"Serenity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... world. And in any case it was inevitable; and Hugh was content as before to leave himself in the hand of God, only glad at least that a process which would naturally have been finished under the overshadowing of the melancholy of youth, could thus be worked out with the temperate tranquillity, the serenity of manhood. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... eggs and garden stuff brought higher prices at Commercial, twelve miles away, than did any in the district. She was not a pretty girl, according to the local standards, but there was about her, even at twenty-two, a clear-headedness and a restful serenity that promised well for ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... the house everybody was crying, in the streets the little girls were dancing around in a ring. And this contrast of anguish and serenity, of grief and calm, imparted to Manuel a confused sense of life. It must, he thought, be something exceedingly sad, and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... against nature, against the circumstances which had conspired to place her in this position; against the man for his apparent lack of interest in her welfare, moved her, though she might have left the man out of it, for certainly he could not be held responsible. Yet his nonchalance, his serenity—something about him—irritated her. Didn't he know she was getting wet? Why didn't he offer her shelter? It did not occur to her that perhaps he knew of no shelter. But while her indignation over his inaction grew she saw that ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... felt as soldiers sometimes feel who know the enemy is undermining them; no danger on the surface; nothing that can be seen, met, baffled, attacked, or evaded; in daily peril, all the more horrible that it imitates perfect serenity, they await the fatal match. She imparted her misgivings to Aubertin; but he assured her ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... people—a scratch lot of wandering Bugis—to the conquest of the bay, and now in his august care they had forgotten all the past, and had lost all concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice, reward, punishment, life or death, with the same serenity of attitude and voice. He understood irrigation and the art of war—the qualities of weapons and the craft of boat-building. He could conceal his heart; had more endurance; he could swim longer, and steer a canoe better than any of his people; he could shoot straighter, and negotiate ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... habitually anxious face smoothed to unusual serenity, and the streaks of pale hair on her veined temples shining glossily beneath the lamp, had seated herself at the table, and was tying up, with her usual fumbling deliberation, a knobby object wrapped in paper. Now and then, as ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but they had the advantage of being a place in which she could walk ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... will see spirits— people who adopt a singular mode of dress in order to appear different from their fellow-creatures—people who are lachrymose, dissatisfied, or in any way morbid. Never forget that TRUE Spiritualism engenders HEALTH OF BODY AND MIND, serenity and brightness of aspect, cheerfulness and perfect contentment,—and that its influence on those who are brought within its radius is distinctly MARKED and BENEFICIAL. The chief characteristic of a true, that is, CHRISTIAN, spiritualist is, that he or she CANNOT be shaken from faith, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... disgraced an experienced chirurgeon. Then in the Bay the sloop had met with half a gale, and the passenger, in circumstances which the skipper knew to be more trying to landsmen than to himself, had maintained a serenity beyond applause. He had even, clinging to the same ring-bolt with the skipper, while the south-wester tore overhead and the gallant little vessel lay over wellnigh to her beam-ends, praised with a queer condescension ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... still lay in wait. Barbara racked her mind for disguise of words, but found none. There was no escape. Even to avoid any longer the waiting eyes would confess too much. She met them and they gazed up into hers in still anguish. Barbara's answered, with a sweet, full serenity. Then without a word or motion came the ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... wife, Josephine, in the days when she thought she was in love with him, used to call him Melanchthon—that was not many years ago, and he still resembled in appearance the poet of the Reformation. But his features had now lost their fine serenity, and he was glad when his bitter and troubled thoughts on the doctrine of justification—a subject he had chosen for its bearing on his brother-in-law's conduct—were interrupted by his wife. Josephine burst into his study in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... return to the court room with their verdict. "It is all over, there is no hope, it is simply a question of time. The disease has progressed very rapidly. One lung is entirely gone and the other substantially." And we must return to the invalid, restore her serenity with a smile, give her reason to hope for convalescence in every line of our faces. Then we feel an unconquerable longing to rush from the room and from the poor creature. We leave the house, we wander at random through the streets; at last, overdone with fatigue, we ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... forces strove to turn him from the truth that they knew he was about to achieve. In the morning they departed, and the Prince as he sat, saw flowers spring up and blossom all around him with miraculous swiftness. The air seemed purer than ever before, the sun was wonderfully bright and a peaceful serenity seemed to enfold the entire earth. And when night came and the stars awoke, the truth for which the Prince had been seeking flowed into his soul. He had indeed become ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... toward between the Florentines' Secretary of State and the Duke of Valentinois, each mistrustful of the other. In the end Cesare, a little out of patience at so much inconclusiveness, though outwardly preserving his immutable serenity, sought to come to grips by demanding that Florence should declare whether he was to account her his friend or not. But this was precisely what Macchiavelli's instructions forbade him from declaring. He answered that he must first write to the Signory, and begged the duke to tell him what terms ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... interwoven sounds, soft lisp of wavelets on the sands a hundred feet below, hum of nocturnal insect life in thickets and plantations, sobbing of a tiny, vagrant breeze lost and homeless in that vast serenity, wailing of a far violin, rumour of distant motor-cars. A night of potent witchery, a woman willingly bewitched. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... seemed scarcely aged at all, in spite of his eight-and-forty years; but there was a greater dignity about his face. Formerly, too, he had been a heavy drinker, but now no signs of excess disturbed the calm serenity of his countenance. The presence of his son, whom he called Raoul—a boy of fifteen—seemed to explain to D'Artagnan the regenerated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... religious art, to which the writer most wisely has directed equal and symmetrical attention, and interrupted partly under extreme pressure of other occupation, and partly in very fear of being tempted to oppress the serenity of the general prospect, which I think these essays are eminently calculated to open before an ingenious reader, with the stormy chiaroscuro of my own preference and reprobation. I leave the work, therefore, absolutely Miss Owen's, with ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... exhibiting whatever he could lay his hands on, including the twins, whom he bore down one after the other, to the great wrath of Sibby, not to say of little Stella herself, while Theodore took the exhibition with perfect serenity. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her toilet. He seemed utterly unconscious of his anomalous condition, and as his business associates are gentlemen, and his intimate friends are ladies, he may drift through life without a single jar to mar the serenity ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... of himself, lost for an instant the absolute serenity of his self-control. He started, and his face expressed his surprise. By what devilish instinct did this raw undergraduate find the one chink in his armour? Deep in his heart, unacknowledged to any one, there was the will to pay many a thousand pounds to the man who would ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dead and buried in the centre of an iceberg or at the bottom of the Polar Sea. His mother—squat, solid, pleasant-faced, and mild—alone put up with his ways with that long-suffering endurance which is characteristic of mothers. Nothing could disturb the serenity of Toolooha. When the young giant, (that was to be), roared, she fondled him; if that was ineffectual, she gave him a walrus tusk or a seal's flipper to play with; if that did not suffice, she handed him a lump ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... wavelets lapped along the shingle, swaying the brilliant sea mosses which clung to the larger rocks. Altogether the scene gave a strong impression of peace and security, yet just in the offing was one jarring contrast—the masts and funnel of the Nebraska slanting up out of the blue serenity, where she lay upon the sloping bottom in the edge of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... does God treat offenders now? Incapable of anger or caprice, he retains his own steady procedures and absolute serenity unaltered, but leaves the culprits to endure the effects of their perverted bearing towards him and towards ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... from her history which follow the baptism of our Lord, she should appear as a matron between forty and fifty, but still of a sweet and gracious aspect. When Michael Angelo was reproached with representing his Mater Dolorosa much too young, he replied that the perfect virtue and serenity of the character of Mary would have preserved her beauty and youthful appearance long ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... of serenity in her air, of state in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Falkland, and such as you. We should be contemptible indeed if the prospect of human improvement did not yield us a pure and perfect delight, independently of the question of our existing to partake of it. Mankind would have little to envy to future ages, if they had all enjoyed a serenity as perfect as mine has been for the latter ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... changed into a bird,—the kingfisher,—and, floating over the sea, she still calls for the lost Ceyx in tones full of plaining and tears. And "whensoever she makes her nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon's weather—days distinguishable among all others for their serenity." ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... but nevertheless I felt an extraordinarily serene satisfaction. Then someone said: "The people who've lost their sons and husbands—now's the time they'll feel it." The truth of this remark struck me with sudden violence. My serenity was broken and I looked into the blackness beneath it. I knew what I was going to see, but, nevertheless, I looked, in spite of myself, and saw innumerable rotting dead that lay unburied in all postures on the bare, shell-tossed earth. A horror of death ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... us, and seeing that we were a pleasant-faced and by no means an antagonistic assembly—even Doria's curiosity lent her a semblance of a sense of humour—she relaxed her Olympian serenity and laughed a little, shewing teeth young and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... there we took a short trip to the Lake of the Isles, a lovely place, where instead of boats full of gigglin' girls with parasols, and college boys with yells and oars, the water lilies float their white perfumed sails, and Serenity and Loneliness seem to kinder drift the boat onwards, and the fashion-tired beholder loves to hasten there, away ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... from her bedroom looking calm and smiling. There was something deliberate about her serenity, and her eyes were tired, but she said the little rest had done her good. Vere instinctively felt that her mother did not wish to be observed, or to have any fuss made about her condition, and Artois took Vere's cue. When tea ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... starts up from his seat. O'Meara lays down his pen, and stares across at his contemporary, but that individual proceeds with unruffled serenity. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... I heard those half-spoken words, "My boy." I ate my breakfast with her and when I was about to get into my saddle at the door I gave her a hug and, as she tenderly patted my cheek, a smile lighted her countenance so that it seemed to shine upon me. I have never forgotten its serenity and sweetness. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... reformatory movement was ever treated any better at the outset? Still, it requires a large stock of patience to be calm under such trying provocations; and the consideration that, after all, they are indispensable to the success of the righteous object sought, can alone impart serenity. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... years without getting any farther, and I closed with a remorseful feeling of having said more than I intended and perhaps having made them feel bad. But not they. They had listened to me throughout with undisturbed serenity. When I had done, the chairman said courteously that they were greatly indebted to me for my frank opinion. Every man was entitled to his own. And he could quite sympathize with me in my inability to catch their ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... behaved, in the rare latter event? As a man in the presence of a miracle done for his sole benefit. He has exulted, then doubted its reality, then betaken himself to the broad prairie, where he is most at home, to cool his blood in the north wind, and restore himself to the serenity, the freedom from entanglements, befitting an uncle at the head of his tribe. This, you say, is all conjecture, deduced from the behavior of those of his nephews who most resemble him? No. Do you not recall that early affair of his, with the dark ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... province of Cumana. The leaves of the pejoa have even a more agreeable smell than those of the Myrtus pimenta, but they yield no perfume when rubbed a few hours after their separation from the tree.) But the great charms of this solitary place were the beauty and serenity of the nights. The proprietor of the farm, who spent his evenings with us, seemed to enjoy the astonishment produced on Europeans newly transplanted to the tropics, by that vernal freshness of the air which is felt on the mountains after sunset. In those distant regions, where men yet ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... said the giant, in his deep, musical tones, "know there's one. It takes more than men to make me believe there ain't. I know it when I look at them!" He waved his hands at the starlit mountains surrounding them, and towering in serenity high ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... drawing, of dancing to Miss de Barral, had no idea; the minds of her medical man, of her dentist, of the servants in the house, of the tradesmen proud of having the name of de Barral on their books, were in a state of absolute serenity. Thus, that fellow, who had unexpectedly received a most alarming straight tip from somebody in the City arrived in Brighton, at about lunch-time, with something very much in the nature of a deadly bomb in his possession. But he ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... with this reposeful life, and without other excitements to emotion than those arising in the family, this scene conveyed to the soul its own serenity. If I had met her there for the first time, between the count and her two children, instead of seeing her resplendent in a ball dress, I should not have ravished that delirious kiss, which now filled me with remorse and with the fear of having lost the future of my love. No; in the gloom ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... is, that the passions of lust and jealousy and rage had at length worn out Shakespeare's strength, and after trying in vain to win to serenity in "The Tempest," he crept home ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... him, being very great. Next day he drove out to Nymphenburg; saw the Pandour devastations there,—might have seen the window where the rugged old Unertl set up his ladder, "For God's sake, your Serenity, have nothing to do with those French!"—and did not want for sorrowful comparisons of past ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... negligent of time and its employment is usually found to be a general disturber of others' peace and serenity. It was wittily said by Lord Chesterfield of the old Duke of Newcastle- -"His Grace loses an hour in the morning, and is looking for it all the rest of the day." Everybody with whom the unpunctual man has to do is thrown from time to time into a state of fever: ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... to build up the largest fortune they could, and they allowed no obstacles to hinder them. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. In getting their charter for the notorious Chemical Bank, they bribed members of the Legislature with the same phlegmatic serenity that they would put through an ordinary business transaction. This bank, as we have brought out previously, was chartered after a sufficient number of members of the Legislature had been bribed with $50,000 in stock and a large sum of money. Yet now that this bank is one of the richest and most ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... heard of their adventures at the bears' den he became serious at once. But it was not the strange noise they heard that disturbed his serenity. It was regarding the unknown Mexican lurking ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... not be from grief, but because the end was so beautiful, so glorious! It was at sunset, and the streamers of the sun were coming horizontally into the room. He awoke from a long drowsiness, and a serenity almost angelic overspread his face. I could see that he was himself once again. Death had led him back through the long years since he was a child, and he knew he was an old man and I a young woman. 'Have the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... conflicts and the heaviest trials. We cannot explain the process, but we see in others or feel in ourselves this: that out of the hardest struggle in which we have held our ground comes the deepest peace. What serenity is to the intellectual life, that to the moral life is this "peace which passeth understanding," this blending of gladness and love. It is not a passive condition, but of the highest potential energy,—the parent of all great ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... open doorway stood, with an air of great serenity, a rather tall young woman, definitely though indefinably artistic— her dress the colour of spring and her hair of autumn leaves, with a face which, though still comparatively young, conveyed experience as well as intelligence. All she said was, 'I ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... is hardly possible to conceive a more intelligent, venerable looking head, than poor Herbert Stockhore presents; a fine capacious forehead, rising like a promontory of knowledge, from a bold outline of countenance, every feature decisive, breathing serenity and thoughtfulness, with here and there a few straggling locks of silvery gray, which, like the time-discoloured moss upon some ancient battlements, are the true emblems of antiquity: the eye alone is generally dull and sunken in the visage, but during his temporary ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... formidable in military enginery. This custom was dispensed with at once, after emancipation. As Christmas came on the Sabbath, it tested the respect for that day. The morning was similar, in all respects, to the morning of the Sabbath described above; the same serenity reigning everywhere—the same quiet in the household movements, and the same tranquillity prevailing through the streets. We attended morning service at the Moravian chapel. Notwithstanding the descriptions we had heard of the great ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... chapter "Des Biens de Fortune" we may be astonished at his courage, and we may see in him a direct precursor of the revolution which took a little more than a hundred years to gather before it broke on France. He describes the great of the earth with a savage serenity, and then he adds, "Such people are neither relatives, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even men. They have money." There are many such maxims in the chapter "De l'homme" which must have set people's thoughts running in channels ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Meyerbeer's finest effort. In his old age Meyerbeer seems to have looked back to the days of his Italian period, and thus, though occasionally conventional in form, the melodies of 'L'Africaine' have a dignity and serenity which are rarely present in the scores of his French period. There is, too, a laudable absence of that ceaseless striving after effect which mars so ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... I think she isn't cantankerous. Quite selfish people never are; they just grab everything in sight, with a total serenity and regardless of any consequences. That is the reason Mrs. Brenton is such a good subject ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... never confessed to you. Yes. It is true that I was cruel to you—deliberately. I did want to hurt you. And do you know why? I wanted to shatter that Olympian serenity of yours. You were too strong, too self-confident. You had the air of a being that nothing could hurt. You were like ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... suppose they would, according to their known system of warfare, divide into small parties, and scatter over the whole country, infesting every road and path; and he knew not how soon some of them might be found following on the heels of the messenger. He took advantage of the first symptom of returning serenity on the part of his host, to acquaint him with his resolution to set out immediately, the rains having ceased, and the clouds broken up and ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... went, from house to house and between the village and the plantation, working, working steadily. Yet they were aware, all the time, of the pursuing terror, behind the turn of the road; they were held still in their intentness. Over all of them was a quiet, fixed serenity. McClane's body had lost its eager, bustling energy and was still; his face was grave, preoccupied and still; only Trixie Rankin went rushing, and calling out to her quiet man in ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... years are out, and another is chose, a messenger is, sent to him, who stands at the bottom of the stairs, and he at the top, and says, "Va. Illustrissima Serenita sta finita, et puede andar en casa."—"Your serenity is now ended; and now you may be going home," and so claps on his hat. And the old Duke (having by custom sent his goods home before), walks away, it may be but with one man at his heels; and the new one brought immediately in his room, in the greatest state in the world. Another account was told ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... woman, my child," said the duchess, as she keenly scrutinised the fair face with great blue eyes and broad humourous mouth, which, but for an added serenity and dignity, was so very like the face of the girl who had been left behind at Ismailiah over twenty years ago, and who had journeyed into the desert with the Arabian Sheikh and had married him. "I'm not surprised your husband adores you. Could he not have ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... ugly look, and said: "What an odious visage is this, a hideous figure; what an accursed appearance, and ungracious demeanor!—Would to God, O raven of the desert! we were wide apart as the east is from the west:—The serenity of his peaceful day would change into the gloom of night, who on issuing forth in the morning might cross thy aspect. An ill-conditioned wretch like thyself should be thy companion; but where could we find such ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... secured the price of his treason, and was in the full enjoyment of the estates of Penford-bourne. Not even certain domestic troubles that occurred regarding the marriage of his daughter, Lady Eleanor, disturbed the serenity of his content. Before his accession to the property of Lord Langleigh, Lord Ashkirk had betrothed his daughter to his nephew, Walter Dixon, the son of a wealthy attorney, who had married the peer's sister. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... female in frantic haste and Edwin Gurwood, occupying the exact spot he had vacated, had the bundle thrust into his hand. He retained it mechanically, in utter abstraction of mind. The bell rang, and the magnificent guard, whose very whiskers curled with an air of calm serenity, said, "Now then, take your seats; make haste." Edwin grew desperate. Emma smiled bewitchingly to a doting female friend who had nodded and smiled bewitchingly to Emma for the last five minutes, under the impression that the train was just going to start, and who earnestly wished that it would ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... his hat tilted over his eyes. He pulled his tawny beard lazily with one hand, and with the other caressed a great tumbler of iced beer. He was beautifully happy in his perfect idleness, and a sense was upon him of the eternal fitness of things in general. In the absolute serenity of his beatitude he fell asleep, with one hand still lazily clutching his beard, and the other still lingering lovingly near the great tumbler. This was surely not surprising, and on the face of things it would not have seemed that there was any reason for blushing at ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... his boots and equipment still on, a veritable boy breathed regularly in the same attitude into which he had sunk the moment he had passed inside. His pale, tired face was dimly visible in the hazy starlight and one wondered at the peaceful serenity. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... 'smarter' than ever and her waist was smaller and her back straighter and the fall of her shoulders finer; her long eyes were more oddly charming and the extreme detachment of her elbows from her sides conduced still more to the exhibition of her beautiful arms. So she floated, with a serenity not disturbed by a general tardiness, through the interminable succession of her engagements. Her photographs were not to be purchased in the Burlington Arcade—she had kept out of that; but she looked more than ever as they would have represented her if they had been obtainable there. There ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... her deep easy-chair sat the great-grandmother, dozing. Hers was the only face that did not show any change, or lose any of its usual serenity. She opened her eyes now and then, then dozed off again. Soon after twelve o'clock the women busied themselves with arranging the table ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... inflated with passion; but such was his self-command, and so habitual his dissimulation, that, by the time he reached his seat, all traces of agitation had disappeared; his countenance had resumed its usual expression of stern serenity, and his manners their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... adopted the Panglossian view of the universe I used no arguments that might cloud his serenity. I acquiesced with mental reservations. We talked for a time, Paragot sitting primly on a straight-backed chair. He had abandoned his sprawling attitudes, for fear, I suspect, of spoiling his new clothes. The position, however, not making for ease of conversation, he presently took up a book and ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... a distance I had wondered at the Reverend Gregory Goodloe, wondered at his freedom from all resentment because of his ministerial and spiritual failures and at his loving serenity and enjoyment of us all. He partook of the joy in almost all of our adventures in pleasure, and when we did things that in the nature of the case would seem to merit his disapproval, he never administered it; he simply was not with us, but was serenely about his business at the other ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he gave a sheep and wine to the people, which, with the smoothness of the sea, and the serenity of the sky, so enlivened them that they perfectly recovered ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... the privilege of reading his letters to his family from the day of April when, as a private in the New York Seventh, he obeyed the President's first call. Some day they must be published, for they form a veritable poem for serenity and simplicity of tone. He took to camp life as if it were his native element, and (like so many of our young soldiers) he was at first all eagerness to make arms his permanent profession. Drilling and disciplining; interminable marching and counter-marching, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... begun, and the ugly noises they made at the tramway depot, where they were booing some one, penetrated into the palace. He had to snatch a meal between services, and the sense of hurry invaded his afternoon lectures to the candidates. He hated hurry in Ember week. His ideal was one of quiet serenity, of grave things said slowly, of still, kneeling figures, of a sort of dark cool spiritual germination. But what sort of dark cool spiritual germination is possible with an ass like ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... at this moment as he stood in the ring, Cecil saw the betting man with whom Berkeley was taking long odds on the race; he raised his eyebrows, and his face darkened for a second, though resuming its habitual listless serenity almost immediately. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... your fun,' the father says, once more putting his hands on Dick's shoulders. 'Let me look at you again, Dick. There is such a serenity about you now.' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... serenity of the village that O'Flaherty was about to make a little speech—a situation which usually deprived him of half his wits. Still with the suspicion of conscious weakness, he read something affecting himself in the general buzz and countenance of the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wrangling and confusion which the presence of the others bred, Flavia regained her serenity as she walked. There was nothing, indeed, in the face of nature, in the mist and the dark day, and the moisture that hung in beads on thorn and furze, to cheer her. But she drew her spirits from a higher source, and, sanguine and self-reliant, foreseeing ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... where the pile was made, with an inscription to the honour of the deceased. When they come from the funeral, they discourse of his good life and worthy actions, but speak of nothing oftener and with more pleasure than of his serenity at the hour of death. They think such respect paid to the memory of good men is both the greatest incitement to engage others to follow their example, and the most acceptable worship that can be offered them; for they believe that though by the imperfection of human sight they are invisible ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... itself a token of our Lord's divinity. The serenity in which He makes His claims is as stupendous as the claims themselves. "Finished," perfected in the utmost refinement, to the last, remotest detail! Nothing scamped, nothing overlooked, nothing forgotten! Everything which concerns ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... with the same undiminished splendour, and rise and set with the same regularity. So that from time immemorial the stars have been regarded by mankind as the embodiment of all that is eternal and unchangeable. Yet, the serenity of the celestial regions does not always remain undisturbed—at occasional times a 'Nova,' or new star, blazes forth unexpectedly in the heavens, and perplexes astronomers; and, after shining with a varying degree of brilliancy for a few weeks or months, gradually ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... sky," used to express a state of prosperity. He does not mean, by the phrase, the serenity of mind which prosperity produces, nor any other abstract inflexion or suggestion of the figure. He is constantly exposed to the storms of heaven, in the chase, and on the war path; and, even in his best "lodge," he finds but little shelter from their fury. Clear weather ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... sudden change from darkness to this dreadful light, it was not the sound of distant shrieks and shouts of triumph, it was not this dread invasion of the serenity and peace of night, that drove the man back as though a thunderbolt had struck him. It was the Bell. If the ghastliest shape the human mind has ever pictured in its wildest dreams had risen up before him, he could not have ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... evening with a coppery sunset flaring across the snow, but intensely cold, and though they had wood enough and sat close beside a fire with their ragged blankets wrapped round them they could not keep warm. Harding and Benson were openly dejected, but Blake had somehow preserved his cheerful serenity. As usual after finishing their scanty supper, they began to talk, for during the day conversation was limited by the toil of the march. By and by Harding took a few bits of resin ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... habit of finding pleasure everywhere; and to see the bright side of everything. "Serenity of mind comes easy to some, and hard to others. It can be taught and learned. We ought to have teachers who are able to educate us in this department of our natures quite as much as in music or art. Think of a school or classes for training men and women to carry ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... lived like a bird of the air; he did not know in the morning what he would eat at midday. It was not that he was lacking in will, or energy, or feeling for his mother; it was simply that he felt no inclination for work and did not recognize the advantage of it. His whole figure suggested unruffled serenity, an innate, almost artistic passion for living carelessly, never with his sleeves tucked up. When Savka's young, healthy body had a physical craving for muscular work, the young man abandoned himself completely for a brief interval to some ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not usually minister to repose; but the Governor's serenity was too deep to be easily disturbed, and he felt the calmness of a man who knows there is a mosquito in the room, but has drawn the netting close about his head. This calmness reflected itself in the accent with which ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... and purity of such a union as ours. I tried to inspire her with trust and confidence. She listened to me with a bright, serene countenance, and now and then turned her beautiful eyes towards me. The serenity of the weather corresponded with the serenity of our souls. The sun had gone down behind the mountains; and they shone now in their evening dress of purple. I offered my arm to Aniela, which she accepted, and so we went together ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... light and peace; looking back upon the world and its troubles, with a surprise and satisfaction similar in kind (though far higher in degree) to that which we now feel, when we escape from a terrifying dream, and open our eyes to the sweet serenity of a summer morning." Sometimes, in our dreams, we imagine scenes of pure and unutterable joy; and how much do we regret at waking, that the heavenly vision is no more! But what must the raptures of the good man ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... I know nothing of your nursing. But from your face, from a something, a serenity and strength that your presence suggests, I feel that you must understand and ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... was a very calm, very secure refuge. There was no danger of discovery. Yet there was a restlessness in my spirit at war with the half-mournful, half-joyous serenity of the place, where I had seen so many people die, and where there were so many new graves in the little cemetery up the hill. If I could go away for a while, I might return, and learn to be content ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... greetings of multitudes of children lift the shadows from the darkest day, and always there is the glorious scenery; the shadowed mystery of the mountains, a turquoise sky, the blossoms and bamboo. The brooding spirit of serenity soon envelops me, and in its irresistible charm is found ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... officials and soldiers were handsomely rewarded for their trouble, and Lady Hester set out on her homeward journey, minus her tents, palanquin, military escort, and other emblems of grandeur, but with no loss of dignity or serenity. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... worshipped thee. The Persian, on his mountain-top, Waits kneeling till thy sun go up, God-like in his serenity. All-giving, and none-gifted, he draws near, And the wide earth waits till his face appear— Longs patient. And the herald glory leaps Along the ridges of the outlying clouds, Climbing the heights of all their towering steeps. Sudden, still multitudinous laughter crowds The universal face: ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... fields the mountains climb in rocky slopes to solitudes of stone and sunlight that curve round and join that wall of cliffs in one common skyline. This desolate and austere background contrasts very vividly with the glowing serenity of the great lake below, with the spacious view of fertile hills and roads and villages and islands to south and east, and with the hotly golden rice flats of the Val Maggia to the north. And because it was a remote and insignificant ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... acquired a larger measure of gravity and his thought took a profounder cast than characterised it in youth. The highest topics of tragedy were naturally more congenial to him, and were certain of a surer handling when he was nearing his fortieth birthday than at an earlier age. The serenity of meditative romance was more in harmony with the fifth decade of his years than with the second or third. But no more direct or definite connection can be discerned between the progressive stages of his work and the progressive stages ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... obsolete Cowper's belief, and the language in which he expresses it may have become for many of us, we must take it as his philosophy of life. At this time, at all events, it was a source of happiness. "The storm being passed, a quiet and peaceful serenity of soul succeeded," and the serenity in this case was unquestionably produced in part ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... sovereign surrounded by subjects, of a glorious prince upon a throne. There is no thought of war, or of strife, or of suffering, or of triumph, or of vengeance connected with the Epiphany, but of august majesty, of power, of prosperity, of splendour, of serenity, of benignity. Now, if at any time, it is fit to say, "The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him[1]." "The Lord sitteth above the waterflood, and the Lord remaineth a king for ever." "The Lord ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... brief silence—not without a certain dramatic significance to the girl who stood there with slightly parted lips. The smooth serenity of her forehead was broken by a frown; her beautiful blue eyes were troubled. She seemed somehow to have dilated, to have drawn herself up. Her air of politeness, half gracious, half condescending, had vanished. It was as though in spirit she ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a thousand times no," cried my uncle. "I do not wish to disturb the serenity of any man. I thank you, however, with all my heart. The presence of one so learned as yourself, would no doubt have been most useful, but the duties of your ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... resourceful in its serenity, caused all eyes to turn at length to him as if for explanation. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Codman says of him that he was "a finely formed, large, graceful-featured, modest man. His voice was low, soft, and calm. His presence inspired confidence and respect. Whatever he touched was well done. He was faithful and dignified, and the serenity of his nature welled up in genial smiles. In farm-work he was Mr. Ripley's right hand. They agreed in practical matters, and Ripley deferred to his judgment. His wife was an earnest, strong, faithful worker. They entered into the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... was it, that it seemed like sacrilege to disturb the serenity of that Sabbath day. The sanctuaries stood invitingly in the way, and one could in fancy, almost hear the peal of the organ, as the choir chanted, "Gloria in excelsis"—Glory be to God on high and on earth peace, good will to men—and the voice of the preacher, as he read: "And ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Roden. But I doubt whether it be good that a man's heart should be much gladdened. Gladness and sorrow counterbalance each other too surely. An even serenity is best fitted to human life, if it ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... girl afraid to come and say so, it didn't matter much; anyhow nothing like so much as having one's peace upset. How foolish to be so agitated and talk of having been robbed of everything. Fritzing's mind, she feared, that large, enlightened mind on whose breadth and serenity she had gazed admiringly ever since she could remember gazing at all, was shrinking to dimensions that would presently exactly match the dimensions of Creeper Cottage. She went upstairs disheartened and tired, and dropping down ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... you to set out towards them, as you intended; the sun shone all day, and the moon at night, and all nature, for three miles round, looked gay. Indeed, we have had nine or ten days of such warmth and serenity, (here called heat,) as I scarce remember when the year begins to have gray, or rather yellow hairs. All windows have been flung up again and fans ventilated; and it is true that hay-carts have been transporting haycocks, from a second crop, all the morning ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... as her eyes travelled down the pages. It occurred to me after I had retired to my room that night, that an English girl of twenty-one would not have weathered the concentrated gaze of three strangers with such serenity of features. An observant and invisible critic might have imagined us to have been awaiting the decision of a young and charming Sibyl, so intently did we gaze and so neglectful was she of our regard. This apparent coldness was explained to me by Bill as a characteristic ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... wind-flowers on the banks, and wine-coloured anemones under the thick ilex-like olives; and all round the splendid pale-blue chains of jagged and conical mountains. A population of tattered people and galled horses; much misery; a sort of more savage Umbrian landscape, and without Umbrian serenity; deserted, deserted roads. I am writing from the olive yard above the inn; the rugged little Olevano hanging, almost sliding, down the hillside opposite, black ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... suspected crime; and if, before his acquittal, one might have fancied from the descriptions of his countenance that none but that of Mephistopheles in the celebrated picture of the Game of Life could equal its terrific malignity, after-accounts drew it a very Saint John's for sweet serenity of expression. What was then called sullenness now took the name of resignation, and stupidity was quiet contempt. Indeed, I began to fear that they would give him a public triumph, and invite me to make the flag with ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... sit knitting mufflers for the soldiers in the trenches, and not think of Boris and also of Ian, whom they had all conspired to send to the same danger and perhaps death? She could not understand her mother's serenity. It occurred to her this afternoon, that she might have run away with Ian to Shetland and there her sisters would have seen her married; and she did not do this, she obeyed her parents, and what did she get for it? Loneliness and misery and her lover sent far away from her. Oh, those moments ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hoped to live and die—even if it did not pass from their possession—bartered for some glittering toy—could not remain their permanent home. For this flowed her first tears; and these, as we have said, were for herself. But her mind soon regained its serenity; and from herself, her thoughts turned to her husband. She was unselfish enough not only to be able to realize something of his state of mind, but to sympathize with him, and pity his inability to find contentment in the actual. This ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... anything for you, and if he can, and will, he will serve you with care and friendliness; but ask him to fetch you vodka—and his habitual serenity and friendliness will pass at once into a sort of joyful haste and alacrity; he will be as keen in your interest as though you were one of his family. The peasant who fetches vodka—even though you are going to drink it and ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the city, bringing with them what little of provisions or money they may possess, and are quartered upon the inhabitants, or take up a temporary abode in the open squares, or in the courts and porticos of palaces and temples—the softness and serenity of the climate rendering even so much as the shelter of a tent superfluous. But by this vast influx the population of the city cannot be less than doubled, and I should tremble for the means of subsistence for so large a multitude, did I not know the inexhaustible ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... whimsical smile of the unknown had humiliated her. She felt he had laughed at her prim propriety in wishing to get rid of him before the gate. Indeed, she suddenly felt he might laugh at a good many of the things she did. And this ruffled her serenity. She put up her slender hands and pushed the thick hair back from her forehead with an impatient gesture. It all made her dissatisfied with ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... dark-brown and the hair was of tawny gold, but the complexion was of that clear and healthy pallor so rarely met with among blonde women. The finest thing about her face was its expression of perfect serenity. Even now, as she stood looking at Farnham, with her hands in his, her cheek flushed a little with the evident pleasure of the meeting, she received his gaze of unchecked admiration with a smile as quiet and unabashed as that of ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... drifted across the sky of his serenity, however, as a blockade of traffic delayed his car in front of the old Adams homestead, rising among lilacs that flooded half city square with fragrance. The old house, famous beyond its own day for Judge Adams's friendship ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... American people, and in no man had they a better representative or a more effective advocate. There was in him something of John Bright's sturdy manhood, direct speech and devotion to human rights; something, too, of Franklin's homely shrewdness,—though little of Franklin's large philosophy or serenity. He was at first a Henry Clay Whig, and always a zealous protectionist; then in alliance with the anti-slavery element in the party, and soon the leading Republican editor. He was a lover of peace, in active sympathy with social reforms, sometimes ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... his life seen nor heard. But Mubarek laughed at him and said to him, "Fear not, O my lord; this whereat thou art affrighted is that which we seek; nay, it is a presage of good to-us. So take heart and be of good cheer." After this there came a great clearness and serenity and there breathed pure and fragrant breezes; then, presently, behold, there appeared the King of the Jinn in the semblance of a man comely of favour, there was none like unto him in his goodliness, save He who hath no like and to whom belong might and majesty. ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... a man who at a card-table can preserve a serenity in his looks, under good or bad luck, has considerably the advantage of one who appears elated with success, or cast down with ill fortune, from our being able to read his cards in his face; so ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... town. But Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturb the felicity of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that his interment should be private, prepared himself for the great change by devotions which astonished those who had called him an atheist, and died with the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian, while his friends and kindred, not suspecting his danger, were tasting the sack posset and drawing the curtain. [564] His legitimate male posterity and his titles soon became extinct. No small portion, however, of his wit ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the high well-born Count? The liveried servant (somewhat haughtily) would inquire of his Serenity. Sir Charles sent up his card, and also Lady Vandrift's. These foreigners know ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... advantages of the woolsack, used to stipulate for special allowance—over and above the ancient emoluments of place. Lord Nottingham had an allowance of L4000 per annum; and Lord Guildford, after a struggle for better times, was constrained, at a cost of mental serenity, to accept the seals, with a special salary of half ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... It was about the going down of the sun that God brought me to that state in which I said, "Thy will be done. I am willing to be annihilated; I am willing to fail if the Lord wants me to." I gave it all up into the hands of God, and rose up in a state of peace and serenity simply unspeakable, and when the coach came to take me down to Manchester Hall I felt no disturbance nor dreamed ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... a smile, that had no brightness in it, flickered over his full lips, then died, leaving behind it an impassible serenity. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... of the bravery of His Majesty, whom his father Amen loved more than any other king of Egypt from the very beginning, the King of the South and North, Aakheperenra, the son of Ra, Thothmes (II), whose crowns are glorious, endowed with life, stability, and serenity, like ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... have described above allowed to disturb their serenity. It soon became known to the innermost circle of Wall Street that the stock the three men had resold to "Standard Oil" represented the share of each in some of the gigantic deals to which he had been a party during the last ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... with gratitude, that his intellects had been preserved clear throughout his illness. During the night, he was much engaged in prayer; his bodily powers were fast sinking, but his mind appeared preserved in peaceful serenity. In the morning, he expressed a desire that his sister would remain by him, affectionately inquired for his father, and soon after, we reverently believe, exchanged a state of suffering for one of never-ending rest and joy, in the everlasting kingdom ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... frankness and candor. He was the type of a true American, able, unselfish, prudent, unambitious, and good. Other pens will do justice to his memory, but I thought as I heard the last account of him alive, as he lay within the rebel lines, his face wearing that calm serenity which grew more beautiful the nearer death approached, after having given so abundantly of his goods, now yielding his life to his country in the hour of her trial, that hereafter the good and true men of the nation would emulate the illustrious ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... good time, my boy," he calmly remarked. This was tantalizing. My strange narrative did not seem to have disturbed his serenity in the least degree. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Mirah with new examination. After laying down her hat and pushing her curls flat, with an air of fatigue, she placed herself on a chair opposite her friend in her habitual attitude, her feet and hands just crossed; and at a distance she might have seemed a colored statue of serenity. But Mrs. Meyrick discerned a new look of suppressed suffering in her face, which corresponded to the hint that to be patient and hopeful required ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... He was very pale—unhealthily so—perhaps with the progress of the disease of which he was to die in so short a time. In contrast with his usual brilliancy of mind, he seemed to me, at first, depressed and quiet—with a kindly serenity of manner, at once gracious, and intimate, ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... is serenity attributed amongst the titles of Princes, and the beams of the sun to irradiate their Crowns; That the Scepter bears a Flower; since as that glorious planet produces, so does it also wither them; ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... have been more innocent than the serenity with which these wicked little places revealed themselves for what they were; and, bound by this final tie of guilelessness, they stood together in a row which ended with a companionable barbershop, much like them. Beyond was a series of soot-harried frame two-story ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... may pass with increasing prosperity and renown. And it may well happen that in the crises of a distant future the momentous trial of 1868, though properly resulting in acquittal of the accused, will be recalled as demonstrating the ease and the serenity with which, if necessity should demand it, the citizens of a free country can lawfully deprive a corrupt or dangerous Executive of the office he has dishonored and the power ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... silence. The countenance of Herbert had been for a moment troubled, but after a few seconds resumed its serenity, heightened by the fervid feelings of ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... sudden thought, I turned from the beauties of this our island to study the beauty of her who sat beside me; the proud carriage of her shapely head 'neath its silky masses of hair, the level brows, the calm, deep serenity of her blue eyes, the delicate nose, full red lips and dimpled chin, the soft round column of her throat, deep bosom and slender waist—thus sat I staring upon her loveliness heedless of all else until she stirred uneasily, as if conscious of my regard, and looked at ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... point of being realised, and hence we indulged our imaginations in those romantic schemes which the fancied possession of the Chilean gold and Peruvian silver might be conceived to inspire. These joyous ideas were heightened by the brightness of the sky and the serenity of the weather, which was indeed most remarkably pleasing; for though the winter was now advancing apace, yet the morning of this day, in its brilliancy and mildness, gave place to none we had seen since our departure from England. Thus animated by these delusions, ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle overdrawn. True, he ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... bosom rests a mirrored image of that which lies beyond its farther bank—a great town with glistering walls and gleaming spires reaching tower above tower and height above height into the blazing blue, the awful serenity of a heavenly sky. One can know that toward that town the poor man who had sinned and repented would in the evenings gaze and wonder until his soul, now ploughed clean for new seed, might learn the laws that would make it indeed an inhabitant of that place. It is a serene and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... chariot passed a fair open space, on the outskirts of the city. A sudden chill froze the serenity of Ascobaruch's mood. He prodded the charioteer sharply in ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the intense enjoyment of pleasures independent of the body.' She sent me a little work of hers called 'Traditions of Palestine.' Her friends had hoped by the stationary character of some symptoms that the disease was suspended, but lately it is said to be gaining ground, and the serenity and elevation of her mind are more and more triumphantly evident as the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... themselves and settled down into something like collected calmness—he felt a sensation of indescribable joy at having triumphed over the appalling temptations which had beset him. And in his soul a voice seemed to be singing an anthem of delight and gratitude; and he soon experienced a serenity of mind such as he had not known for many hours past! When man, having yielded to temptation, succeeds in escaping the perils of the consequences, he beholds a strong motive for self-gratulation;—but how ineffably ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... lean heavily on what they find of the above influence in him. They won't follow the rivers in his thought and the play of his soul. And their cousin cataloguers put him in another pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic." They translate his outward serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than sensuous. A sombre dignity of style ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... falter; she was merely practising a trained discretion. She was going to buy a pair of satin dancing slippers though the whole world should look upon her as lost. Too long, she felt, had she dwelt among the untrodden ways. As she had confided to her journal, the placid serenity of her life had become a sea of mad unrest. Old moorings had been wrenched loose; she floated with strange tides. And Wilbur Cowan, who was going to war, had invited her to be present that evening at the opening of Newbern's new and gorgeous ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... BUILDER is sitting in his after-breakfast chair before the fire with The Times in his hands. He has breakfasted well, and is in that condition of first-pipe serenity in which the affairs of the. nation seem almost bearable. He is a tallish, square, personable man of forty-seven, with a well-coloured, jowly, fullish face, marked under the eyes, which have very small pupils and a good deal of light in them. His ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is the literal English:—"Your Electoral Serenity will doubtless rejoice with us that the little Prince Fritz has now got his sixth tooth without the least INCOMMODITE. And therein we may trace a pre-destination, inasmuch as his Brothers died of teething [Not of cannon-sound and weight of head-gear, then, your Majesty thinks? That were ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... surrounded herself more than ever with children, taking a Catechism class and encouraging her small scholars to come to Top Meadow where her garden also helped her towards a difficult peace and serenity, rendered harder by the struggle with ill health. Soon we began to realise that the physical weakness, which all her courage could not overcome, was more than merely her old malady. "What did Frances die of?" Bernard Shaw wrote to me. "Was it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... less strong in her likes and dislikes, less violent in her prejudices, she might have forced herself to dwell upon the advantages over her present position and come to accept the situation with something like serenity. But she was too strong a character to adapt herself complacently to a livelong, intimate association with a person so genuinely, so uncontrollably, physically repugnant to her as ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... hours by his avalanche of words. But the long walk that we took in the afternoon, that he might give me convincing proof of the soundness of his archaeological theories, fortunately set matters right again; and when we returned in the late day to the Chateau my old friend had recovered his normal serenity of soul. ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... as Lucilla had proposed. She wished me to play first, and to play alone. I was teaching her, at the time, one of the Sonatas of Mozart; and I now tried to go on with the lesson. Never before, or since, have I played so badly, as on that day! The divine serenity and completeness by which Mozart's music is, to my mind, raised above all other music that ever was written, can only be worthily interpreted by a player whose whole mind is given undividedly to the work. Devoured as I then was by my own anxieties, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... During an argument he was often excited. The war of words, the keen and subtle conflict between trained minds—in this his soul took delight, in this he sought and found the joy of battle and of victory. Yet he would not allow his serenity to be ruffled by any foe whom he considered unworthy of his steel; he refused to argue with people whom he knew to be hopelessly illogical—definitely refused, though with such tact that no wound was given, even to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Colosseum would no doubt still stand, and be as provocative of thought as the Pyramids themselves. It has already survived many earthquake shocks and nineteen noisy centuries. It stands to-day in grey serenity—a mighty stone structure of great height and massivity, with tier upon tier of galleries where could be accommodated surely all the Rome of its day. There is no other place like it—with its two hundred and forty arched entrances, and its cages ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... be needed by the many thousands who have lived with me the wonderful sunrise of Paul's love, and the sad gray morning of his bereavement. To these friends who, with Paul, loved and mourned his beautiful Queen and their dear son, the calm peace and serenity of the high noon of Paul's life will seem but ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... that from first to last Louis Napoleon was courteous, affable, gentle, patient, and kind, with a control over his feelings and thoughts absolutely marvellous and unprecedented in a public man,—if we except Disraeli. Nothing disturbed his serenity; very rarely was he seen in a rage; he stooped and coaxed and flattered, even when he sent his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... off as delightfully as a visit might have been expected to pass off when it was the first day of smooth experience in a hitherto obstructed love-course. And then came a series of several happy days, of the same undisturbed serenity. Dick could court her when he chose; stay away when he chose,—which was never; walk with her by winding streams and waterfalls and autumn scenery till dews and twilight sent them home. And thus they drew near the day of the Harvest Thanksgiving, which was also the time chosen for ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... thing—a man living in a house in Dublin, living a life of intense, ceaseless, and extraordinarily diversified activity, travelling on life's common way in cheerful godliness, and shedding abroad to the remotest corners of the earth a masculine serenity of soul. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Poets" this master singer is described as the most melodious of our songsters, with the exception of the Wood Thrush, a bird whose strains, more than any other's, express harmony and serenity, and he complains that no merited poetic monument has yet been reared to it. But there can be no good reason for complaining of the absence of appreciative prose concerning the Hermit. One writer says: "How pleasantly his notes greet the ear amid the shrieking ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... I felt in my heart that vivifying freshness that characterizes the air near a lake of cool water; the sweet serenity of my father's soul exhaled as a perfume from the dusty leaves I was unfolding. The journal of his life lay open before me; I could count the diurnal throbbings of that noble heart. I began to yield to the influence of a dream that was both sweet ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... consciousness, but to the higher sensations connected with the special organs of perception. The student in optics soon makes the startling discovery that his field of vision has all through his life been haunted with weird shapes which have never troubled the serenity of his mind just because they have never been distinctly ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... him. He laid his hands upon their heads, and in a brief and fervent prayer blessed them. Both were sobbing. Tears ran down his cheeks also; but his countenance was bright in its uplifted serenity, wearing a strange expression ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... darkness visible; it is rather a celestial glory than a light—an emanation that penetrates the grossest body with more subtilety than the rays of the sun penetrate the purest crystal, which rather strengthens than dazzles the sight, and diffuses through the soul a serenity which no language can express. By this ethereal essence the blessed are sustained in everlasting life; it pervades them; it is incorporated with them, as food with the mortal body; they see it, they feel it, they breathe it, and it produces in them an inexhaustible source of serenity and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the contrary, did not seek pleasure, but pleasure seemed to seek him: he had a perpetual complacence and serenity of mind, which rendered him constantly susceptible of pleasing impressions; every thing that was prepared to refresh or entertain him in his seasons of retirement and relaxation, added something to the delight which was ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... climates in brightness and elasticity, so, also, had nature dealt most lovingly with the inhabitants of this land. Throughout the whole being of the Greek there reigned supreme a quick susceptibility, out of which sprang a gladsome serenity of temper, and a keen enjoyment of life; acute sense, and nimbleness of apprehension; a guileless and child-like feeling, full of trust and faith, combined with prudence and forecast. These peculiarities lay so deeply imbedded in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... joyous and exhilarated, for the rest of the year during which she will be bound to her "wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil." Such a possibility, thinks Pippa's trustful heart, must surely be enough to cajole the weather into beauty and serenity. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... barely risen; a new order of things had come. The fire of the day was replaced by the infinite peace of night. Beyond the confines of my little domain the whole world lay hushed and hidden. There were few stars as yet to mock with their passionless serenity the toilers of the earth, worn out with the long day's struggle. Only a great quiet—a great, peaceful quiet—and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Clark stepped out on deck and breathed in the ineffable serenity of the scene. A ray of moonlight lay along the inlet like a silver line. As he went down to his cabin he noticed that the other's door had swung open. Inside the bishop was kneeling by his narrow bunk, his face ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... period of her minority, the management of her fortune and the care of her person, had by the Dean been entrusted to three guardians, among whom her own choice was to settle her residence: but her mind, saddened by the loss of all her natural friends, coveted to regain its serenity in the quietness of the country, and in the bosom of an aged and maternal counsellor, whom she loved as her mother, and to whom she had ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney |
