"Placable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother labouring ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... power Which is our human nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives: By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; Is placable—because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure As more exposed to suffering and distress; Thence, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... distress, because his wife had run off from him for the fourth time with "another gentleman!" He vowed that though he had taken her back three times, he never would receive her more; yet I venture to say, that when the false fair one presents herself, she will find him placable; he is evidently in such distress at having no woman to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... prompted by nothing but sheer kindness and love of harmony, proposed to form a Court of Honour to which the two officers would leave the task of their reconciliation. Unfortunately, they began by approaching Lieutenant Feraud. The assumption was, that having just scored heavily, he would be found placable ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... prisoners all that night, and whatever might have been the construction the Tetons placed on their act, they themselves by dawn were far more placable. Continually they motioned that the whites should come ashore, that they must stop, that they must not go on further up the river. But when all was prepared for the start on the following morning, Lewis ordered the great cable of ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... whirled R——- before it like a feather. The people in the public square seemed much diverted at our predicament, being, I suppose, accustomed to these rude blasts in their mountain-home. However, the wind blew in momentary gusts, and then became more placable till another fit of fury came, and passed as suddenly as before. We walked out of the same gate through which we had entered,—an ancient gate, but recently stuccoed and whitewashed, in wretched contrast to the gray, venerable wall through which it affords ingress,—and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Egan's Life in London.[42] The hero may be called a French Tom Jones in something (but not so much as in the original phrase) of the sense in which Klopstock was allowed to be a German Milton. He has his Allworthy in a benevolent uncle-colonel, peppery but placable; he is far more plentifully supplied than even Tom was with persons of the other sex who play the parts of Black George's daughter and Mrs. Waters, if not exactly of Lady Bellaston. A Sophia could hardly enter into the Kockian ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... relish for every physical and intellectual enjoyment; constitutional intrepidity, and that frankness by which constitutional intrepidity is generally accompanied; spirits which nothing could depress; tempers easy, generous and placable; and that genial courtesy which has its seat in the heart, and of which artificial politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such a disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... we call good humour. Political papers in pacific England and France raved and ranted over the crisis, responsible journals howled with jingoism; but through it all, until the moment when the French agreed to retire, the two most placable and even sociable figures were the two grim tropical travellers and soldiers who faced each other on the burning sands of Fashoda. As we see them facing each other, we have again the vague sense of a sign or a parable which runs through ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... Susan's little poperies, eh? I can't scold you, child, now I've got you; only have your letters forwarded another time," said Sir Harry, placable as ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tone or a right colour, or made a dexterous stroke with his brush. And, again, painters may work out of doors; and the fresh air, the deliberate seasons, and the "tranquillising influence" of the green earth, counterbalance the fever of thought, and keep them cool, placable, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... palms and shook his head "Impossible!" he answered. "We are already en voyage. Time presses. Be placable—tomorrow you shall ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... while there would come to their ears delectable tales of war. They halted upon the pass and prayed, and waited for any sign. For a man's totem may be in the likeness perhaps of an otter, and a man may pray, and if his totem be placable and watching over his man a noise may be heard at once like the noise that the otter makes, though it be but a stone that falls on another stone; and the noise is a sign. The four men's totems that stood so far away were in the likeness of the coney, the bear, ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... two of the gentlemen boarders join hands and dance round you in a ring, calling out, "It's all right! it's all right!" you are apt to be flustered and even displeased. Dr. Warner was a placid but hardly a placable person. The two things are by no means the same; and even when Moon explained to him that he, Warner, with his high hat and tall, solid figure, was just such a classic figure as OUGHT to be danced round ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... against Abel's marrying," interposed Betsey with a placable air. "I knew she'd be a drag on him, an' now that he's goin' into politics with sech good chances, the mo's the pity. I've told him so time and agin when ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... her fixedly, and although her wantonness excited him to vengeance, he could not withstand this affecting appeal. With a placable countenance he raised her from the ground, and consoled her as well as he could, telling her, among other things, that as he knew of no punishment adequate to the magnitude of her folly, he would suspend the consideration ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... my story. Her eyes were large and bright as those of the bison-ox, and her hair black and braided with beads, brushed, as she walked, the dew from the flowers upon the prairies. Her temper was soft and placable, and her voice—what is so sweet as the voice of an Indian maiden when tuned to gladness! what so moves the hearer to grief and melancholy by its tones of sorrow and anguish! Our brother has heard them—let him say if the birds of his own forests, the dove ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Those of them whom I happen to know, or to have met, have shown themselves, in the relations of civil life, to be irritable, self-willed, combative creatures, where the average soldier is calm, unselfish, and placable. There is something incongruous and absurd in the pacifist of British descent. He has fighting in his blood, and when his creed, or his nervous sensibility to physical horrors, denies him the use of fighting, his blood turns sour. He can argue, and object, and criticize, but he cannot ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... of ascending the throne of France; but it is nevertheless certain that she was enabled to dissimulate sufficiently to render her society indispensable to the King, and to accept with a good grace the equivocal honours of her position. Her brother, the Comte d'Auvergne, was, however, less placable; he had always affected to believe in the validity of her claim upon the King, and his naturally restless and dissatisfied character led him, under the pretext of avenging her wrongs, to enter into a conspiracy which had recently been formed against the person of the King, whom certain ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... conduct. Man's intercourse with God is to be kept up as that of an affectionate human relationship, into which no motives either of force or of commerce enter. Although God is so just and holy, he is perfectly placable, and ready to greet the approaches which are made to him. It is absurd to spend so much money and toil on sacrifice, when the happiest relations with God can be attained so much more simply. God forgives without any sacrifice; his ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Mrs. Mallathorpe. Now that her own scheme had failed, she seemed quite placable to all Pratt's proposals—a sure sign of danger to him if he had only known it. "Better let me know them now—and have done ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... at LORD MAYOR; Mace-Bearer grasped with both hands shaft of his ponderous weapon. Both warriors accustomed to public meetings in Dublin; knew what was expected of them by way of argument. LORD MAYOR happily in placable mood. Readjusting around his neck the collar of gold (the very one "MALACHI won from the proud Invader"), he bowed his head; Mace and Sword were deposited behind doorkeeper's chair, and his Lordship strode in, escorted by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... tales of Thebes and Argos. There is for these men no fatality save the evil nature of man, no justice save the doubling of crime, no compensation save revenge: there is for Webster and Ford and Tourneur and Marston no heaven above, wrathful but placable; there are no Gods revengeful but just: there is nothing but this blood-stained and corpse-strewn earth, defiled by lust-burnt and death-hungering men, felling each other down and trampling on one another blindly ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... offices therein,—having been of the Quorum ever since the reign of King Edward the Third,—to avoid mingling in some kind or another in the dissensions with which our beloved country was then torn. Mr. Greenville was indeed a person of a tranquil and placable humour, to whom party janglings were thoroughly detestable; and although he leant naturally, as beseemed his degree, towards the upholding of his Majesty's Crown and Dignity, and the maintenance in proper Honour and Splendour ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... himself very soon found it impossible to continue his countenance to the intrigues against her which he had previously favored. He preferred ingratiating himself and the countess with her. Marie Antoinette was always placable, and from the first had been eager, as the head of the family, to place her sister-in-law at her ease; so that when the count evinced his desire to stand on a friendly footing with her, she showed every disposition ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... right hand, she fibbed me whilst she held me round the neck with her left arm; I was soon glad to beg her pardon on my knees, which she gave me in a moment when she saw me in that condition, being the most placable creature in the world, and not only her pardon, but one of the hairs which I longed for, which I put through a shilling, with which I have on evenings after fairs, like this, frequently worked what seemed to those who looked on downright witchcraft, but which ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the frame of the jelly-fish), neither was there any big rock, like an obstinate barrier rising; but gentle slopes of daisied pasture led the eye complacently, sleek cows sniffed the herbage here and there, and brushed it with the underlip to fetch up the blades for supper-time, and placable trees, forgetting all the rudeness of the winter winds, began to disclose to the fond deceiving breeze, with many a glimpse to attract a glance, all the cream of their summer intentions. And in full enjoyment of all these doings, the poet of the whole stood ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... smelt blood, from the day of his first duel he took a delight in such fatal scenes—being ever ready to rush at and quarrel with any one. The marquis has now, I am glad to say, subsided into a very quiet, placable, and peacemaking old gentleman; but at the time I speak of he was much blamed for his duel with F—, a young man of nineteen. While dining at a cafe he exclaimed, "J'ai envie de tuer quelq'un," and rushed out into the street and to the theatres, trying ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... friends, if they retorted his wit, or defended themselves successfully against his satire. In dispute he was eager, fierce, unsparing, and often precipitated himself into angry discussions with the Council, which, however, always ended in peace and good humor—for he was as placable as passionate. On one occasion he flew into his own room in a storm of passion, and having cooled and come to himself, was desirous to return; the door was locked and the key gone; his fury overflowed all ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... good i' the main, Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, 110 But rougher than His handiwork, be sure! Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, And envieth that, so helped, such things do more Than He who made them! What consoles but this? ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... reasonable, Mary," said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable voice; "she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impression of a very busy, human, energetic man of letters, a good Churchman, and a good citizen, brimful of likes and dislikes, and waving his red beard often as a flag of battle in many a hot skirmish, especially with J.R.G., but always warm-hearted and generally placable—except in the case of James Anthony Froude. The feud between Freeman and Froude was, of course, a standing dish in the educated world of half a century ago. It may be argued that the Muse of History has not decided the quarrel quite ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his merits is less easy for the most competent scholar and the most appreciative critic. In despite of his rare occasional spurts or outbreaks of self-assertion or of satire, he seems to stand before us a man of gentle, modest, shiftless, and careless nature, irritable and placable, eager and unsteady, full of excitable kindliness and deficient in strenuous principle; loving the art which he professionally followed, and enjoying the work which he occasionally neglected. There is no unpoetic ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... by the archbishop of Toledo, proceeded to Segovia, where an interview took place between her and Henry the Fourth, in which she vindicated her past conduct, and endeavored to obtain her brother's sanction to her union with Ferdinand. Henry, who was naturally of a placable temper, received her communication with complacency, and, in order to give public demonstration of the good understanding now subsisting between him and his sister, condescended to walk by her side, holding the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... that time of his life the most placable of men, had shaken his hand heartily. "And I so esteem and admire you, sir," he answered warmly, "that I would I could convert you, for your doctrines are bound to plunge this country into civil war ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... to inflict the same punishment on Raleigh himself, had not Lord Thomas Howard interposed with his good offices, and persuaded Raleigh, though high-spirited, to make submissions to the general. Essex, who was placable, as well as hasty and passionate, was soon appeased, and both received Raleigh into favor, and restored the other officers to then commands.[*] This incident, however, though the quarrel was seemingly accommodated, laid the first foundation of that violent animosity which afterwards took place ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Philopoemen, was like, may see his brazen statue in Rome, which stands beside the great statue of Apollo from Carthage, opposite to the Circus, with a Greek inscription upon it. His temper is said to have been warm, both in love and in anger, though he was ever moderate and placable in inflicting punishment, while he was never weary in conferring favours, and was always eager to help those upon whom he had bestowed some benefit, preserving and protecting them as though they were the most precious of his possessions. Being ambitious and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... gracefully down. "Thou hast it, George," said the placable Prince. "I believe thou wilt be sooner tired of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... these persons were entirely deadened in me by the spectacle I beheld, yet I knew not well how to behave. I was prompted to shew them how placable I was become, by accosting them first: but this might be misconstrued into that servility for which I had thought of them with so much contempt. Beside, the bishop and the president, if not the tutor, were in the phraseology of the world my superiors; and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... They are brave, without Arrogance; gay, without Levity; polite, without Affectation; charitable, without Ostentation; religious, without Formality; affable, without Meanness; generous, without View; and hospitable, without Reserve: In their Converse, easy; in their Dealings just; placable in their Resentments, in their Friendship steady:—They have neither the volatile Airyness of the Frenchman, the stated Gravity of the Spaniard; the supicious Jealousy of the Italian; the forbidding Haughtiness of the German; the saturnine ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... o' a very placable disposition, I didna say much in reply to this harangue; but, mutterin something aboot there bein nae help for't, rushed oot o' the hoose, an' down the confounded lang close, as fast as my legs could carry me, and that was pretty ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... swiftly, and inconclusively, but the fault generally lay in his premisses, which were often wild assumptions; not in his subsequent argument, which was cogent, logical, and admirably quick at finding weak points in his adversary's armour. At the same time he was wholly placable. No one could so banish and obliterate from his mind the impression of the harshest and fiercest arguments. The effervescence of his mind subsided as quickly as it arose. And my whole recollection of the period is that he was in a state ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hadst better manners, or wast i' the stocks, where every prying impertinent should be," replied Conrad, being in no very placable humour with his morning's work. The stranger laughed, not at all abashed by this ill-mannered, testy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the house, and carefully repeated it, whilst Polly turned away as if the conversation did not interest her. Thereupon Mr. Gammon bade them good night, and went his way, marvelling that Polly Sparkes had all at once become so placable. Was it a stratagem to throw him off his guard and bring him into the clutches of some avenger one of these nights? One never knew what went on in the minds of such young ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing |
