"Placidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... succeeding twenty-four hours was but that which precedes the storm, and the glassy placidity of Steve's life for that one day proved to be the deceitful stillness of deep waters. Upon his return from the city he was again greeted with the welcome intelligence that Sarah Maria had raised her head, adjusted her hind legs, whose hinges, owing to much kicking, had been reversed of late, ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... before the quarrelsome stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen, they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better halves until they dropped down to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... felt almost certain, knowing her freedom from levity of character, and the extreme simplicity of her intellect. There may, too, have been enough recklessness and resentment beneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any momentary doubts. On a previous occasion when he had declared during a fuddle that he would dispose of her as he had done, she had replied that she would not hear him say that many times more before ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... their unexpected arrival, and since then the good lady had been doing her best to entertain them; for, as she could not help noticing-, they seemed a little dull. It was a great change from the whirl of London to the deep placidity of the Court, and Lady Merceron could not quite understand why Charlie had tired so soon of his excursion, or why his friend persisted with so much fervor that anything was better than London, and the Court was the most charming place he had ever seen. Of the ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... home, share the same one. Love, even universal love, the kind of love with which she felt herself flooded, should not be tried. Much patience and self-effacement were needed for successful married sleep. Placidity; a steady faith; these too were needed. She was sure she would be much fonder of Mellersh, and he not mind her nearly so much, if they were not shut up together at night, if in the morning they could meet with the cheery affection of ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the teachings of modern science and Confucian classic meet; the faith of the Christian grapples with the faith of the Buddhist; the masterful aspirations of Western civilization surge against the old placidity of the East. ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... recumbent figure before him, till gradually,—very gradually,—that figure took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which life has but recently and painlessly departed. The limbs grew stiff and rigid—the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,—the closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised ... there was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of returning animation,—and when, after some little time, Heliobas bent down and listened, there was ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... man of gigantic build, and of imperturbable placidity. When a soldier in the German army had provoked him to the point where he had to fight, this modern Titan had seized his tormenter and without apparent effort had dashed the man's brains out by butting him against the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... no longer. She knew that Hope expected to hear that she was engaged. And not with less placidity ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... aberrations of individual assertion and feeling. By studying together in clubs, by conversing in monotone and by rule, by thinking the same things and exchanging ideas until we have none left, we shall come into that social placidity which is one dream of the nationalists—one long step towards what may be called a prairie mental condition—the slope of Kansas, where those who are five thousand feet above the sea-level seem to be no higher than those who dwell in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who fears no open fight and never ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... rocking-chair two inches nearer the door, and whisking a few invisible particles of dust from the centre table. Every time any one of importance comes our way, or is distantly likely to come our way. Harriet resolves herself into an amiable whirlwind of good order, subsiding into placidity at the first sound of a ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... large solid lady with a fine white bosom and strong white arms. Her face was homely and kind; I saw at once that she adored her husband; her placid smile carried beneath its placidity a tremulous anxiety that he should be pleased, and her mild eyes swam in the light of his encouragement. I was sure, however, that the calm and discipline that I felt in the things around me came as much from her domesticity ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the placidity of Mr. Blithers came with the brief note in reply to his request for an informal conference. The Lord Chamberlain curtly informed him that the Cabinet would be in session at two and would be pleased to grant ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Present. But will the memsahib of to-morrow take warning by the fate of Helen Peachey, who went out to India in all her bridal bravery, in all her youth and freshness? Will she escape exchanging the placidity of Fra Angelico's piping cherubim for the petulance and ring-shadowed eyes of the seasoned matron? Will she be on her guard against shrinking to the prejudices and flirtations of a coterie, dying to all finer and higher issues? ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... previously pointed out, Lyly was not very successful in the matter of character drawing. Never, even for a moment, is passion allowed to disturb the cultured placidity of the dialogue. The conditions under which his plays were produced may in part account for this. The children of Paul's could hardly be expected to display much light and shade of emotion in their acting, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... by just what course of agonized reasoning he arrived at his final decision, but at dusk he came back to the store. With the dumb placidity of some ruminant, Avery was sitting in his same place on the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the energetic animal, with its various reflex movements and pulsating organs, stands the plant, in its apparent placidity and immobility. Yet that same environment which with its changing influences affects the animal is playing upon it also. Storm and sunshine, the warmth of summer and the frost of winter, drought and rain, all these ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... extemporaneously, in Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid rhyme. Monsieur Theophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited in European clothes, laid aside his Moslem placidity to cry that the tragedy was marvellous. Monsieur Alfred de Musset, lolling in his arm-chair in an attitude which seemed a compromise between sleep and Kief, smiled beatifically. Monsieur Victor Hugo vowed that nothing half so fine had ever before been written in any age or in ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... visited him frequently. His mind remained clear, and he showed his old freedom from any fault-finding spirit, though evidently oppressed by business cares and bodily suffering. His serenity was especially evident as I sat with him the night before his death, and I can never forget the placidity of his countenance, both then and on the next morning, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... virtue by offering as a motive that sense of pleasure which follows the deliberate performance of a virtuous act. This emotion is a distinct and isolated gratification following a distinct action, and may therefore be easily separated from that habitual placidity of temper which results from the extinction of vicious and perturbing impulses. It is this theory which is implied in the common exhortations to enjoy "the luxury of doing good," and though especially strong in acts of benevolence, in which case sympathy with the happiness created ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... long he walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess. The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himself placid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power of commonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice say: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... romped, nor tore her clothes, nor climbed trees. It was an uninteresting life from Sibyl's point of view, and yet, perhaps, it was the right life. Up to the present the child had never seriously thought of her own conduct at all. She accepted the fact with placidity that she herself was not good. It was rather interesting to be "not good," and yet to live in the house with two perfectly angelic beings. It seemed to make their goodness all the whiter. At the present moment she longed earnestly to be ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... his wrathful eye swept from Frances in her high chair, up along the line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,—the most irascible of unsuccessful men,—and the snort with which he finished the inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan annals long before Sissy brought down the house ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... went by monotonously, routine merely varying to give place to pipe-in-mouth idleness. But the third night out came an occurrence to break the placidity of the voyage for Kendric, and both to startle him and set him puzzling. He was out on deck in a steamer chair which he had had the lazy forethought to bring, his feet cocked up on the rail, his eyes on the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... in the afternoon, waking the torpid town into semblance of interested activity during the brief duration of its stay. But before she had disappeared over the horizon native Davao had relapsed into stupid placidity, and the Chinos had stored the meager cargoes dropped for them—print goods, cigarettes, matches, rice, a few small agongs, and, probably, a little opium. The lethargy of the tropics during the hot hours is entire ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... them, and the results are very like those of a first sight of Niagara. Everybody knows how that looks—the huge downpour of the American Fall, the graceful rush of the slenderer stream formed by Goat Island, the mighty curve and tremendous placidity of the Horseshoe Fall, the clouds of spray, the lightly poised rainbow. But all this does not give us the feeling of Niagara: one person is overwhelmed, another enraptured, very many are disappointed. Besides, we are bothered by notions of how we ought to feel at such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... got the story from one of the guards who had accompanied them. But even these thick-skinned disciples of "kultur" and brutality were not disposed to be communicative. The stoicism, grim determination and placidity of the Reverend Fathers constituted something which their square heads and addled brains failed to understand. They ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... fertility of the domestic rabbit. In consciously selecting the largest and most flourishing individuals and the best and most prolific mothers, he must have unconsciously selected those rabbits whose relative tameness or placidity of disposition rendered it possible for them to flourish and to produce and rear large and thriving families, instead of fretting and pining as the wilder captives would do. When we consider how exceedingly delicate and easily disturbed ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... door, which gave to the house the appearance of having a nose and two eyes. Houses of this kind have literally got a sort of expression on—if we may use the word—their countenances. Square windows give the appearance of easy-going placidity; longish ones, that of surprise. Mrs. Varley's was a surprise cottage; and this was in keeping with the scene in which it stood, for the clear lake in front, studded with islands, and the distant hills beyond, composed a scene so surprisingly beautiful that it never failed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until—perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids—little ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... parting shot she left him. Going home, he bathed and changed into his customary garb of smooth black, to which his rotund placidity of bearing imparted an indescribably silky finish. His discarded clothes he put, with his own hands, into an old grip, sprinkled them plenteously with a powerful disinfectant, and left orders that they be destroyed. It was a phase of Dr. Surtaine's courage that he never took ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... exiled lover was permitted to return to Beorminster, and very pleased he was to find himself once more in the vicinity of his beloved. After congratulating the bishop on his recovered cheerfulness and placidity, George brought forward the name of Mab, and was pleased to find that his father was by no means so opposed to the match as formerly. Dr Pendle admitted again that Mab was a singularly charming young lady, and that his son might ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... billows sailed the stout bark of Russian idealism, rising, falling, never overwhelmed, always bravely confident, never seeking for calm waters, refusing them indeed for their very placidity. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... his wheel-chair for a period of ten years, and otherwise debarred many of the comforts to which, in more prosperous circumstances, he had been accustomed, Alexander Balfour retained to the close of life his native placidity and gentleness. His countenance wore a perpetual smile. He joined in the amusements of the young, and took delight in the recital of the merry tale and humorous anecdote. His speech, somewhat affected by his complaint, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... like to say good-bye to your cousin, I know," Lady Kew continued, with imperturbable placidity. "Ethel, my dear, here is Mr. Clive Newcome, who has come to bid us all good-bye." The little girls came trotting down at this moment, each holding a skirt of their elder sister. She looked rather pale, but ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... usual, now and then giving herself a little shake, and laying her work on her knee to contemplate it with an air of hesitating weariness. Her mamma, who had returned from an excursion to the kitchen, sat on the other side of the small work-table with an air of more entire placidity, until, the clock again giving notice that it was going to strike, she looked up from the lace-mending which was occupying her plump fingers ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... childishness and loss of memory had come an increased gentleness and love of quiet, which partially disguised the loss of strength. She would sit in her chair from morning till night, looking out of the window or watching the movements of those around her, with an expression of perfect placidity on her face. When she was spoken to, she smiled, but did not often speak. The smile was meaningless and yet infinitely pathetic: it was an infant's smile on an aged face; the infant's heart and infant's brain ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Lou can catch up," said Emmy Lou's Aunt Cordelia, a plump and cheery lady, beaming with optimistic placidity upon the infant populace seated in parallel rows at desks ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... placidity itself. It was his nature. He did not betray his sentiments, which were not favourable ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... waters within, and the little lady in Martha's strong arms, between the matronly coaxing of the fat hostess and the kind soothings of the two young ladies, had been restored to something of equanimity, Mistress Martha laid her down and said with the utmost good humour and placidity to the young husband, "Now I'll go, sir. She is better now, but the sight of my face ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... figured on operations at the claims. Their domestic affairs moved with the smoothness of a perfectly balanced machine. To the very uttermost Hazel enjoyed the well-appointed orderliness of it all, the unruffled placidity of an existence where the unexpected, the disagreeable, the uncouth, was wholly eliminated, where all the strange shifts and struggles of her two years beyond the Rockies were altogether absent and impossible. Bill's views he kept largely to himself. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... off, with all placidity and sweetness, three or four sacrilegious oaths against God and the sacraments, as if he were reciting an Ave, and drew the conclusion that he knew as much about it as a member ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... at this point, by the procession of cars occasioning a stoppage of about three-quarters of a mile in length, as nearly as I could judge. His Majesty, however, entreating me not to be discomposed by the contingent uproar, smoked with great placidity, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... burnished auburn—such starlike eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul—But phoo! phoo! phoo! she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.—There is a Head for a painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms—those sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the same is true of a school. Giggleswick has but once been the prey of the brigand and then it was fortunate enough to have a friend at court. It lost its original endowment and its private character. It gained a larger revenue and a Royal Charter. The placidity of its life was undisturbed by financial deficits. Its income expanded steadily. The close corporation of Governors were never ambitious to display their wealth, they never excited the greed of the statesman; even Cromwell's army passed through the ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... quick, fiery or humorous, cheerful, even unrestrainedly gay manner, winning him by his hearty open advances where he felt himself attracted and encouraged to confidence; at other times he was all seriousness, placidity, self-possession, cool circumspection, methodical consideration, prudence, criticism, even irony and scepticism." Such is not the portrait which imagination paints of the demeanour of a court favourite. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Eileen had been cold when she came. It had been like a douch of cold water. She had not recovered her sweet placidity since that time. Lady O'Gara had commented on the change to her husband, but he had not seen it. He was fond of Eileen, in a superficial way. Indeed his devotion to and absorption in his wife were such ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... placidity, stillness, composure, imperturbability, dispassion, imperturbation, unconcern, equanimity, collectedness, self-possession. Antonyms: commotion, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... no need that we should walk any further. Here are two chairs," said Sir John. There was in truth no need. He had ascertained something about which, in spite of his outward placidity, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... at the placidity of Garrick Street with the intensity of some challenging "Stand and Deliver!" All that the street had to give for the moment was a bishop and an actor mounting the steps of the Garrick Club, an old lady with a black bonnet and a milk-jug, a young man in a hurry and a failure ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... victims in an attendant capacity. I have a suspicion, moreover, that a good number of women poisoners actually chose the medium as THE KINDEST WAY. Women, and I might add not a few men, who would be terribly shocked by sight or news of a quick but violent death, can contemplate with relative placidity a lingering and painful fatal illness. Propose to a woman the destruction of a mangy stray cat or of an incurably diseased dog by means of a clean, well-placed shot, and the chances are that she will shudder. But—no lethal chamber being available—suggest ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... effect on my own nerves of the plaintive murmurs of the neela-cobeya, that sometimes, when irritated, and not without reason, by the perverseness of some of my native followers, the feeling has almost instantly subsided into placidity on suddenly hearing the loving tones ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... her placidity, a quiet domestic fowl whose feathers were only to be ruffled when ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... accustom himself to expect it with a serene countenance. If life is a benefit, if it be necessary to love it, it is no less necessary to quit it; reason ought to teach him a calm resignation to the decrees of fate: his welfare exacts that he should contract the habit of contemplating with placidity, of viewing without alarm, an event that his essence has rendered inevitable: his interest demands that he should not brood gloomily over his misfortune; that he should not, by continual dread, embitter his life; the charms of which he must inevitably destroy, if he can never view its termination ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... animal are quite of the Grecian cast, and he has a placidity of countenance which shows that things went well with him when in life. Some gentlemen of great skill and talent, on inspecting his head, were convinced that the whole series of its features has been changed. Others again have hesitated, and betrayed doubts, not being able to make up their minds ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... politely determined to serve the country in his own way, lost in admiration of this opponent's intellect, but forced to admit his mistakes—the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue, the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington. Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such hate and resentment that ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... activities and triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up on ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... not less the father, saw the advantages that might result as well to the health of her mind as that of her body. They had waited—a vain waiting—for the wearing out of the traces of the obdurate image; and when they thought they might take placidity as the sign of what they waited for, they first hinted, and then expressed in plain terms, the wishes of their hearts. For a time all their efforts were fruitless; but John Carr getting old and weak, wished to be succeeded ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... period when we felt the results of the intimate relations of the three emperors, which for some time permitted us to face the future with greater placidity. But at the first symptoms of any instability in the relations of the three emperors or of the termination of the agreements which they had made with one another, public opinion was possessed by the same nervous and, I believe, exaggerated excitement with which we have had to contend ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... morning routine of a country house began. She and Arthur walked together over the fields to church. The whole country breathed a lazy atmosphere of early summer. Its beauty and its placidity mocked her. Before them went the Considines. He wore a long cassock that swept the grass, as they went, while Gabrielle walked in silence at his side. Never once in their journey did she look back. It struck Mrs. Payne for the first time how young she was, how very much younger and more ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... its cheerful placidity—"if his marrying of Jude and Joyce would hold in any court ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... sipped a mouthful of the clear water. He was in a more reasonable state than he had shown for long, though it was now close on the moon's final quarter, a period that should have marked a more general tenor of placidity in him. The summer solstice, was, however, at hand, and the weather sultry to a degree—as it had been, I did not fail to remember, the year of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... served and the welfare of Fatherland were but convertible terms. He soon came into bitter conflict, not with nobles, but with progressive liberals in the Chamber, who detested him and feared him, but to whom he did not condescend to reveal his plans,—bearing obloquy with placidity in the greatness of the end he had in view. He was a self-sustained, haughty, unapproachable man of power, except among the few friends whom he honored as boon companions, without ever losing his discretion,—wearing a mask with apparent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... with tolerant placidity upon the face of this man whom he must consider, according to his tenets, as a creature antagonistic to the true gods, and said, in his soft, modulated voice: "Thou art young, Sahib, and full of the life force which ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... and quiet of the room, in which he broke his bread and sipped his wine, whilst old Jem stretched by the hearth gazed at him with yellow up-turned eyes full of lazy inquiry concerning this departure from the usual nightly regularity; the serene placidity of the scene indoors as contrasting with the angry voices of elements without, answered to the peace—the strange peace—that filled the man's soul, even in the midst of such uncongenial memories as now rose up before him in ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... happy humour is assailed at Marseilles. His placidity and stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers, like rapacious bats, hover around the emigrant and before his purse is opened for the fourth time, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... rarely allowed any feeling, or even any annoyance, to interfere with his usual manner,—a man who could always come to table with a smile, and meet either his friend or his enemy with a properly civil greeting. Not that he was especially a false man. There was nothing of deceit in his placidity of demeanour. It arose from true equanimity; but it was the equanimity of a cold disposition rather than of one well ordered by discipline. The squire was aware that he had been unreasonably petulant before dinner, and having taken himself to task ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... when the news of the flag of our Union being fired upon, in Charleston harbor, the country resembled the sea in one of those calms preceding a storm. When the placidity betrays hidden and mighty currents, and overhead, in the clear sky, one divines the coursers of the tempest gathering to race in strife like that beneath. Up to Lincoln's arrival in Washington, the nest of sedition, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... days the thought of the wind and the thought of human life came very near together in my mind. Our noisy years did indeed seem moments in the being of the eternal silence: and the wind, in the face of that great field of stationary blue, was as the wind of a butterfly's wing. The placidity of the sea was a thing likewise to be remembered. Shelley speaks of the sea as "hungering for calm," and in this place one learned to understand the phrase. Looking down into these green waters from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the great Gorges of the Upper Yangtze—to China what the Niagara Falls are to America—was not remarkable for its placidity, albeit taken with as much complacency as ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... news stolidly. A feeling of regret, that the attention of the devoted Gibson must now cease, certainly occurred to her, but she never thought of contesting the arrangements made for her, and accepted the situation with a placidity which the more ardent Barber was utterly ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... into the kitchen, took a little tin kettle from a nail over the dresser, and her sun-bonnet from another behind the door, and made her way through the apartment as well as she could for bristling chair-legs, with exemplary placidity. She was used to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of masterly placidity changed before her sister Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of terror and distress ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... holding in her hand an empty glass. As my eyes encountered her calm, inquiring gaze, my courage fled precipitately, likewise the object of my errand. There was a pause; diffidence and embarrassment on my side, placidity ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... I was saying. Same thing," he muttered with strange placidity. She looked at him searchingly. He had a large simplicity that filled one's vision. She found herself slowly invaded by this masterful figure. He was not mediocre. Whatever he might have been he was not mediocre. The glamour of a lawless life ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... unexpected peace and quiet on Stratton, however, was precisely opposite from the one he presumed was intended. He had a feeling that it was a calm before the storm, and became more alert than ever. The unnatural placidity weighed on him, and as day followed day serenely ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... opened to her particular friends; he was alone with her, and his unusually agitated manner betrayed that he had been conversing upon some subject of the deepest interest. Madeleine, too, looked paler than usual, and the troubled expression which had displaced the wonted placidity of her countenance was, doubtless, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... out of her habitual placidity by the abrupt withdrawal of the girl's hands. Kate sat inertly staring, but no ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... shook his head. He always had been a dull little boy. One had been fond of him because of his sweetness and placidity, not for ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... perfect placidity, caused by mental and bodily freedom, is disturbed at a very early age by those who should be his true guides. It would be impossible to say when the first wrong impression is made, but it is so early that a true statement of the time could only be accepted from scientific ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... for an instant by his astonishment, the queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down by leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope like a monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seated on the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as he grinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous and desolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... life, without being overcome! My father, however, to prevent us seeing the melancholy which weighed upon him, assumed a serene air, when his soul was a prey to the most horrible anguish; but through this pretended placidity it was easy to see the various sentiments by which his heart was affected. Often would that good man say to us, "My children, I am not unhappy, but I suffer to see you buried in the deserts. If I could gather a sufficient ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... me," said Hilda, with her usual placidity, and without taking any notice of the excited feeling of the other, "that if you insisted on going I was to give you twenty pounds, with her kind ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... varies the silence of Treasury Bench. Well there was someone at that temperature. Committee, take it all together, in volcanic mood. Peculiarity of situation, as SAUNDERSON put it, with some mixing of metaphor, was that "it was the cucumber that kept the pot a-boiling." Whenever any sign of placidity was visible, JOSEPH sure to appear on scene, rub someone's hair the wrong way, or stir up some slumbering lion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... "Fatty" in school. It had possibly soured her, or her over-plumpness may have been due to some physical ailment which rendered her irritable. At all events, Annie Stone had not that sweetness and placidity of temperament popularly supposed to be coincident with stoutness. She had a bitter and sarcastic tongue for a young girl. Maria inwardly shuddered when she saw Annie Stone's fat, malicious face surveying ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were years and years older, and we were babies playing in a sand box or making mud pies." It was clear that his amusement amused her, just as her mother's admonition amused her: nothing annoyed or disturbed her,—her serenity was too deep for that. Her fine placidity was lighted now with an inner flame, but she was very quiet about her happiness; she was not very articulate ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... counter of his general store. There was nothing in his appearance to suggest kin to the lean and cadaverous Professor. The Professor always seemed to move with effort, but his brother was alive all over. Though short and fat, he had none of the placidity which we associate with corpulence. As he talked his hands moved restlessly; his bristling red mustache accentuated the play of his lips; his heavy gold watch-chain moved up and down with his breathing; even ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those stages is almost sure to be worldly advance. We can hardly imagine bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining social aims as the transitional phase. Yeobright's local peculiarity was that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living—nay, wild and meagre living in many respects, and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... expressed such placidity that the master asked him to stand and give out the answer, and he gave it gladly enough—999.009—which sounded particularly learned to a class not ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... with a thought besmirch Blood over all our soul, How should we see our task But through his blunt and lashless eyes? Alive, he is not vital overmuch; Dying, not mortal overmuch; Nor sad, nor proud, Nor curious at all. He cannot tell Old men's placidity from his. ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... responsive nature, and great mobility of face, grow to be like those they live and are in sympathy with. The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine than his fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but he also exhibits some of the better qualities—the repose and placidity ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... stable, a nice bedding of straw upon the floor, and plenty of hay laid up for her. Snow deserved it, for she was a beauty, and a very well-behaved cow, letting Alice and Ellen stroke her and pat her and feel of her thick hide, with the most perfect placidity. Mrs. Vawse meanwhile went to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... with the billiard-tables as if there had been not a soul staying in the hotel. His placidity was so genuine that he was not unduly, fretting himself over the absence of Heyst, or the mysterious manners Schomberg had treated him to. He was considering these things in his own fairly shrewd way. Something had happened; and he was loath to go ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... be of extraordinary depth; and though stone-blue water seems at first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava, it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous antecedents. The winds never reach it and its surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you fancy it in communication with the capricious and treacherous forces of nature. Its very colour is of a joyless beauty, a blue as cold and opaque as a solidified sheet of lava. Streaked and wrinkled by a mysterious motion ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... quick energetic steps, an alert and suggestive figure amidst a scene of placidity. Up the uneven plank walk he went, noting with a swift, sidelong glance the neat white house of Dibbott, the Indian agent, a house that thrust its snowy, wooden walls and luxuriant little garden close up to the street. On his left, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... distant mountains: she was evidently unconscious of anything around her. An eager life had left its marks upon her: the finely-moulded cheek had sunk a little, the golden crown was less massive; but there was a placidity on Romola's face which had never belonged to it in youth. It is but once that we can know our worst sorrows, and Romola had known ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... that glare, confusion, din, riot, and insanity, to the soothing sights and sounds of this rural paradise! And after looking at it till my spirits have subsided into something like kindred composure and placidity, I open my letter-case, and find your last unanswered epistle lying on the top of it. "If Cunard and Harnden have proved true," you must have received by this time our reply to your proposition touching the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... faintest tinge of color, in spite of her golden hair. More than one artist, looking at the pure brow, the discreet, composed mouth, the delicate nose, the small ears, the long lashes, and the dark-blue eyes filled with tenderness,—in short, at the whole countenance expressive of placidity,—has asked the great artist, "Is that a copy of a Raphael?" No man ever acted under a truer inspiration than the minister's secretary when he married this young girl. Agathe was an embodiment of the ideal housekeeper brought up in the provinces and never parted from her mother. Pious, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... going to Bath, and should have been sorry to leave Dr. Johnson before I came." Considering the heart-rending struggle in which she was engaged at this time, with the aggravated infliction of an unsympathising and dogmatic friend, the wonder is how she retained her outward placidity ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... fixedness and placidity, conveying the impression of fate, death, repose, or immortality, which render sculpture so congenial as commemorative of the departed. Even quaint wooden effigies, like those in St. Mary's Church at Chester, with the obsolete peaked beards, ruffs, and broadswords, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... youths well grown, have a childish freshness and frankness indescribable; some are as uninteresting as others are attractive; a few are beautifully feminine. But all are equally characterized by a singular placidity—expressing neither love nor hate nor anything save perfect repose and gentleness—like the dreamy placidity of Buddhist images. At a later day you will no longer recognise this aspect of passionless composure: with growing acquaintance each face will become more and more individualised for ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... quiet; so that the evening passed off very well. Mrs. Edmonstone waited on both; and, in Amy's presence, was better able to resume her usual manner towards her nephew, and he sat wondering at the placidity of Amy's pale face. Her hair was smoothed back, and she wore a cap,—the loss of her long shady curls helping to mark the change from the bright days of her girlhood; but the mournfulness of her countenance did not ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of these mats Lo Ong, gaunt, curious, even hostile, retreated, squatting with his delicately thin hands folded over his abdomen. A look of recognition disturbed only for the instant the placidity of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... a life of hardness and adventure; and the square jaw and straight, piercing glance was that of a man who, when roused, would prove a resolute, relentless, and a most dangerous enemy. In repose the face wore a placidity which ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... hereafter untroubled by the jeers of an untemperamental world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby, who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of La Tosca, Camille or Manon, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought, "It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal! Whatever should I do with her between ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... endeavored to console him had thin and worn slippers on her tender feet, and her snowy skin was in more than one place visible through the rents of her frock. The old man looked at them, from time to time; and there might have been observed, notwithstanding the sweetness and placidity of his smile, a secret expression of inward agony—the physical and natural feelings of the parent and the man mingling, or rather struggling, with the great principle of dependence on God, without which he must at once have sunk down ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... show his face there, who questioned her, glanced at us with no friendly look, took the note, and closed the wicket. We waited half an hour or so, sipping our wine and talking carelessly, till I imagined the long-nosed man was becoming a little doubtful. But just as he was losing his placidity so far as to cross one leg over another, the chateau gate opened, and a heavy, dark-browed fellow with the appearance rather of a soldier than of a servant, came out, and over to us, scrutinizing us keenly as he approached. He asked if ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his love story, or that which in the life of such a man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote to her every week a long letter, and spent a large part of the long vacation ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... next week the office of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. had its usual aspect of prosperous placidity. The routine work was done in the routine way; the porter opened the office every morning, and the office-boy arrived a few minutes after it was opened; the clerks came at nine, and a little later the partners were to be seen in the inner ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... Add to these advantages his considerable holdings of the bank's stock, and it is easy to comprehend how in spite of his youth he had come to stand next to Masters and Farnsworth. The dissensions between these two were disagreeable to one who had a decided preference for quietude and placidity of manners; but he kept aloof from their quarrel, though he must have had private grievances against a superior ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... ignorance of a mother's heart, to prevent her from ever adverting to her darlings; it had only debarred her from the true source of comfort, and left the wound to ache unhealed, while her docile outward placidity was deemed oblivion. The fear of such sorrow had often been near Violet, and she was never able to forget on how frail a tenure she held her firstborn; and from the bottom of her heart came her soothing sympathy, as she led her on to dwell on the thought of those innocents, in their rest ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fact, I resumed my duties near the Emperor, and I found him exactly the same as he had been before entering on the campaign; the same placidity was evident on his countenance. It would have been said that the past was no longer anything to him; and living ever in the future, he already saw victory perched again on our banner, and his enemies humiliated and vanquished. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... her spirit was so fervently asking of the Almighty. Then he gazed into the face of his mother again; hoping to catch a gleam of some expression and recognition, that denoted more of reason. It was in vain; the usual placidity, the usual mild affection were there; but both were blended with the unnatural halo of a mind excited to disease, if not to madness. A slight exclamation, which sounded like alarm, came from Beulah; and turning towards his sister, Willoughby ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... intelligence both lucid and penetrating, and a sense of form and symmetry almost Greek in its fastidiousness. The sweet, vague, passionate aspiration^, the sensibility that quivers with every breath of movement from the external world, he could not understand. Placidity, grace, and repose he had in perfection. Yet he was very highly appreciated by those who had little in common with his artistic nature. As, for example, Robert Schumann writes of Thalberg and his playing, on the occasion of a charity concert, given in Leipzig in 1841: ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... corpulence such as I should never have thought the slender lieutenant of artillery capable of acquiring; his heated, sun-burnt complexion, and dissipated look, exchanged for a fresh colour and benevolent placidity; the Dutchman I had left on the Rhine stood beside me in the lobby of the French theatre. I turned to the lady: she was less changed than her companion, and now that I was upon the track, I recognised Emilie Sendel. By this time we were in the street. Van Haubitz ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... blow! And yet—it was very strange!—she herself was not stricken with any particular horror or despair at her destiny. When, after the doctor had left, Cicely came in, trembling and afraid,—Maryllia smiled at her with quite a sweet placidity. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... They found it to be a most beautiful stream, averaging two and a half miles in width, evidently very deep, and with a full, steady current. After proceeding for several hours, they found that the general placidity grew less, the smooth surface occasionally became ruffled by projecting rocks and rapids, and the banks rose till the voyagers again found themselves in a ravine or canon. During their sojourn on Jupiter they had had but ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... that he expected soon to become a father—I was surprised that his wife had not come to the station to welcome him. However, it was plain that Briggs himself was not particularly surprised, nor, what was more important, disappointed. Nothing could damp his eternal placidity and good humour. He proposed that from this point onward he should pursue his journey alone. "Nowt to do but git on th' tram," he said. "It's a fair step from 'ere, but I knows every inch of t' way." At all events (as of course I could not allow this) he would ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... This placidity shed its soft light into the modest academies of the rabbis. Wherever a ray fell, a blossom of Haggadic folklore sprang up. Every occurrence in life recommends itself to their loving scrutiny: pleasures and follies of men, curse turned into blessing, the ordinary course of human ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... whirled in the brain of Monsieur le Comte, where they found plenty of space to gyrate. He was entirely thrown off his balance, and it was not till after the next polka that his placidity returned. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... mind, placidity of conduct and control of passion rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and tyranny, making him always master of the human midgets or vultures ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... convince me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that, if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your now restless and ambitious ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Whatever placidity there is is attained by means of vampirism. Diderot, the husband of a stupid seamstress, had no right to the love of a Mlle. Voland. It was vampirism and sin to take all from this woman, and to return her favour with so much less than ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London |
