"Sedate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bearing their importunity very calmly for some time, suddenly turned round, and with the most serious face thus addressed them—'I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Elizabethan pit with the rough London apprentices and the Elizabethan boxes with superfine gallants and courtiers; why he has been a delight equally to the worldling, to whom always "the play's the thing," and to the sedate scholar, who has perchance never set foot in a theatre, and to whom a play is a dramatic poem printed in a book. Yet the reason is simple. It is because Shakespeare's gifts are numerous and varied enough to appeal to populace and gallant, to worldling and student; they meet to the full ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the lofty group sedate, I see Great Franklin muse where Truth had locked her stores, Holding within his steady hand the key ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... make no "silence in the hills;" for the Pamet, as I saw it, is far too sedate a stream ever to be caught "babbling." It has only some three miles to run, and seems to know perfectly well that it ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... left him with the group of elders who closed the proceedings and locked up the school. But after this, further delay was impossible. The whole party moved out into the moonlight, and the Rector and his son, the schoolmaster and the teachers, commenced a sedate parish gossip, while Bill trotted behind, wondering whether any possible or impossible business would take one of them his way. But when the turning-point was reached, the Rector destroyed ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... to know an aged swineherd who was in want of a lad of Bladud's age to attend on his pigs. He accordingly introduced his new friend, Bladud, as a candidate for that office; and his mild and sedate manners so well pleased the old man, that he immediately took him into ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... drove to their house, I kept recalling the old Sonetchka to my mind, and wondering what she would look like when I met her. Somehow I imagined that, after her two years' sojourn abroad, she would look very tall, with a beautiful waist, and, though sedate and imposing, extremely attractive. Somehow, also, my imagination refused to picture her with her face disfigured with scars, but, on the contrary, since I had read somewhere of a lover who remained true to his adored one in spite of her disfigurement with smallpox, strove to ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... horrid, old-time, hoopskirt-minded prude. My first act of domestic tyranny is to make you find a sedate, prim place for my work and play, where I may know my own blushes when I see them in the mirror, and will have ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... had no desire to be left alone with someone who might prove dangerous. But his long legs took him quickly out of sight before I could catch him, even by running, and so I fell into a more sedate pace. All Miss Francis' metaphysical talk was beyond me, but what little I could make of it was pure nonsense. Guilty. Why, I had never done anything illegal in my life, unless taking a glass of beer in dry territory be so accounted. All this talk about guilt suggested ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... some men fit for schoolmasters, one at Frederica and one at Darien, also a sedate and sober minister, one of some experience in the world and whose first heat of youth ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... months ago the sedate tranquillity of the neighborhood had been broken by an astonishing series of burglaries, which had occurred in rapid succession. Half a dozen houses were entered; valuables, chiefly jewelry, worth many thousands of pounds, had been taken, and not a single arrest, even on ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... realize it's only ten days to half-term? Oh, do, for goodness' sake, look less like a statue of melancholy! Do you know, child, that you're getting permanent wrinkles along that forehead of yours, and it makes you more like fifty than fifteen. You're too sedate. That's what's the matter with you, Lorna Carson! It's a fault that ought to be overcome. Copy Delia and me. We know how to enjoy ourselves. There—my lecture is over and now ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... bourgeois, you know. But that is just what I like in you. It's on account of the contrast, I have no doubt, because I was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always been fond of sedate, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of intelligence. His hair was auburn, his eyes dark, and his complexion clear and sanguine. He was considerably robust, and took delight in practising gymnastics; he desired fame, not less for feats of running and leaping, than in the sedate pursuits of literature. His premature death was the subject of general lamentation; in the "Lord of the Isles," Scott introduced the following stanza in tribute to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... away right and left, to look at the miracle;—and there lay the canoe, rumbling and splashing, with her crew walloping about, and grinning and yelling like incarnate fiends, and as naked as the day they were born, and the old Don himself so staid and so sedate and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting "Tira diablitos, tira!" flourishing a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping about in his seat, as if his bottom had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that hour there was not in the establishment a single girl who did not feel envy toward the fat Kitty, and did not experience a painful, keen, vertiginous curiosity. When Dyadchenko was going away half an hour later—with his sedate and stern air, all the women speechlessly, with their mouths gaping, escorted him to the street door and afterwards watched him from the windows as he walked along the street. Then they rushed into the room of the dressing ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... a well-shapen headstone made for her; but a headstone without a epitaph being no better than a body without the breath of life in't, I made a poesy for the monument, not in the Latin tongue, which Mrs. Balwhidder, worthy woman as she was, did not understand, but in sedate language, which was greatly thought of at the time. My servant lassies, having no eye of a mistress over them, wasted everything at such a rate that, long before the end of the year, the year's stipend was all spent, and I did not know what to do. At lang and length I sent for Mr. Auld, a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... account of his make-up being an exact reproduction of THACKERAY's sketch, gave us as good a grotesque performance as I've seen for some considerable time. To see him on the ground after the fight, tearing his hair out in handfulls, is something that will shake the sides of the most sedate or blase, and among the audience that will crowd to see this juvenile show, there will be very few sedate (I hope) and still fewer (I am sure) blase. It is an excellent performance throughout. But, my dear Mr. CAROLUS ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... one hand, in the aged and the young, in the wise and the unlearned, in the rich and the poor; in those of stronger and weaker degrees of mental capacity, in more sanguine or more sedate dispositions; and in a multitude of otherwise varying circumstances, there is a striking conformity of principles and feeling to Christ, and to each other. Like the flowers of the field and the garden, they are "all rooted and grounded" in the soil of the same earth; ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... called long in such a short town—was entirely empty. No one came out of the doors, no one looked out of the windows. It was with no small joy that I saw a man, at last, in a shop, in whose window hung a paper of pins, a red handkerchief, and two tea cans, a solitary, sedate apprentice, who leaned over the counter and looked out through the open house door. He certainly wrote that evening in his journal, if he kept one; 'To-day a traveller went through the town; the dear God may know him, I do not!' The apprentice's face appeared to me to say all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time of Louis Philippe did but recall the good old days of Brookes's and of White's, of the two Foxes, of George Selwyn and of Sheridan. But how changed is all this! There is not to-day in Paris, perhaps in the world, a more sedate, reputable and in every sense temperate club than the "Jockey." It concerns itself only with racing, the legitimate object of its foundation, and nothing else is discussed in its salons, if we except one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... of her name. He was in America for music-hall material for England, and he was shrewd after the manner of his kind. Here was a girl who frolicked on the stage. The English, accustomed to either sensuous or sedate dancing, would fall hard for her, he decided. Either that, or she would go "bla." She was a ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not only swept but scoured; the dark rafters, whence depended the flaming banners of the red pepper, harbored no cobwebs; the grave faces of the white-haired children bore no more dirt than was consistent with their recent occupation of making mudpies; and the sedate, bald-headed baby, lying silent but wide-awake in an uncouth wooden cradle, was as clean as clear spring water and yellow soap could make it. Mrs. Hollis herself, seen through the vista of opposite open doors, energetically rubbing the coarse ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... dignity of a minuet. Right in the midst of the solemn affair some mischievous fellow gave a squeak and a big jump; and away they all went hurry-skurry, for all the world like a lot of boys turned loose for recess. In a minute they were back again, quiet and sedate, and solemn as bull-frogs. Were they chasing and chastising the mischief-maker, or was it only the overflow of abundant spirits as the top of a kettle blows off when ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... spoke, he entered the apartment with his usual slow and sedate step—raised his flapp'd and steeple-crowned hat from his brows, and, standing in the midst of the room, eyed alternately his daughter and Julian Peveril with ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... tried to look severe, remarking: "Don't be frivolous here, my dear"; but, as Hal described it later, "she looked as if having so often to be sedate was beginning to make ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... and having lost two of these, her husband, her father and mother, she had known, though only twenty-seven, most of the vital experiences that life can give. Perhaps it was well, for thereby she was better fitted to be the mate of a man sober and sedate in disposition and created by Nature to ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... speak of the "silly sheep," and happy in the phrase "silly Suffolk." It is cognate with Ger. selig, blessed, often used in speaking of the dead. We have compounds in Sillilant, simple child (Chapter X), and Selibarn. Seely was also used for Cecil or Cecilia. Sadd was once sedate ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... century and a half, feelings hardly compatible with temperate examination will not be stirred up in many minds by the name of Darien. In truth that name is associated with calamities so cruel that the recollection of them may not unnaturally disturb the equipoise even of a fair and sedate mind. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... made their sedate way across a great plain of grass, stretching without a break from the avenue up to a belt of palms, before which they stopped, swayed a moment, grunting disapprovingly in chorus, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... gave to our table a sort of patriarchal dignity that we all appreciated. If a louder burst of laughter than usual came from where we sat and the other passengers looked inquiringly our way the sedate and self-possessed face of Mr. Blair kept us in countenance, and we, who had given way to undue levity, felt ourselves enshrouded by an atmosphere of genial seriousness. This prevented our table from getting the reputation ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... representatives of our lower house need no such appeals to popular passion as the Athenian assembly required; only on questions of patriotism or principle would they be tolerated. Still less does emotion govern the sedate and masculine eloquence of our upper house, or the strict and closely-reasoned pleadings of our courts of law. Its proper field is in the addresses of a popular member to one of the great city constituencies. The best speeches addressed to ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Sedate and steady, Calm, quick, and ready, They boldly enter, and make no din. Where'er such trifles As Snider rifles And bright six-shooters are stored within. The Queen's round towers Can't baulk their powers, Off go the weapons by sea and shore, To where the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Queenie, a small, sedate maiden of five, a miniature of Theo in face, stood silent in the doorway for a few seconds, wistfully piecing out the possible meaning of her tall sister's bewildered grief. Then ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... which afterwards came out against him with staves: these places are there, now as they were in his day, very credible—nay, more, impossible not to be believed. These are the true holy places of Jerusalem, places for which Greeks and Latins do not fight, guarded by no sedate, coffee-drinking Turks, open there to all men under the fair heavens, and desolate enough, too, even in these pilgrim weeks, for any one or two who will sit there alone and ponder over the wondrous history of the city that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... ribbon. Accompanying her was a pretty maid of honor dressed as a milk maid with a pail in her hand and a three-legged stool under her arm. The Count d'Artois, gay, handsome, debonair, met them and held them in conversation, then the grave, sedate Monsieur, as the elder of the two brothers of King Louis XVI was styled, approached, and with him was our own Benjamin ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... a young girl, is prettiest in the morning. Pehl is calm and sedate, and simple and decorous. Pehl is like some tender, fair, wholesome yet patrician beauty, like the pretty aristocratic Charlotte in Kaulbach's picture, who cuts the bread-and-butter, yet looks a patrician. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... gazed at one with her big, black eyes. She is very circumspect in her movements, and with such a mother and father as she had, I should think may be very brilliant. Naturally she had to be specially dignified and sedate at these public functions, as she and the Imperial Princess were the only ones belonging to the old imperial household, the descendants of Tao Kuang, who were intimately associated with the Empress Dowager's court. She is small, but pretty, and, as I have indicated, ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... danced there till the blue that overskied us Swooned with passion, though the footing seemed sedate; And the mountains, heaving mighty hearts beside us, Sighed a rapture in a shadow, to dilate, And touch the holy ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... an oval face, which was full of good-humor, and in which an imaginative eye might have discerned an odd resemblance to a pear; the second, who seemed to be his brother, was more sedate, and did not smile. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Ohio," on the threatening prospects of a migration of the negroes from the South, and the President's "evident intenshun of colonizin' on 'em in the North," he especially relished. After rehearsing a portion of this letter to his guests at the Soldiers' Home one evening, a sedate New England gentleman expressed surprise that he could find time for memorizing such things. "Oh," said Lincoln, "I don't. If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it." He once recited a long and doleful ballad, something like "Vilikins and his ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of his youth, far from being inordinate or criminal, never exceeded the bounds of that decent jollity which an extraordinary pot, on extraordinary occasions, may be supposed to have produced in a club of sedate book-keepers, whose imaginations were neither very warm nor luxuriant. Little subject to refined sensations, he was scarce ever disturbed with violent emotions of any kind. The passion of love ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... laughing merrily as we went past them. They waved their hands up the stream as if urging us to go ahead and say they were coming. The one reclining was a venerable personage, with a thin beard fringing a sedate visage, into which he drew long whiffs and comfort ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... had not intended these for his closing words; but just there, straight away before his sight and almost at the farthest door, a man rose slowly from his seat and regarded him steadily with a kind, bronzed, sedate face, and the sermon, as if by a sign of command, was ended. While the Credo was being chanted he was still there; but when, a moment after its close, the eye of Pere Jerome returned in that direction, his ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Louise-Angelique was admirably adapted for her way of life; not that her features wore an expression of shameless effrontery, or that the words that passed her lips bore habitual testimony to the disorders of her existence, but that under a calm and sedate demeanour there lurked a secret and indefinable charm. Many other women possessed more regular features, but none of them had a greater power of seduction. We must add that she owed that power entirely to her physical perfections, for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of human affairs, and of his own relation to them, was sober and sedate. All their grandeur and splendor, to his apprehension, connected themselves with the immortal life, and with God, as their guide, overseer, and ruler; and the sum of the practical wisdom of all worthy personal purposes seemed to him to be, to discern the path of duty, and ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... too high strung for me; but, my king, I must have you; you don't know how jolly I can make life for my pets; Blanche won't look at Sir Peter Tedril and I know it is you she wants, you may have her and her million, you will be near me then; the Colonel, poor sedate old fellow, would not like it, but that don't signify, because he wishes (now that your secret marriage to Fanny Clarmont has become public talk) that there were a thousand miles between your handsome person and Miss Vernon; ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... misfortune, but from some feeling within, that appeared to indicate a soul conscious of a brighter realm. Her step was not that light footing, which strays where'er a butterfly or a colour may attract—it was sedate and pensive. When alone, her face was never brightened by the smile of joy; but when her brother breathed to her his affection, and would in her presence forget those griefs she knew destroyed his rest, who would have exchanged her smile for that of the voluptuary? It seemed as if those eyes,—that ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... say which of the two was the more beautiful. Both were unusually lovely. Alma Trepka was queenly, her movements sedate, her disposition calm and unclouded—Carl Bloch could paint a Madonna, or even a Christ, from her face without making any essential alteration in the oval of its contours. Clara Rothe's beauty was that of the white hart in the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... chateau very dull. Solitude and seclusion are not at all the thing for a beautiful young woman, I know. Reading and embroidery are but melancholy pastimes at best and there must be moments when even the gravest, most sedate of maidens grows weary of gazing out upon the stagnant waters of the moat, and longs to look upon the face of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... tight-clasped her bent knees hold Like long grass drooping on the wold Her sightless head is bending; She sits all ears, and drinks her fill, Then rising goes, sedate and still, On ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... handkerchief again)—"beware of traps, hen roosts, bacon and eggs; always walk upon your hind legs." Pigling Bland, who was a sedate little pig, looked solemnly at his mother, a tear ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... that character; to copy him in all the variations of his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve, in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the woods at a little distance before her. She recognized him, immediately, as a young man whom she called Albert, who had often been employed by Mrs. Bell, at work about the farm and garden. Albert was a very sedate and industrious young man, of frank and open and manly countenance, and of an erect and athletic form. Mary Erskine liked Albert very well, and yet the first impulse was, when she saw him coming, to cross over to the other side of the road, ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... him to the very spot or whistle him the very tunes; but he was busy, and wondered so sedate a man as myself could ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... and the Departmental Governor, grave and sedate, with their aids and secretaries, their books and documents, their mandates and red-sealed processes, and were rowed out to confront the master whom they believed to have dared to thwart the hand of justice and remain to taunt them with his egregious presence. This should be made an international ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... There were days, it seemed to him, when a conflict was waged, an unequal conflict, between that outer and that inner self. Days when the inner spirit was intense, alert, eager, and when the outer self was languid, dreary, mockingly sedate and indolent. Again there were days, and these were the saddest of all, when the inner spirit seemed to Hugh to be tranquil, high-minded, and strong; when that outer self was malign, turbulent, and headstrong, and when all the resolution and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... always knows he is thinking of cowboys and broncos. However, I shifted the weight into the other scale by answering 'Thank you. And your phraseology is just as unusual to us.' 'Indeed?' he said with some surprise. 'I supposed our method of expression very sedate and uneventful.' 'Not at all,' I returned, 'when you say, as you did a moment ago, that you never eat potato to your fish.' 'But I do not,' he urged obtusely. 'Very likely,' I argued, 'but the fact is not of so much importance as the preposition. Now I eat potato ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... almost simultaneously produced a profound impression throughout the Loyal States. Men rushed to the conclusion that the war would be closed and the Union restored before the end of the year. The most sedate communities become mercurial and impressible in time of deep excitement. The rejoicing was universal. Congress ordered the illumination of the Capitol and other public buildings in Washington on the 22d of February "in honor of the recent victories of our army and navy;" and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... eyes, a fair delicate skin, and a bewitching smile that displays a row of—of "pearls!" The vision is about sixteen years of age, and answers to the romantic name of Flora Macdonald. It is sister to that stalwart Hector who first showed Mr Sudberry how to fish; and stately, sedate, and beautiful does it appear, as, leaning on its brother's arm, it ascends the hill towards the White House, where extensive preparations are being made ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... now joined by the head-steward—a sedate, highly intelligent, respectable-looking Scotchman, who has been in Ireland thirteen years. He told me that the number of persons that had been ejected was about 10,000, of whom one-tenth were employed by Lord Lucan, who had given most of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... voice stole upon him, and once he lingered, allowing her to get a few yards in front so that he might notice the quiet figure, a little demure, and intensely itself, in a yellow gown. When he first saw her she had seemed to him a little sedate, even a little dowdy, and when she had spoken of her intention to abandon painting, although her manner was far from cheerless, he had feared a bore. He now perceived that this she at least was ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... us at vantage still, Our sumptuous indigence, O barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense The constant mountain doth dispense; Shedding on all its snows and leaves, One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, O watchman tall, Our towns and races grow and fall, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... so, I hope so," Mr. Tufton said encouragingly, and as if stiffness were one of the most desirable things in life. "I like to see young men with a sedate bearing. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... appearing to be curious. But she was curious about the old gentleman. However, being Ruth Kenway, she would not have shown this in any way to ruffle his feelings; for, despite her own youth, Ruth had mothered her three orphaned sisters for so long that she was more sedate and thoughtful than most girls ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... Polonius a Bromide. Becky Sharp was sulphitic; Amelia Sedley bromidic. So we might follow the line of cleavage between the two groups in Art, Religion and Politics. Compare, for instance, President Roosevelt with his predecessor in office—the Unexpected versus the sedate Thermometer of Public Opinion. Compare Bernard Shaw with Marie Corelli—one would swear that their very brains were differently colored! Their epigrams and platitudes are merely the symptoms of different ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... no apprehension of any body but Colonel Morden. I know it will not be a mean to prevail upon you to oblige me, if I say that I am well assured that this gentleman is a skillful swordsman; and that he is as cool and sedate as skillful. But yet I will add, that, if I had a value for my life, he should be the last man, except yourself, with whom I would choose to ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... came a young squaw. Her white doeskin dress was as clean as snow, barbarically splendid with cut fringes and work of bead and porcupine quills. Her mien was sedate, and she swayed to her horse lightly and flexibly as a boy, holding aloft a lance edged with a flutter of feathers, and bearing a round shield of painted skins. Beside her rode the old chief, his blanket falling ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... at once imposing and attractive. His large black eyes shone with the lustre of intelligence. A deep and melancholy calm seemed fixed in their commanding gaze. His quiet countenance and stately form, his black clerical garments, his sedate step and thoughtful mien added to the impressive effect of his appearance. His beauty, however, was marred by two serious defects. The lower half of his right ear had been torn away and his left arm was stiff at the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... always succeeded in dragging him down to the garden. He must play ball, or in the sand, with her; but her playfellow's awkwardness and lack of enthusiasm soon impressed the little girl. Then she would become very sedate, contenting herself with walking gravely between the hedges of box, with her hand in her friend's. After a moment Risler would entirely forget that she was there; but, although he did not realize it, the warmth of that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... whistle of the train brought her back to her real world. She rose and looked at herself in the mirror, at the unromantic face with its lines showing faintly around her eyes, grown quiet during the dozen years that had settled her fluffy hair into sedate waves. She smiled at the changes of the years and shook her head, and got a grip on her normal consciousness, and after putting away the picture and closing the box, she went downstairs to finish ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the month of May, Bryde came down to the big house, and the Laird and his Lady welcomed him at the door, and Margaret behind them very sedate by ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... the sake of being laughed at, do not approve of their buffooneries being taken for granted—"I'll tell you what it is, sir—you have 78formed a most mistaken estimate of my character; I beg to say that any affair I undertake is certain to be conducted in a very sedate and business-like manner. My prudence I consider unimpeachable; and as to steadiness, I flatter myself I go considerably ahead of the Archbishop of Canterbury in that article. If I hear you repeat such offensive remarks, I shall be under the painful necessity of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... girl, who rallied Lucy on her sedate behaviour, and the profound curtseys she made to her partner, instead of the pirouette which she performed with Humphrey, his arm round her waist, and her little feet twinkling under the short skirt of her stiff brocade, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... mother often said that he seemed more like two boys of opposite natures rolled into one, than just one ordinary boy. When quite a little chap, he would at one time be as full of noise, action, and enterprise as the captain of an ocean steamer in a gale, and at another time be as sedate, thoughtful, and absentminded as the ancient philosopher who made himself famous by walking into a ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... are concerned, by the vast number of manuscripts existing of it. The "Host" is, so to speak, charged with the constant injunction of this cardinal principle of popularity as to both theme and style. "Tell us," he coolly demands of the most learned and sedate ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... his neck was suspended a collar of emeralds of uncommon size and brilliancy. His short hair was decorated with golden ornaments, and the imperial borla encircled his temples. The bearing of the Inca was sedate and dignified; and from his lofty station he looked down on the multitudes below with an air of composure, like one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... not forget that first meal in the home of his grandparents. It was so strange, so different from any other meal he had ever eaten. The food was good and there was an abundance of it, but the surroundings were so queer. Instead of the well-ordered and sedate school meal, here all the eatables from fish to pie were put upon the table at the same time and the servant—or housekeeper, which to his mind were one and the same—sat down, not only to eat with the family, but to take at least an ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... lonely Brook met her ambitious sister. She was violent no more; but sober and sedate; calm as the evening sky ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... therefore, for the meeting with pistols on the following morning; and the combatants proceeded to the spot fixed on, some five or six miles, I think, from the Baths. Plowden, who, as a sedate business man was less intimate with the generality of the young men at the Baths, was accompanied only by his second; his adversary was attended by a whole cohort of acquaintances—really far more after the fashion of a party going to a picnic, or some ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of his prowess, of his conflicts with the giants, who, however, give him a good deal of trouble with their cunning; and of his catching the Midgard serpent which surrounds the world at the bottom of the sea. Being a god of storm, he forms a connection with agriculture, and thus gains a more sedate aspect; he has also to do with marriage, and a hammer is used symbolically at Icelandic weddings. Thor is only half-brother to the other sons of Odin; his mother was Fioergyn, the earth; the worships of Odin and Thor, originally distinct, seem to have been united ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... We kept away right and left, to look at the miracle; and there lay the canoe, rumbling and splashing, with her crew walloping about, and grinning and yelling like incarnate fiends, and as naked as the day they were born, and the old Don himself, so staid and sedate, and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting, "Tira, diablitos, tira,"[13] flourishing a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... address each day at some central point, and speaking frequently by the way, his journey fastened the attention of the country and amply illustrated his versatile and brilliant intellectual powers. No man was more seductive in appeal, or more impressive in sedate and stately eloquence. With his art of persuasion he combined rare skill in evading difficult questions while preserving an appearance of candor. His speeches were as elusive and illusive as they were smooth and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... one last fling at the old free buccaneering life before settling down to the more sedate and respectable calling of an officer in the French King's navy, de Grammont sailed off with a party of 180 desperadoes, but was never heard ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... moment, Liz, who occupied the middle step between the two, and was of a much more sedate and equable nature than either of her sisters, suddenly effected a diversion that did more to raise Cissy's spirits than all Conny's whispered consolation ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... through the Presbytery became incarnate in the clerk, who was one of the most finished specimens of his class in the Scottish Kirk. His sedate appearance, bald, polished head, fringed with pure white hair, shrewd face, with neatly cut side whiskers, his suggestion of unerring accuracy and inexhaustible memory, his attitude for exposition,—holding his glasses in his left hand and enforcing his decision with the little finger of the right ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... one must be careful to choose only what is /individually/ becoming. It must be in perfect harmony with one's personality. To assume a character that is in every way opposed to one's own character is unwise and ungratifying. A sedate, quiet young miss should not choose a Folly Costume. Nor should a jolly, vivacious young lady elect to emulate Martha Washington, And furthermore, a character must not be merely dressed—it must be lived. The successful costume ball ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... horrid to feel so stuffy on such a perfect day. How long to Whitsuntide? That was to be heavenly—if James didn't get inspired by the dark! Something would have to be prepared for that. In her eyes, sedate though they were, there lurked a gleam: the beacon-fire of a woman beleaguered. Certainly Jimmy Urquhart liked her. He had said that she liked him. Well, and so she did. Very ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... boatswain's mate was very sedate, Yet fond of amusement, too; And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch While the captain tickled the crew. And the gunner we had was apparently mad, For he sat on the after-rail, And fired salutes with the captain's boots, ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... she rose and went to the window. The sedate Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... accordingly. It almost overwhelmed him. A wild chuckle of spasmodic delight burst from him, which threatened to end in a convulsion. And though he rallied from this, yet he was quite demoralized, and it was a long time before he settled down into that sedate old darky which was his ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... appeared with her parents, the Duke of Hereward sought her out; and the more he saw of her, the more interested he became in her; and it must be confessed that the conversation of this handsome and accomplished man of middle age pleased the grave, sedate girl more than that of younger and gayer men ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... The sedate smile with which this was spoken, left it impossible to conjecture whether the words were meant in approbation, or in derision, of the plan of the Scottish Reformer. Turning then to Roland Graeme, as if he thought he had been long enough ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... emerged a quaint old coach, lumbering and shabby, drawn by a pair of sleek sorrel horses, whose teeth would have given evidence of advanced age had a possible purchaser submitted them to the indignity of examining them. Their progress was slow and sedate, although the driver handled the reins as though it were with difficulty that he restrained them from prancing and cavorting ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... taking off her jacket and gloves to do it, but bustling about cheerfully, with her hat rather awry and her cheeks flushed with excitement and hope. Just now, when the Frau Professor had gone, the prospect of a music pupil meant everything. An American child, too! Fond as Harmony was of children, the sedate and dignified youngsters who walked the parks daily with a governess, or sat with folded hands and fixed eyes through hours of heavy music at the opera, rather daunted her. They were never alone, those Austrian children—always under surveillance, always restrained, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... knighthood the sight, then," she said smiling, and looking up with a glance of brightness, such as her hitherto sedate face had never ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turnings in the long flight of steps that descend from the hotel at Cap d'Ail to the station, and what there is in the way of town. She had never come abruptly face to face with him before. She knew she colored and betrayed a ridiculous self-consciousness. He, on his part, was unruffled and sedate, lifting his hat with the somewhat rigid dignity that characterized all ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... where he was not known, in a native prau, and had managed, with his sedate manner and the exactly right kind of yarn he knew how to tell to the natives, to ingratiate himself ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Cuba as not," she said, in her sedate way. "One place is the same as another to me. But it's very soon to ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... narrow channels amongst the wooded islets, and paddled vigorously over the black and sleepy backwaters towards Sambir. Her canoe brushed the water-palms, skirted the short spaces of muddy bank where sedate alligators looked at her with lazy unconcern, and, just as darkness was setting in, shot out into the broad junction of the two main branches of the river, where the brig was already at anchor with sails furled, yards squared, and decks seemingly untenanted ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... site; once more than fifteen miles away. On their rambles they met other beaver families, and stopped to visit; the young people of the combined families played and splashed about, while their more sedate elders lay contentedly basking ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... development seemed to be connected with hydrocephalus; although the head was no larger than that of a child of two, the anterior fontanelle was widely open, indicating that there was pressure within. He was strong and muscular; grave and sedate in his manner; cheerful and affectionate; his manners were polite and engaging; he was expert in many kinds of handicraft; he possessed an ardent desire for knowledge and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... perversity, thus exemplified, which compelled Andrew to constitute himself the business manager of the firm. He had a sedate, inexorable way with him, a grotesque dignity, to which, for all his gibes, Bakkus instinctively submitted. Bakkus might provide ideas, but it was the lank and youthful Andrew who ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... ladies start in their seats, and sit upright, trembling excessively. What can have happened? Has the sedate Ryan come to loggerheads with Mrs. Reilly the cook? (a state of things often threatened); and are they now standing on the mat ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... with yourself!" Vanderborn, who is sedate in the ordinary, cries, "It's not me yet, you see! Here I am!" With a mad gesticulation he serves me a thump on the shoulder. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... through." When I last saw our traveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, still undecided whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock. But I forgot all about him and his hurry when, shortly after, we sat at the table-d'hote at the hotel, and the sedate Germans lit their cigars, some of them before they had finished eating, and sat smoking as if there were plenty of leisure for everything ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and the young, all calm and all devout, seated before the tent of the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence, or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, and such as these, the poet has poured his satire; and since this desirable reprehension the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was a sober animal who had long ago reached the age of discretion. But to have his old ears and eyes suddenly blanketed with a flapping white thing swooping apparently from nowhere was too much even for his sedate nerves. He jumped sidewise. The reins were jerked from the driver's hands and fell ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lobby. I left Jones with a determination to go over to the Senate and consult with the Senator from our district, and ascertain whether he entertained the same views of necessary appliances for legislation, as did my friends of the Second and Third Houses. Our Senator was a very sedate man, who had a reputation for honesty and piety, equalled only by that of Jones himself. I explained my business, showed him my bill, and he read it carefully through. On handing it back ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that, your Excellency," replied the Bourgeois, who hated compliments to himself. "If those who have do not give, how can you get from those who have not? You may lay some of it to the account of Pierre too,—he was in Acadia, you know, Governor." A flash of honest pride passed over the usually sedate features of the Bourgeois at the mention of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... been anything done to that sedate limousine quite as this was done. Even the preoccupied girl looked on in fascination at a rapidity of unwasted ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... unconcerned he stands, confessing treachery and ingratitude! Is there a vice more black? Oh, I have excuses thousands for my faults; fire in my temper, passions in my soul, apt to ev'ry provocation, oppressed at once with love, and with despair. But a sedate, a thinking villain, whose black blood runs temperately ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... room hastily, and his daughter, calling in the assistance of Elise, proceeded to arrange her little boudoir in a somewhat more sedate, though by no means less joyful, frame of mind than that in which she had made her entry into her new ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... was the corridor. The outer door was open; the sound of the sea came in faint murmurs, the mingled odours of pine and wrack borne with it. Out in the heavens a moon swung among her stars most queenly and sedate, careless altogether of this mortal world of strife and terrors; the sea had a golden roadway. A lantern light bobbed on the outer edge of the rock, shining through Olivia's bower like a will-o'-the-wisp, and he could hear in low tones the voices of Doom and his servant. Out at ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... excited to-day. The sedate [Pg 166] girl was completely changed; she tore up handfuls of moss and, standing behind Marianna, threw them gleefully on her cap and down her neck, as she bent forward. And when the latter, scolding and panting, loosened her frill ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... explained to her at some length the most approved method of curing a cold, in case that were the cause. In striking contrast to the sober looks of the others—for Younker himself was a man who seldom exhibited other than a sedate expression—was the general appearance and manner of Isaac. He seemed exceedingly exhilarated in spirits, yet kept his eyes down, and appeared at times very absent minded. Whatever his thoughts were, it was evident they were pleasing ones; for he would ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... a fete and procession in these Landes on one occasion; triumphal arches were erected, hung with flowers and garlands; and the feature of the parade was a sedate platoon of these heron-like shepherds engaged for the occasion, dressed in skins, decked with white hoods and mantles, preceded by a band of music, and stalking by fours imposingly down the line ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... late for a deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish positions on the morning on which began the September bombardment of Plevna, in proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff remonstrated, and that even the sedate American historian of the war speaks of him as having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish pickets." His son, the Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of age, was nevertheless a keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom of getting to close quarters and staying there. He ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... who is called Bianco, is also white, but with red spots. Fido is a grave and serious personage, walks with dignity round the circle assembled to see him, and appears much absorbed in reflection. Bianco is young and giddy, but full of talent when he chooses to apply it. Owing to his more sedate disposition, however, Fido is called upon to act the principal part of the exhibition. A word is dictated to him from the Greek, Latin, Italian, German, French, or English language, and selected from a vocabulary where fifty words in each tongue are inscribed, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... who had been listening attentively, suddenly chuckled, as if he had seen a joke. Septimus's gaze conveyed sedate reproof. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... vicious; and that even admitting those things to be evils, which occasion fear or grief, and those to be goods which provoke desire or joy, yet that very commotion itself is vicious; for we mean by the expressions magnanimous and brave, one who is resolute, sedate, grave, and superior to everything in this life: but one who either grieves, or fears, or covets, or is transported with passion, cannot come under that denomination; for these things are consistent only with those who look on the things of this world as things with which their ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... game of which Farmer Green's sheep never seemed to tire. They called it "Follow My Leader." And even the oldest members of the flock played it every day. Though they had grand-children—many of them—and were quite solemn and sedate, they still continued to run anywhere whenever somebody happened to ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... the door-way, shivering from top to toe,—it was Angus searching for his cap; and it was so long since I had suffered him to exchange a word with me! I know not what change was wrought in my bewildered lineaments, what light was in my glance; but, seeing me, all that sedate sadness that weighed upon his manner fell aside, he hastily strode toward me, took my hands as he was wont, and drew me in, gazing the while down my dazzled, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heard him for some time splashing about and puffing with all his might; a sort of playfulness which struck me as remarkable for so grave and sedate a character; and then a most unusual floundering, attended with a gurgling of the throat, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... of the floors. In the room where I slept a nightingale had made herself a nest between the window and the shutter, and while I was there little naked nightingales, looking like undressed Jew babies, hatched out from the eggs. Sedate storks live on the barn. At the beehouse there is an old grandsire who remembers the King Goroh [Translator's Note: The equivalent of Old King ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... next morning, off started poor Daffy-down-dilly, and began his rambles about the world, with only some bread and cheese for his breakfast, and very little pocket money to pay his expenses. But he had gone only a short distance, when he overtook a man of grave and sedate appearance, who was trudging along the road at a ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... particular chums. He was older than most of them, and yet in some ways younger than any, and his remarkable youthfulness of manner and exuberance of spirits sometimes made him appear foolish to Jane, whose sense of humour was of a more sedate kind. But of the absolute perfection of his outward appearance, there was no question; and Jane looked at him now, much as his own mother might have looked, with honest admiration in ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... true name and character, and traveled in ease and safety to Paris. The excitement and the intoxicating joy which Henrietta experienced when she got her darling child once more in her arms, can be imagined, perhaps, even by the most sedate American mother; but the wild and frantic violence of her expressions of it, none but those who are conversant with the French character and ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... engines for the accomplishment of this great revolution? Will these people, crawling from the holes and caverns of their original destinations, apostates from the loom and the anvil—he should have said the awl—and renegades from the lowest handicraft employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... king, 'but still My joints are something stiff or so. My Lord, and shall we pass the bill I mention'd half an hour ago?' The chancellor sedate and vain In courteous words return'd reply: But dallied with his golden chain, And, smiling, put ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... uproar, silent seen, Sailing sedate in majesty serene, Now midst the pillar'd spray sublimely lost, And now, emerging, down the Rapids tost, Glides the bald eagle, gazing, calm and slow, O'er all the horrors of the scene below; Intent alone to sate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... her, gentle reader, with so commonplace an incident. Let her act on serenely until that glorious night in April 1713, when, back at Drury Lane, under the triumvirate of Cibber, Wilks and Dogget, she helps to make sedate Addison's equally sedate ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... faultlessly running machine. From the outset the Evening Press had championed the cause of the old crowd—the state-house ring as the enemy called it, when they didn't call it something worse. We championed it not as a Northern or an Eastern paper might, in a sedate, half-hearted way, but fiercely and wholly and blindly—so blindly that we could see nothing in our own faction but what was good and high and pure, nothing in the other but what was smutted with evil ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... talked together Burns regarded Amy Mathewson, his long-time associate, with renewed wonder, and presently found himself addressing her from an entirely new point of view. This fair girl with the graceful head and the glowing blue eyes could not possibly be the sedate young woman who was accustomed to hand him instruments and sutures, ligate arteries, and attend to various minor matters from the other side of his operating-table. He wondered why he had never before noticed how much real individuality she possessed, ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... same scene invariably repeats itself, over the coffee in the "next room." At the big table several sportive souls start a poker game, while at a smaller one two sedate spirits wrap themselves in the intricacies of chess. Captain Thenault labours away at the messroom piano, or in lighter mood plays with Fram, his police dog. A phonograph grinds out the ancient query "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle?" or some other ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... to the grand-stand they found the next box to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party of foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared for sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one cannot set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those depths to which it ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Pulse beats there, and you may easily see who turns the Wheel; if a perfect Calm possesses the Soul; if Peace and Temper prevail, and the Mind feels no Tempests rising; if the Affections are regular and exalted to vertuous and sublime Objects, the Spirits cool, and the Mind sedate, the Man is in a general Rectitude of Mind, he may be truly said to be his own Man; Heaven shines upon his Soul with its benign Influences, and he is out of the Reach of the evil Spirit; for the divine Spirit is an Influence of Peace, all calm and bright, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... poplars are like ladies trim, Each conscious of her own estate; In costume somewhat over prim, In manner cordially sedate, Like two old neighbours met to chat ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... gesticulate excitedly, and run about like people bereft of their senses. The uncivilization crops out of these obscure Harood villagers far plainer than it does in the tents of the wandering tribes. They are noisier and more boisterous than the nomads, who, as a matter of fact, are sober-sided and sedate in their deportment. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Energetic prying admits first his head, then he squeezes his body through, brushing past the stamens as he finally disappears inside. At the moment when he is forcing his way in, causing the lower lip to spring up and down, the eyeless turtle seems to chew and chew until the most sedate beholder must smile at the paradoxical show. Of course it is the bee that is feeding, though the flower would seem to be masticating the bee with the keenest relish! The counterfeit tortoise soon disgorges its lively ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, His learning seems to lay small stress on, But seems to hear not what he hears; Thrusting his fingers in his ears, Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, In honest parable of Bunyan. His working Sister, more sedate, Listens; but in a kind of state, The painter meant for steadiness; But has a tinge of sullenness; And, at first sight, she seems to brook As ill her needle, as he his book. This is the Picture. For the Frame— 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in the House, he starts up, 'He has good blood in his veins, Tom Mirabell begot him, that rogue cheated me in that affair; that young fellow's mother used me more like a dog than any woman I ever made advances to.' This way of talking of his very much enlivens the conversation among us of a more sedate turn; and I find there is not one of the company, but myself, who rarely speak at all, but speaks of him as of that sort of man who is usually called a well-bred Fine Gentleman. To conclude his character, where women are not concerned, he is ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... more interesting every virtue it softens, giving mild grandeur to the contracted horizon. Nothing can be more beautiful than the poetical fiction, which makes Diana with her silver crescent, the goddess of chastity. I have sometimes thought, that wandering with sedate step in some lonely recess, a modest dame of antiquity must have felt a glow of conscious dignity, when, after contemplating the soft shadowy landscape, she has invited with placid fervour the mild reflection of her sister's beams to turn ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... More important merits than this must, no doubt, be attributed to Max Mueller; but, after all, so wayward is he and so whimsical, such a lover of paradox and of digression, that he must perpetually exasperate that sedate race of men whom Philology is supposed to have peculiarly chosen for its own. In this second series of Lectures, especially, "we have been at a great feast of languages, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... galloped off. Colonel Willett remembered that he was exceedingly well mounted, though plainly dressed, and "very sedate in his air for ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... species of tern, or sea-swallow; the "parson," so called for his sombre appearance and sedate manner, was a kind of sable gull about the size of an English crow. His colour, however, was not black, but a dusky brownish black, as if the reverend gentleman's coat had got rusty from wear. These birds had a very odd, "undertakerish" air about them, which amused Maurice and Florry very ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... High Cliff House or its outbuildings were a horse, a pig, and a dozen hens and two roosters. Captain Obed bought the horse at Mrs. Barnes' request, a docile animal of a sedate age. A second-hand buggy and a second-hand "open wagon" he also bought. The pig and hens Thankful bought herself in Trumet. She positively would not consent to the pig's occupying the sty beneath the woodshed and adjoining the potato ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... standpoint of this calm, deliberate, and correct century—as we conceive our own to be—is for sedate middle-age to judge from its own standpoint the reckless, hot, passionate, lustful humours of youth, of youth that errs ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... progress in crowded omnibuses; no Bohemian teas in paint-smelling studios. The streets through which they passed were wide and stately, even if a trifle windy; a motor car whirled them to their destination (which was always the right place to be seen at); their meals were consumed in sedate Georgian apartments, and in every detail would have satisfied a peer. They moved through life on oiled and noiseless wheels, wrapped in comfort and attended by respect. Let no carping critic say that the good things in this life are not distributed ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... then, pompous, affable, and most sedate, having motioned his visitor into his master's favourite chair, set down the tray of decanters and glasses upon the piano, coughed, and pulled down his waistcoat; and Mr. Brimberly did it all with that air of portentous dignity ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... courts, and may be sure of hearing admiring whistles shrilled through the sunny air. When a lady walks through a college quadrangle and hears no sibilation, let her know sadly that first youth is past. Even the sedate guardianship of Scribe and Urchin did not forfeit one Lady of Destiny her proper homage of tuneful ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... possessed of a craving spirit for displaying his strength, and doing his pleasure at all times and in all places, not only in contempt of the rights and well-being of his subjects, but at the risk of his own safety, his own power, and even of his crown. Philip was of a sedate temperament, patient, persevering, moved but little by the spirit of adventure, more ambitious than fiery, capable of far-reaching designs, and discreet at the same time that he was indifferent as to the employment of means. He had fine sport with Richard. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in sight at once, and at least three of them were infants lately out of the nest, hardly taught to feed themselves; yet the most sedate head of the household was no more dignified and grown-up in manner than was the youngest of them, for when he had cried over his repast and descended to the fence I could not tell ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... through the bayberry and beachplum bushes. But Brown was not anxious about the dog. What caused him to shout and then break into a run was the sight of Joshua, the old horse, galloping at top speed along the road to the south. Even his sedate and ancient calm had not been proof against the apparition which burst from the kitchen. In his fright he had broken his halter rope and managed—a miracle, considering his age—to leap ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he was not so strict in his ideas concerning the day as most of his parishioners. So long as we were sedate and orderly, and neither talked nor laughed too loud, he seldom interfered with our behaviour, or sought to alter the current of our conversation. I believe he did not, like some people, require or expect us to care about religious ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... the full-length mirror to look at herself before going down, and as she did so, she was conscious that her waiting-woman was looking at her too in sedate approval. The gray satin was very becoming. Its elaborate richness and length of train changed the undeveloped girl, to whom she had given a farewell glance in the small mirror at Downport, to the stateliest of tall young creatures. Her bare arms and neck were as soft and firm as a baby's; ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... be understood from this rather dry recital of what took place at the Paris Caucus, this record of minutes and resolutions, that it was an entirely sedate and dignified gathering. On the contrary, Young America was there and quite often the impression which one gathered was that a dozen or so Big Brothers had been turned loose at once. A great many wild speeches were made and all sorts of ticklish ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... The squaws each threw an emancipated, sinewy leg across a pony's back and followed Alchise's fluttering shirt up the mountain. Kut-le stood holding the bridle of a sedate little horse on which he had fastened a ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... failed to interest and fix the attention of the beholders. The leader of one of these singular parties was the venerable Niccolo Poussin! The air of antiquity which breathed over all his works seemed to have infected even his person and his features; and his cold, sedate, and passionless countenance, his measured pace and sober deportment, spoke that phlegmatic temperament and regulated feeling, which had led him to study monuments rather than men, and to declare that the result of all his experience ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... half inclined to waltz round the room, but she was afraid of disturbing the occupant of the office below. Gradually she sobered down, and by the time Jack Cameron returned she was quite sedate. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... other balustrade, where Watteau, remembering this one, painted for us the 'Plaisirs du Bal,' how often they have lain in ambush, knowing that were one of them to show but the tip of his wings those sedate and migniard masqueraders would faint for very shame; yet ever hoping that they might, by their unseen presence, turn that punctilio of flirtation into love. And always they have flown back from Dulwich unrequited for all the pains ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... moved in a more sedate measure. "I think Jenny Lind has had ride enough for one day. And George Washington likes his four feet better than he does an automobile. He won't mind if ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... the winter's morning the world looked bright and radiant to them. The hurry and rush of Broadway, the crowds constantly surging forward, each one seemingly intent on his own business, the constant roll and rumble of trade,—all so different from the more sedate ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate, Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free: Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... of the course, snap the curb, and run riot. Sensible of the importance of his character, accustomed to hold the reins of arbitrary power; and seated where will is law, the mail-whip carries in his appearance all that may be expected from his elevated situation. Stern and sedate in his manner, and given to taciturnity, he speaks sententiously, or in monosyllables. If he passes on the road even an humble follower of the profession, with four tidy ones in hand, he views him with ineffable contempt, and would consider ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... writings; since that we believe the things stated in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like Plato; ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... on the first floor, I had a glimpse of his father. I remember him as a sedate man who did not insist. If he set a boy right, it was done but verbally; the boy was left to see the justness of the point and to act on it for himself. I gathered, later, that James Prince had done little, unaided, for himself; whatever he had accomplished ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... when TEUCER fled, Driven by a Parent's unrelenting frown, Hope from his spirit chas'd each anxious dread, While on his brow he bound the poplar crown; In rich libation pour'd the generous wine, Then bath'd his temples in the juice divine; And thus, with gladden'd eye, and air sedate, Address'd the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward |
