proposition that he should act as agent of ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... pleasant. She had hoped to cut herself off from all the bitterness and sorrow of her past life, but this husband of hers, like an unquiet spirit, came to trouble her and remind her of a time she would willingly have forgotten. She looked calm and quiet enough sitting there with her placid face and smooth brow; but this woman was like a slumbering volcano, and her passions were all the more dangerous from being ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... brain, which an asylum professes to soothe, was steadily undermined by artificial sleeplessness. A man can't sleep in irons till he is used to them and, when Alfred was relieved of these, his sleep was still driven away by biting insects and barking dogs, two opiates provided in many of these placid Retreats, with a view to the permanence rather than the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... prison of a queen, the Royalist refuge—fallen now into such placid dreaminess of age. Into the dark chamber above, desolate, legend-haunted, perchance in some moment of the night there fell through the narrow window-niche a pale moonbeam, touching the floor, the walls of stone; such light in gloom ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... appeared, but the gray sky was parted near the horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap. Even Mynheer von Stoppelnoze, that worthy old Dutchman, was ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... cliffs close together. The river became much narrower and swirled with an oily-looking current around the buttresses of granite that thrust themselves from one side or the other into it. The declivity was not great and the torrent was otherwise placid. After three miles of this ominous docility, just as the dinner hour was near and the threatening black granite had risen to one thousand feet above the water, we heard a deep, sullen roar ahead and from the boats the whole river ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... my suspicions," Niafer replied. "And now she is about to speak I believe she will justify these suspicions, for Madame Gisele is in no placid ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... sportsman's outfit. This boat was kindly loaned by the manufacturer, Mr. Fred W. Rice, formerly of Saranac Lake, N. Y., but now living at Seattle, Wash. His son continues the manufacture of guide-boats at Lake Placid, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... personal pain; it is also the sense of obligation, or that which combines the two, the pain of sin; and again it is love; in short, the moral order. What saves us from the sorceries of Maia is conscience; conscience dissipates the narcotic vapors, the opium-like hallucinations, the placid stupor of contemplative indifference. It drives us into contact with the terrible wheels within wheels of human suffering and human responsibility; it is the bugle-call, the cockcrow, which puts the phantoms to flight; it is the armed archangel who chases man from an artificial ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... population is so desirous to sever. A population with whom peace, humanity, mercy, oaths, contracts, and compacts, pass for nothing—whose promises and engagements are as chaff before the wind—to whom bloodshed, robbery, assassination, and murder, are objects of placid contemplation—whose narrow creed of bigotry supersedes all the obligations, of morality, and all the commands of positive law. With such men what valid compact can be made? The appeal must be to those who think that a deliberate compact is mutually binding on ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and placid; sort of thing you women who live sheltered lives can say. I often wonder if you women realise the strain ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... there was therefore nothing that he could ask her for which she had not an immediate answer ready. Her brow was always unruffled, her black shining hair brushed neatly back and parted down the middle, her large flat face always composed and placid, and her voice never raised above a whisper. The only sign that she ever gave of disturbance was a little clucking noise that she made in her mouth like an aroused hen. Peter's time in the little pink sitting-room was sometimes exceedingly short and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Some wrinkles no doubt were there too; lines deep-marked that spoke of sorrows once known. Those storms had all passed away; the last shadow of a cloud had departed; her evening sun was shining clear and bright towards the setting; and her brow was beautifully placid, not as though it never had been, but as if it never could be ruffled again. Respect no one could help feeling for her; and more than respect one felt would grow with acquaintance. Her dress was very odd, Ellen ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... cannot see to the bottom. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. The higher you climb the further you will see down into the 'sea of glass mingled with fire' that lies placid before God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished; of a building before the scaffolding is pulled down, and it is as hazardous for us to say about any deed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to proceed in the Indian canoes. At his command the warriors lifted their light boats from the water, and bore them on their shoulders over the difficult portage past the rapids, to the smooth stream above. Here, launching them again, the paddles once more broke the placid surface of the stream, and onward they went, still through the primeval forest, which stretched away in an unbroken ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his window and begged the placid sky for information. He looked through the lilacs and the locusts and all the green wilderness where beauty beat and throbbed like a heart in bliss. It was the Sabbath, and he was not sure. But he was sure of a melting tenderness in his heart for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... woe, And hailed the last resort of fruitless love,[14.B.] He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow: And as the stately vessel glided slow[143] Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount, He watched the billows' melancholy flow, And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,[ex] More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... seek to alter her decision, but sent the boat along with rapid strokes, which broke up the placid water into ripples at each ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... alas! and far more terrible meets us, and alarms our thoughtless senses. Laocoon, allotted priest of Neptune, was slaying a great bull at the accustomed altars. And lo! from Tenedos, over the placid depths (I shudder as I recall) two snakes in enormous coils press down the sea and advance together to the shore; their breasts rise through the surge, and their blood-red crests overtop the waves; the rest trails ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... elevated ground, and far away to our left, down in a hollow, flows the broad Elbe; placid indeed from this distance, for not a ripple can we see upon its surface. A few ships are lazily moving on its waters. Stand aside, and make way for this reverend gentleman; he is a prediger, a preacher of the gospel; he is habited in a black gown, black silk stockings and shoes, a small black ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face continued my flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered a rugged climb to the summit of a long ridge. Beyond was a steep declivity to the shore of a placid, inland sea, upon the quiet surface of ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... communicating by sea. The various "staircases" were painful and difficult to climb, they gave no passage to animals, and only light forms of merchandise could be conveyed by them. As soon as the first rude canoe put forth upon the placid waters of the Mediterranean, it must have become evident that the saving in time and labour would be great if the sea were made to supersede the land as the ordinary ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... him who gives the light, And draws the sable curtains of the night, Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind, At morn to wake more heav'nly and refin'd; So shall the labours of the day begin, More pure and guarded from the snares of ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... situated on the western shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than half a mile from the village. The ground had become settled, and the walking was good and dry. Marmaduke, with his daughter, her friend, and young Edwards, continued on the high grassy banks at the outlet of the placid sheet of water, watching the dark object that was moving across the lake, until it entered the shade of the western hills, and was lost to the eye. The distance round by land to the point of destination was a mile, and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... first suck of the rapids. We seemed a conscious arrow hurled through a gray, writhing world, the light of which was noise. And then, suddenly, the quiet, golden morning flashed back; and we were ripping the placid waters ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Florida that all this took place—in shabby, fascinating Jacksonville, where one meets everybody and does nothing in particular except lounge about and be happy. So the Jook and I lounged and were happy with a placid, unexciting sort of happiness, until the day when Kitty Grey descended upon us with the suddenness of a meteor, and very like one in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... closeted for two hours, at the end of which time they came forth together. The countenance of Madame Bauche was serene and comfortable; her hopes of ultimate success ran higher than ever. The face of the capitaine was masked, as are always the faces of great diplomatists; he walked placid and upright, raising his wooden leg with an ease and skill that was absolutely marvellous. But poor Adolphe's brow was clouded. Yes, poor Adolphe! for he was poor in spirit, he had pledged himself to give up Marie, and to ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... of the whole scene seemed almost romantic; and Waverley, who had given his horse to his servant on entering the first gate, walked slowly down the avenue, enjoying the grateful and cooling shade, and so much pleased with the placid ideas of rest and seclusion excited by this confined and quiet scene, that he forgot the misery and dirt of the hamlet he had left behind him. The opening into the paved courtyard corresponded with the rest of the scene. The house, which seemed to consist of two or three high, narrow, and steep-roofed ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... proprieties; cannily profiting by the high war prices, and yearly stowing away a little nest-egg in the bank against calamity; approved of and sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placid sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right-hand man in the parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for the moment only; ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... language—projected through an open port-hole. This in turn ceased. The captain reappeared with a pail and brush, scrubbed feverishly at the offending spot, mopped it dry with that same old red bandana handkerchief, glared about him,—and abruptly became as serene and placid as a noon calm. He took up the direction of the stevedores. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... from it homewards. How can I sum up its wonderful attractions! It is dotted with islands of great beauty, as yet unvisited by man, but which at no remote period will be adorned with villas and the ornaments of civilized life. The winds from the mountain gorges roll its placid waters into a furious sea, and crest its billows with foam. Forests of pine, deep, dark and almost impenetrable, are scattered at random along its banks, and its beautiful margin presents every variety of sand and pebbly beach, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... rivers, Thames and Severn, Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches, Clyde, dying at sunset westward In a sea as red as blood; Rhine and his hills in close procession, Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling, And Isar, son of the Alpine snows, A ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... home where the cataract's foam Is admired by the poor and the rich, as they roam By thy banks, Montmorenci, so placid and fair, Oh! what would I give, could I find ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... French, who kept to themselves. Successful Germans or Hollanders of the more stupid class ran so true to type and were so numerous that they earned the generic name of "Dutch Charley." They have been described as moon-faced, bland, bullet-headed men, with walrus moustaches, and fatuous, placid smiles. Value meant nothing to them. They only knew the difference between having money and having no money. They carried two or three gold watches at the end of long home-made chains of gold nuggets fastened together with links of copper wire. The chains ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Governor's acceptance of them. The prompt and continuous work incident to the enlistment of the men, the bustle of preparation, and all the scenes of that time, come before me now. It turned the calm current of the life of an old and placid country neighborhood, far from any city or centre, and stirred it into a boiling torrent, strong enough, or fierce enough to cut its way and join the general torrent which was bearing down and sweeping everything before it. It seemed but a minute ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and the monk, was unfelt by the two anxious maidens, who remained with their eyes bent, now upon the dim landscape, now on the stars by which it was lighted, as if they could have read there the events which the morrow was to bring forth. It was a placid and melancholy scene. Tree and field, and hill and plain, lay before them in doubtful light, while at greater distance, their eye could with difficulty trace one or two places where the river, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... their character. The Malay may thus be compared to the buffalo and the tiger. In his domestic state he is indolent, stubborn, and voluptuous as the former, and in his adventurous life he is insidious, bloodthirsty, and rapacious as the latter. Thus also the Arab is said to resemble his camel, and the placid ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... noblemen invented to gratify their petty spite. I might have complained to the superior, but I scorned to do so. I buried my sorrow deep in my heart, as I had done years before; and I firmly resolved never to show ought but a smiling, placid face, so as to prove to my enemies that they were powerless to disturb my peace of mind. Study became my refuge and consolation; and I plunged into work with the energy of despair. I should probably still live at Sainte-Marthe now, had it not been for a trivial circumstance. One day I had ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... on the deck admiring the different points as they went by, and delighting in the glorious pace at which they were going; a great contrast to their sluggish progress earlier in the day, when the river was broad, placid, and leisurely, and there was hardly a breath of wind stirring to urge ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... hundred times to give her some choice recipes. In short, domestic affairs are a burden to her, and she entrusts them as far as possible to the housekeeper. Altogether she finds country life very tiresome, but, possessing that placid, philosophical temperament which seems to have some casual connection with corpulence, she submits without murmuring, and tries to lighten a little the unavoidable monotony by paying visits and receiving visitors. The neighbours within a radius ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... morning when the car entered the sleeping city, where darkness and quiet held possession. Here and there a light shone from a window, telling its tale of sickness; now and again they passed a night wanderer or policeman; but Melbourne lay in placid sleep, reinvigorating ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... Dolly stuttered badly, but was gradually getting over it, for no one was allowed to mock him and Mr. Bhaer tried to cure it, by making him talk slowly. Dolly was a good little lad, quite uninteresting and ordinary, but he flourished here, and went through his daily duties and pleasures with placid content and propriety. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Honor, in a provokingly placid way, "don't exert yourself so violently in contradicting your own free, unextracted observations. You can amuse me in a dozen other different ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... only an instant, caught, as it were, in the midst of their play. The attitude of Penelope Boothby, on the other hand, is one of repose, as suits the tranquil nature of the little girl. The background of each picture is likewise perfectly appropriate. Miss Penelope's placid figure is seen against a leafy screen which nearly closes in the picture; but Miss Bowles needs plenty of space for her romps, and has a whole park ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... joy that night; and when she was seated in the boat, and they were rowing over the placid water, she so far forgot her fears as to begin singing. Something in the surroundings had recalled to her mind the time when she used to sing nearly every night her mother's favourite hymn. It all ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... Cutter seventy-five dollars. He went to attend the constable's sale, and found among the effects a dog appraised at ten dollars; rails ten cents each, and a watch worth five dollars valued at twenty dollars, so he left the place in disgust and hurried home, through the woods, in no placid frame of mind. Of four new shoes put on his horse that morning, three had been torn off by the mud, roots, and corduroy ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... illustrious, is becoming understood. It must contain and represent the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic, it must not be Saxon—it must be Irish. The Brehon law and the maxims of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Sasanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman—a literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions and idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies—finally, a native ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the Northern colonies responded to the call "to arms" that rang from the placid waters of Massachusetts Bay to the verdant hills of Berkshire, and from Lake Champlain to the upper waters of the Hudson. Every Northern colony had its Negro troops, not as separate organizations,—save the black ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... me sweetly, Inviting me then to partake Of the fanciful pleasures reflected Far down in the clear, placid lake. O, beautiful scene of reflection! So perfect, so grand, and so pure, In my mind that mirror enchantment To the end ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... being one of those sleepers that nothing short of an earthquake can rouse until their customary time for awaking, had slept soundly through the stirring events of the past night. She came down in the morning in quite a placid state of mind, expecting to enjoy a day of rest, as she had the night before sat up much beyond her usual time, to set matters to rights after the confusion consequent on the dinner party. What was her ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Florent Guillaume. The soft murmur of his petition was answered only by the deep-chested, placid snore of the sleeping priest. The poor scrivener rose from his knees, stepped noiselessly adown the nave, for he was grown so light his footfall could scarce be heard, and, fasting as he was, climbed the tower stairs that had as many steps as ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and great cascades of waves, such as I ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... face, usually as full of placid content as a kitten's, suddenly puckered with anxiety. "Lady, as I passed, it was still a long way down the fiord. I could only see that it was a large and fine trading-vessel. But one of the seamen on the shore told me ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... moods to interfere with business. He had broached the subject of marriage to Pierre, and Pierre had of course fallen in with his views. The fact that Elise evidently loathed him disturbed no whit his placid mind. He was in no hurry. He assumed Elise as his own whenever he chose to say the word. He regarded her in much the same way as a half-hungered epicure a toothsome dinner, holding himself aloof until his craving stomach should give the utmost zest to his viands without curtailing the pleasure ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... together, and I wanted to hear what they said, but that Ugly made such a barking I could not. I woke up, and, sure enough, Ugly was very noisy in the room below, barking regularly and harshly. No one else in the house seemed to be disturbed. There was a placid snoring in the attic, a pattering of rain on the roof, and a splashing of water, as it ran off steadily in a stream to the ground. But in a minute or two, between Ugly's barks I thought I heard something which recalled what I had been dreaming of, the rabbits whispering ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... for there was an indescribable expression of placid triumph, mingled with a modest confusion, lingering between the borders of Mrs Nickleby's nightcap, which ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... at any time, as much taste or use as for a diving-bell; and sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a bank of violets, moved to precocious contemplation by the spire of a village church. There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same calm blue eye, the same placid air. The shining bald head, which looked so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent because it ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens |
