"Serene" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the serene founding of the Mission San Francisco came the first shock to the community, thus noticed in a letter from the governor of the territory to the comandante ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... and benevolent friend lately told me the story of one of her relatives, who married a slave owner, and removed to his plantation. The lady in question was considered very amiable, and had a serene, affectionate expression of countenance. After several years residence among her slaves, she visited New England. 'Her history was written in her face,' said my friend; 'its expression had changed into that of a fiend. She brought ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a fever: A fever is a quick motion of blood, not produced by our consent, which enters into the vessels, the seat of the vital spirits. This we see in the sea; it is in a serene calm when nothing disturbs it, but is in motion when a violent preternatural wind blows upon it, and then it rageth and is circled with waves. After this manner it is in the body of man; when the blood is in a nimble ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... continental principalities; to dwell in palaces and castles, to be surrounded by a disciplined retinue, and to find every wish and want gratified before they could be expressed or anticipated. Yet he showed no elation, and acceded to his inheritance as serene as if he had never felt a pang or proved a necessity. She whom in the hour of trial he had selected for the future partner of his life, though a remarkable woman, by a singular coincidence of feeling, for it was as much from her original ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Sacred substance! sweet, serene; Soothing sorrow's saddest scene: Scent-suffusing, silv'ry smoke, Softly smoothing suffering's stroke;— Solacing so silently— Still so swift, so sure, so sly: Smoke sublimated ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... wide and fair With sunny fields of lucid air, And waters dancing everywhere; The snow is almost gone; The noon is builded high with light, And over heaven's liquid height, In steady fleets serene and white, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... bottom of the hill again when another year called her to its renewed duties,—schooling her temper in unending inward and outward conflicts, until neither dulness nor obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could reach her serene self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly as her prodigal labors were repaid in proportion to the waste of life they cost, her value was too well established to leave her without what, under other circumstances, would have been a more than sufficient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... to undergo a serene hush. The Christmas recess was at hand. What had once, and at no remote period, been called, even by the erudite Miss Twinkleton herself, 'the half;' but what was now called, as being more elegant, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Under serene skies on the morning of July 20th, seventeen ships, assembled in Halifax harbor, made final preparations to steam forth to the highways of the ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... sent you four of these images, and you have been able to examine them and verify their resemblance to the goblins. You will also be able to describe them to the most serene King, your uncle, better than I could do in writing. The natives call these images zemes. When they are about to go into battle, they tie small images representing little demons upon their foreheads, for which reason these figures, as you will ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... who have best succeeded—even Cole, with his accurate eye, and faithful, beautiful art—have but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that nature's toning is inimitable, and that the broad overhanging firmament with its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-fields, temper to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that, within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... City of Light is about 40 degrees south of the Martian equator, not so far from what on earth would be the position of Christ Church, where you "shuffled off the mortal coil." Don't frown. Mars is a serene, sweet place, but I am not yet so intimidated by the lofty life here as to drop my jokes. Some Martians strike me as a trifle heavy in style, just a suggestion of a kind of sublimated Bostonese about them, don't you know. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Then, with equal gravity, he would hand his master the evening paper and the big-bowed spectacles, and would stand gravely by until Richard had dismissed him with a gentle "Thank you, Malachi; that will do." And Malachi, with the serene, uplifted face as of one who had served in a temple, would tiptoe out to ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... be as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such as did once the poet bless, Who, pouring here a later ditty, Could find no refuge from distress, But in ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... continued to regard him with a smile so serene and victorious that he saw she took his somewhat unseemly astonishment as a merited tribute to her genius. Presently she extended a glittering hand and took a sheet of note ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... his Mind is serene; when he's neither in a Passion, nor in the Hippo, nor in Liquor; then being in private, you may kindly advise him, but rather intreat him, that he would act more prudently in this or that Matter, relating either to his Estate, Reputation, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Serene Republic," said that authority, "cannot have unburied Jews adrift in the city without finding out why the cemetery does not hold them and why the gutter does. Inquire, Alessandro mio, inquire! There was a wound in the man's ribs big enough for a ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... in the Booth family since the flood, so to speak. As far back as Brandon could remember, the quaint Irishman had been the same wrinkled, nut-brown, merry-eyed comedian that he was to-day, and Mary the same serene, blarneying wife of the man. They were not a day older than they were in the beginning. He used to wonder if Methuselah knew them. When he set up bachelor quarters for himself in New York, his mother bestowed these priceless domestic treasures upon ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... picked his way cautiously, without either halt or hurry, as he strode toward it, through such a morass of difficulty that no man of less courage would have attempted it, while it would surely have overwhelmed any man of judgment less serene. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... fitting nook for him there still failed to offer itself. People are naturally disposed to return to places in which they have formerly lived, and Concord could not but suggest itself to one who had passed some of the happiest years of his life among its serene pastures and piney forests. This suggestion, moreover, was supplemented by the urgent invitations of his old friends there, and Mr. Emerson, who was a practical man as well as a philosopher, substantiated his arguments by throwing ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... sent for Beatrice and Doucebelle to her own bower. They found her seated by the window, with unusually idle hands, and an expression of sore disturbance on her fair, serene face. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Meadows was mentioned, Sir Launcelot, whose spirits had been in violent commotion, became suddenly calm and serene, and he began to communicate to Clarke the dialogue which had passed between him and Captain Crowe, when the hostess, addressing herself to our errant, "Well," said she, "I have had the honour to accommodate many ladies of the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... hear you say that, for all that is come and gone, yet we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was given to understand in my childhood that the British island, from which my forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and roses and music and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy, mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... in an unbroken series through all medieval Jewish literature. But if the Jewish wife was held in honor by the Jewish husband, it was because of the very practical virtues of the Jewish way of living. The home life was everywhere serene and lovely, and if the Jew retained any virtue at all, he displayed it in the home. The father was the religious teacher of his family, and this duty necessarily increased his domesticity. He took greater interest in his children because ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... believe to be no less than twenty Miles over, the other Side being as far as I could well discern, there appearing great Ridges of Mountains, bearing from us W.N.W. One Alp with a Top like a Sugar-loaf, advanc'd its Head above all the rest very considerably; the Day was very serene, which gave us the Advantage of seeing a long Way; these Mountains were cloth'd all over with Trees, which seem'd to us to be very ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... riding, hunting, ball playing; the bracing walk in storm and sunshine; the free ramble over hill and dale, all adapted to develop an independent, self-relying character; with the occasional reunion where wit, science, healthful industry and serene piety shed their benedictions; associating that which is free and bold with the refined and sacred; all these are, in many cases, displaced by frivolous and less healthful excitements. Our girls and boys, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Wordsworth only from his poetry might have supposed that he dwelt ever in a region too serene to admit of human agitations. This was not the fact. There was in his being a region of tumult as well as a higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his poetry lived. It turned aside from mere personal excitements; and for that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... should say just the contrary. Its tone is too serene, and its style too simple, for a young man. Besides, I don't know any young man who would send me his book, and this book has been sent me, very handsomely bound, too, you see. Depend upon it Moss is the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... put in prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene. ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... gates, and entered the enclosure on foot, accompanied by Hortensia and followed at a respectful distance by a footman. Her arrival proved something of a sensation. Hats were swept off to her ladyship, sly glances flashed at her companion, who went pale, but apparently serene, eyes looking straight before her; and there was an obvious concealing of smiles at first, which later grew to be all unconcealed, and, later still, became supplemented by remarks that all might hear, remarks which did not escape—as they were meant not to escape—her ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... opened the door the dignity of his great grief and of a lofty purpose was upon him, and he greeted Helen unembarrassed and with a serene consciousness ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... than a passing gleam. If too, at times, a thought of the knight Paris and Helen would inflame his heart with bolder and wilder wishes, it needed but one look at his scarf and sword, and the stream of his inner life glided again clear as a mirror, and serene within. "What can any man wish for more than has been already bestowed on me?" would he say to himself at such times in still delight. And thus it went on for ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... of the Gallic dash which had won first honours in airmanship for France, but it was combined with the coolness and circumspection bred of scientific training, so that Smith was able to take repose in serene confidence that, barring accidents, the aeroplane would fly as safely under Rodier's charge as under his own. Karachi was soon a mere speck amid the sand. In less than half-an-hour the aeroplane was crossing ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... celandine, Large as sail that's called lateen— Simply swept the pavement clean: Hapless man was crushed between Flat as any tinned sardine. Thing to rouse a Bishop's spleen, Make a Canon or a Dean Speak in language not serene. We must all be very green, And our senses not too keen, If we can't say what we mean, Write in paper, magazine, Send petitions to the QUEEN, Get the House to intervene. Paris fashion's transmarine— Let us stop by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... Against all the gods Is this their influence, or on one alone Who to his will constrains the universe, Himself constrained? Stars most in yonder clime Shoot headlong from the zenith; and the moon Gliding serene upon her nightly course Is shorn of lustre by their poisonous chant, Dimmed by dark earthly fires, as though our orb Shadowed her brother's radiance and barred The light bestowed by heaven; nor freshly shines Until descending nearer to the earth She ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... at the Monastery gate, looking away down the smooth, well-kept road to the highway beyond. It lay quiet and serene in the June sunshine, the white way to the outer world, and not even a dust cloud on the horizon promised the approach of the train of sumpter mules laden with meats for the bellies and cloth for the backs of the good Brethren within. The Cellarer lacked wine, the drug ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... an idea. Well, since you will know. I was a gardener's boy. I worked under my brother Hermann. I used to ask the nurse, who had charge of her serene highness, where she would go each day. Then I'd cut flowers and meet them on the road somewhere and give the bouquet to the child. There was never any escort; a footman and a driver. The little one was always greatly pleased, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain, Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain; Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene, On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green; Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... shadows under the eyes and the tenseness of the muscles round the mouth revealed sleepless nights and mental agony, Penreath's face showed no trace of insanity or the guilty consciousness of evil deeds, but had the serene expression of a man who had fought his battle ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... sound Roll'd thro the shuddering walls and shook the ground; O'er all the dungeon, where black arches bend, The roofs unfold, and streams of light descend; The growing splendor fills the astonish'd room, And gales etherial breathe a glad perfume. Robed in the radiance, moves a form serene, Of human structure, but of heavenly mien; Near to the prisoner's couch he takes his stand, And waves, in sign of peace, his holy hand. Tall rose his stature, youth's endearing grace Adorn'd his limbs and brighten'd in his face; Loose o'er his locks the star of evening hung, And sounds ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... ever crossed by the idea that there were perhaps certain particulars in which little Jock was the best guide? If so the blasphemy was involuntary. She shook it off with a little movement of her head, and met his glance with her usual serene confidence. "You ought to be," she said, "Tom; but you liked him always. Didn't you like him? I always thought so; and you ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... mild slope to the river, he has not cursed the age he was born into—or blessed it because the Adelphi cannot in earlier days have had for any one this fullness of peculiar magic? Adam Street is not so beautiful as the serene Terrace it goes down to, nor so curiously grand as crook-backed John Street. But the Brothers did not mean it to be so. They meant it just as an harmonious 'lead' to those inner glories of their scheme. Ruin that approach, and how much else do you ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the rail of the tossing vessel, gazing steadfastly into the howling darkness, his face was as serene as if he sailed a summer sea. The great waves that dashed their foam over him as he stood were powerless to raise fear in his soul! He stood as one apart—a lonely watcher ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... point in her meditations Jeanette re-entered the room, smiling and serene. Lucile decided she was older ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... 1, 1814, a few minutes before midday, while the sky was perfectly serene, a violent detonation was heard in the department of the Lot and Garonne. This was followed by three or four others, and finally by a rolling noise, at first resembling a discharge of musketry, afterward the rumbling of carriages, and lastly that ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... intoxication of devotion which had come to her spontaneously the day before. The great spirit does not want martyrs. Joy in beauty and goodness comes of a pure and tranquil mind, not of a tortured body. The faces of the holy ones are calm and their souls serene. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... serene self again, and made answer, "There is no need, Larry. Mr. MacLean will see us safely there, and after the meeting you will come. We must go now, Ethel." There was no bitterness in her voice. Instead, there was about her an air of gentle self-mastery, remote alike from pain and passion, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... over, and that calm and fine weather will succeed. If the weather be about to change, and become wet or windy, the spider will make the supporters of his web very short; but if the threads be extended to an unusual length, the weather will continue serene for ten or twelve days, or more, according to the length of the threads which support the web. The red spider however is very injurious and destructive to different sorts of plants and fruit-trees, especially in forcing houses. It is found particularly so to those of the forced French bean, melon; ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... this respect, that, instead of holding their high office by hereditary or divine right, they were installed therein by election. At Venice, a conclave, consisting of forty electors, appointed by a much more numerous body of men of high position, elected the Doge, or president of the most serene Republic. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... a face as serene as a summer morning. "You have always been good to me," he said. "There's nothing to be sorry about. I ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Boyle and Mariotte was interesting himself in the study of the atmosphere, and had made a wonderful invention and a most striking demonstration. This was Otto von Guericke (1602-1686), Burgomaster of Magdeburg, and councillor to his "most serene and potent Highness" the elector of that place. When not engrossed with the duties of public office, he devoted his time to the study of the sciences, particularly pneumatics and electricity, both then in their infancy. The discoveries of Galileo, Pascal, and Torricelli incited him to solve ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... when she, with her husband and her children, was bereft not only of power, but even of freedom, and was a prisoner in the hands of those whose unalterable object was her destruction—she bore her accumulated miseries with a serene resignation, an intrepid fortitude, a true heroism of soul, of which the history of the world does ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... court was pure; her life serene; God gave her peace; her land reposed; A thousand claims to reverence closed In her as Mother, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... declination of the moon; it ought to blow toward the pole that is nearest to it, and advancing in that direction only, in order to reach every place, traversing dry countries or extensive seas, it ought then to render the sky serene or stormy. If the influence of the moon on the weather is denied, it is only that it may be referred to its phases, but its position in the ecliptic is regarded as affording probabilities much ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the sympathy between the magnet and the pole—that unseen, immaterial spirit, which walks with us through the most entangled forests, over the most interminable wilderness, and across every region of the pathless deep, by day, by night, in the calm serene of a cloudless sky, and in the howling of the hurricane or the typhoon? Who can witness the movements of that tremulous needle, poised upon its centre, still tending to the polar star, but obedient to his distant hand, armed with a metallic guide, round every point of the compass, at the fiat ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... men. From these, smoke with graceful curls rose in the calm evening air, and gave to the locale the appearance of a small though picturesque township; and, with the park-like appearance of the country, impressed our young travellers with the feeling, that Brompton was one of the most serene and delightful spots ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... it seemed. But Nature reckoned without Louis Napoleon. The road is here, serene and self-sufficient. It literally carved its way down to the valley. Slopes often greater than forty-five degrees have been cut into intrepidly; arches and viaducts thrown over gaping clefts, bridges over unbridgeable chasms. The road turns on itself; it doubles and twists ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... continued the courtier, not even honouring with a look, far less with a direct reply, the threat of the incensed Halbert, "doubt not that thy faithful Affability will be more commoved by the speech of this rudesby, than the bright and serene moon is perturbed by the baying of the cottage-cur, proud of the height of his own dunghill, which, in his conceit, lifteth him nearer unto the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... while she suffered the tortures of Hell, you would rest in peace, until your well-scoured little soul might fly straight up to Paradise;—you were afraid of Her when both of you should be dead, and thought yourself very clever to have prepared for all emergencies! Not so, Serene Highness. You too shall taste what it is to wander after death, and to meet the dead whom one ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... kingfisher turns his sapphire back in the sun against the lemon-yellow of the willow leaves, and the smouldering russet of the oak-crowns succeeds to the crimson of the beeches and the gold of the elms, we shall do well to emulate the serene magnanimity of Nature and console ourselves with the reflection that the rural philosopher, if only assured of a sympathetic hearing in an enlightened Press and provided with a suitable equipment by the ingenuity of its directors, may contemplate the vagaries of tyrannical misgovernment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... stared, open-mouthed, at the face before her. Esther had sat down by the window, where the glow from the west was upon it, like a glory round the head of a young saint; and the evening sky was not more serene, nor reflected more surely a hidden light than did the beautiful eyes. Mrs. Barker gazed, and could not bring out ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... seem to approve. I do not believe that war organises wholesome and sane opinion; I believe that it silences it. It is a time when base, heartless, cruel people can become heroes. It is true that it also gives serene, courageous, and calm people a great opportunity. But on the whole it is a bad time for sober, orderly, and peaceable people. I believe that it evokes a good many fine qualities—simplicity, uncomplaining patience, unselfishness, but it reveals them rather than creates ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little minds, though it should show itself even in this court, it has not made the slightest impression on me. The highest flight of such clamorous birds is winged in an inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we look upon them, just as you, gentlemen, when you enjoy the serene air on your lofty rocks, look down upon the gulls that skim the mud of your river, when it is exhausted of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... turned her eyes from the princess while she was thus speaking. This serene calmness, this unembarrassed childishness, completely disarmed her. The dark suspicion vanished from her mind; Anna breathed freer, and laid her hand upon her heart as if she would restrain its violent beating. The letter of Lynar slightly rustled ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... more, August could see through the fretwork of the brass door, as the stove stood upright facing the lake, that this Wurm-See was a calm and noble piece of water, of great width, with low wooded banks and distant mountains, a peaceful, serene ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... her my love, and say I will call to-morrow at two o'clock," added the Prince, now perfectly serene. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... knew the step, and the accused stood before them, smiling and serene, unconscious of the thunder-clouds that lowered above his head. He advanced a few paces into the room, then stood still. His eyes wandered from his father's death-pale face to the downcast countenance of the old serving-man. Surprised and distressed, he wondered what it could mean. ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... order you to be tortured and racked even unto death." The brothers related all as it had been, from the beginning to the end. "Now, most gracious emperor, give us over to any torture whatever, or let thy kindness have compassion on us!" The emperor's brow became smooth, his eyes became serene. He then ordered the old father to be brought before him at once, and made him sit beside him close to his throne, and hearkened to his counsel till death, and his sons he rewarded handsomely. He ordered the corn to be collected ear ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... labors accomplished too soon their work. Even saints are not exempted from the penalty of violated physical laws. Pascal died at thirty-seven. Paula lingered to her fifty-seventh year, worn out with cares and vigils. Her death was as serene as her life was lofty; repeating, as she passed away, the aspirations of the prophet-king for his eternal home. Not ecstasies, but a serene tranquillity, marked her closing hours. Raising her finger to her lip, she impressed upon it the sign of the cross, and yielded up her spirit without a groan. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... bright and serene. Marston and his guests, after passing a pleasant night, were early at breakfast. When over, they joined him for a stroll over the plantation, to hear him descant upon the prospects of the coming crop. Nothing could be more certain, to his mind, than ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... smiled, and the cloud which had sat on his brow when he thought of the coldblooded desertion of Mr. Brown gave way to an expression of serene content. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... is often used to cloud the issue, as if all that children needed for their welfare were the formal alliance of their parents, and as if a home where hatred rages or complacent vice is serene were the ideal rearing-ground for the young. When love of their children is enough to keep two incompatible souls together there is no need of the law. When that love is insufficient what can the law accomplish? And what of the innumerable families where there have been ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... calm night was never dark, the great deep lakes infinitely serene, the great mountains majestically solemn. In the lighted sky the pale ghost-moon seemed ever apologising for itself. The world was a grand harmonious symphony that even the advancing tide of the Argonauts could ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Serene clouds of tobacco smoke were floating through hidden corners, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... figures on the blackboard, using the long pointers for rulers and making beautiful circles by means of chalk attached to pieces of string. A glance at Westby showed that youth apparently intent upon solving the problem assigned him and at work upon it intelligently. Irving began to feel serene; he proceeded to correct the algebra exercises of the Fourth Form, which he ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... was mild and serene, the sky clear, the waves transparent, the dolphins played across the bows, the airs were warm, and the perfumes, which the waves brought from afar, seemed to exhale from their foam. The brilliancy of the stars and the deep beauty of the night breathed a feeling of ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... were commissioned to transfuse into light,—this was the one dismal end for all poor human creatures which he, as a minister of the Gospel was bound to try and represent as not an End but a Beginning,—and his soul was moved to profound love and pity as he raised his eyes to the serene heavens and asked himself: "What compensation can all the most eloquent teaching and preaching make to men for the loss of the mere sunshine? Can the vision of a world beyond the grave satisfy the heart so much as this ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... was distributed to them, and quench their thirst at the pure stream, which poured its bounties down the hill, or they might be seen to extend their bulky forms upon the turf around them. The Emperor, his most serene spouse, arid the princesses and ladies, were also served with breakfast, at the fountain formed by the small brook in its very birth, and which the reverent feelings of the soldiers had left unpolluted by vulgar ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and here it was so in this one only spot, and these few persons into the midst of whom he had suddenly been cast. With these reflections he looked forth from his window into the old-fashioned garden, and at the stone sundial, which had numbered all the hours—all the daylight and serene ones, at least—since his mysterious ancestor left the country. And [is] this, then, he thought to himself, the establishment of which some rumor had been preserved? Was it here that the secret had its hiding-place in the old coffer, in the cupboard, in the secret chamber, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that your most Serene Highness has deigned to remember that I was in the world. It is very sad to be there, without paying you my court. I never felt so cruelly the sad state to which old age ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... spent in Miss Ferris's cozy sitting-room, she started out to find Barbara, armed with the serene conviction that everything would come out ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... being, driven out into the storm of public sympathy to be beaten and undone; for she was left on her wedding day by her lover, who vowed he loved her no more. But now Dilly saw her without the pathetic bravery of her silken gown which was never worn, and knew her for a woman serene and glad. That very day she had unfolded the gown in the attic, where it had lain, year upon year, wrapped about by the poignant sympathy of her kin, a perpetual reminder of the hurts and faithlessness of life. It had become a relic, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... you to faith and holiness.' Be it our duty and privilege to examine our conduct faithfully by those portions of holy writ, with which this treatise is beautifully adorned. It was written in the prospect of sufferings and death, and yet how serene was his soul. No cloud, no doubts or fears are seen; his legacy to us as well as to those who survived him is, 'Love one another when I am deceased.' My labours of love to you are limited to this world. 'Though ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... but one, she had taken many of her mother's burdens upon her young shoulders, albeit not knowing that they were burdens, since they were wholly acts of love and joyously done. She was fully conscious of her advancing years, and took them very seriously, regarding her acts with a grave and serene sense of their importance. She had put back the wild hair that used to fly about her face until her father called her "An owl in an ivy bush" and her mother admonished her that her "head was like a mop." ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... hurry and climbed the path to the lights at the double quick. All was safe and serene in the house, and he breathed more freely. Atkins was sound asleep, really asleep, in the bedroom, and when he emerged he was evidently quite unaware of his helper's unpremeditated treason. Brown's conscience pricked him, however, and he went to bed that night vowing over and over that he would be ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Sir Samuel Romilly. Yet I must pause at the name of Sir Samuel Romilly. Was he a mob orator? Was he a servile flatterer of the multitude? Sir, if he had any fault, if there was any blemish on that most serene and spotless character, that character which every public man, and especially every professional man engaged in politics, ought to propose to himself as a model, it was this, that he despised popularity ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seediest-looking citizen "on the block" was Tresco himself, but what he lacked in tailoring he made good in serene benignity of countenance. His features, which beamed like the sun shining above him, were recognised by all who passed by. It was, "How do, Benjamin; bobbin' up, old party?" "Mornin', Tresco. You remind ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... is better executed than I own I expected, and yet I am not quite satisfied with it. The drawing is a little incorrect, the eyes too small in proportion, and the mouth exaggerated. In short, it is a strong likeness of your features, but not of your countenance, which is better, and more serene. However, I am enough content to place it at Strawberry amongst all my favourite, brittle, transitory relics, which will soon vanish with their founder—and with his no great ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... more tender than ever he had been, with the innocent instinctive coquetry of those who always wait until they are just going to show themselves at their best and most charming. He went to the piano and played her their favorite passages from Mozart and Gluck—those visions of tender happiness and serene sorrow with which so much of their ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his spirit; the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day looking forth with the melancholy which sat so strangely on a face wont to be strong and serene. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a man could not be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented by a friendship with Aretino, or to despise the immense advantages which it included. As he is revealed by his biographers, and above all by himself, Aretino ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... man of less than medium size; but with a sweet expression of features, from which his sunburnt complexion did not detract. Even at that terrible moment his countenance appeared calm and serene! ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... a gem of purest ray serene[9] The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 55 And waste its sweetness on the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... Where all that's fair and beautiful are seen! Where wanton zephyrs court the ambient air, And sweets ambrosial banish every care; Where thought nor trouble social joy molest, Nor vain solicitude can banish rest. Peaceful and happy here I reign serene, Perplexity defy, and smile at spleen; Belles, beaux, and statesmen, all around me shine; All own me their supreme, me constitute divine; All wait my pleasure, own my awful nod, And change the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... their brows corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing of financial crises, military disasters, and any and every form of national calamity consequent upon the war, come you out to meet them, serene and smiling and unafraid. And let your smile be no formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray from the sunshine in your heart. Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your goods. Not only look poverty in the face with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... awoke, it was in that odd, serene way that sometimes occurs. We open our eyes, we know not why, quite placidly, and are on the instant wide awake. He had had a nap of some duration this time, for his candle-flame was fluttering and flaring, in articulo, in the silver ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... because it did not go off all serene, I am to hear nothing but reproaches. Of course I never cared so very ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... one person who remained unmoved. It was de Barral himself. He preserved his serene, gentle, expression, I am told (for I have not witnessed those scenes myself), and looked around at the people with an air of placid sufficiency which was the first hint to the world of the man's overweening, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... what she was, faithful and quietly loyal, steady—and serene; not asking greatly but hoping much; full of small unvisualized dreams and little inarticulate prayers; waiting, without knowing ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... court, bathed in soft light, seemed a corner of fairyland, the music vanishing elfin strains of some mischievous troop putting sighs and love dreams into a sleeping maid's breast. The night was rich with stars, warm with summer, serene with the peace of the mountains. He was late. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... go to the adjutant and tell him that Wolf was the man, and that he must pen him up at night. Indeed, he rather wanted to have more of the serenading. He sniffed a scandal, and in his resentment at Mrs. Truscott's evident avoidance of him and Miss Sanford's serene indifference, he was beginning to feel that he could welcome anything that would besmirch their names or cloud their domestic peace. From his soldier servant he learned that Wolf spent hours in writing letters, most of which he burned ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... through the dining-room where an orderly table for breakfast had already been laid, and out on to the terrace. The rain for the moment had been utterly stayed, as if the tap of the heavens had been turned off, and under the lowering black sky, not quite dark, since the moon rode somewhere serene behind the conglomerated thunder-clouds, Darcy stumbled into the garden, followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow of himself was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odors of rose and lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent was ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... west as a sea of rippling fire, That the face of the gazer is lighted, if unto the west ye gaze, And white walls in the lonely meadows grow ruddy under the blaze; Yet brighter e'en than the cloud-sea, far-off and clear serene, Mid purple clouds unlitten the light lift lieth between; And who looks, save the lonely shepherd on the brow of the houseless hill, Who hath many a day seen no man to tell him ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and there from beams, and they served only to make the darkness visible. Bats flicked in and out between them and disappeared in the echoing gloom above. Censers belched out sweet-smelling, pungent clouds of sandalwood to drown the stench of hot humanity; and the huge graven image of Kharvani—serene and smiling and indifferent—stared round-eyed ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... what was taking place, a great hand-to-hand carnage began. Shrieks, groans, cries filled the heavens. From that time Bob ceased to be the quiet student who had aspirations after a serene scholastic life. He was an Englishman doing battle with a huge fighting machine. He was one of the many who determined to cut out the great cancer of Europe. England and all she stood for was at stake. Honour, faithfulness to promise, liberty, ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the whole inscription. The very independence of the sources from which he drew his knowledge negatived the possibility of doubt. There was but one way in which Diane could have put herself right with him: she could have swept the charge aside, with a serene contemptuousness of denial. Had she done so, her assertion would have found his own eagerness to believe in her ready to meet it half-way. As it was, alas! her admissions had been damning. Where she acknowledged ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... personally directed affairs up to this point, but he now obliterated himself, and the leadership devolved upon two others —Parker, small, smiling, gentle-mannered; Mellen, tall, angular, saturnine. Upon them, engineer and bridge-builder, O'Neil rested his confidence, serene in the knowledge that of all men they were the ablest in their lines. As for himself, he had all he could do to bring materials to them and to keep the long supply-trail open. Long it was, indeed; for the shortest haul was from Seattle, twelve hundred miles away, and the steel ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... only within the last few days that this had appeared. On recovering from the hardships of the forest and on the voyage home, though weak enough, he had been serene, mild, amiable and rather listless, but during the last few days ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... me, if you love me, you must maintain your energy and strive to be cheerful. You can not doubt my constancy and my tender affection. You know too well all the sentiments with which I regard you to suppose that I can be happy if you are unhappy, that I can be serene if you are agitated. Adieu, my love. Sleep well. Believe that I ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... red, some were sallow; some were sleepy, some wide awake. The only one among them who appeared in his usual frame of mind was Festus, whose huge, burly form rose at the head of the table, enjoying with a serene and triumphant aspect the difference between his own condition and that of his neighbours. While the trumpet-major looked, a young woman, niece of Anthony Cripplestraw, and one of Uncle Benjy's servants, was called in by one ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... and helpless, praying and cursing by turns, has rolled himself out of his nook and lies squarely in the way of everything and everybody. But above all the clamor, the ring of carbine, the hiss and spat of lead flattening upon the rocks, Drummond's voice is heard clear and commanding, serene ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the gain the singer's prize Till men hold Ignorance deadly sin till Man deserves his title, "Wise." In days to come, Days slow to dawn, when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men, These echoes of a voice long stilled haply shall wake responsive strain: Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy humble tale to tell— The whispers of the Desert wind: the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... gave them presents and dismissed them unhurt. He also sent Onesikritus to the most renowned of them, who lived a life of serene contemplation, desiring that they would come to him. This Onesikritus was a philosopher of the school of Diogenes the cynic. One of the Indians, named Kalanus, is said to have received him very rudely, and to have proudly ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... flat-bottomed vessels or palanders for the horses; two hundred and forty transports filled with men and arms; seventy store-ships laden with provisions; and fifty stout galleys, well prepared for the encounter of an enemy. [54] While the wind was favorable, the sky serene, and the water smooth, every eye was fixed with wonder and delight on the scene of military and naval pomp which overspread the sea. [541] The shields of the knights and squires, at once an ornament and a defence, were arranged on either side ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... upon the manner in which I spent this most valuable portion of my time. Hunting, shooting, coursing, or fishing all day, and every day; and then at night, instead of passing it with my family and children in the calm, serene, delightful joys of a domestic and rational fireside, I had always a large party at home, or made one amongst the number at a friend's house. Seldom were we in bed till two or three o'clock in the morning. The next ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... play-room, to which he intended to induct hereafter his classical brother Lycurgus. In this reflection he threw himself on the ground, and luxuriously burying his bare feet in the cool, loose soil, gave himself up to serene meditation. But the heat and exertion were beginning to exert a certain influence over him, and once or twice his eyes closed. The water rippled beside him with a sleepy sound. The sunlight on the hill without made him wink. The long-drawn cawing of a crow on the opposite hillside, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... when I first went to look out of this window; but when I saw these birds, and witnessed the scene of faithful love and domestic industry and happiness set forth by these little creatures, the spirit of complaint was rebuked within me, and I learned a new lesson of serene trust and assurance that all were cared for ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... the field is slain, Be in the bed of Honour lain, He that is beaten, may be said To lie in Honour's truckle-bed. 1050 For as we see th' eclipsed sun By mortals is more gaz'd upon, Than when, adorn'd with all his light, He shines in serene sky most bright: So valour, in a low estate, 1055 Is ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his love of pomp and worship; and as he had no particular merits to warrant it, his victim bantered his love of titles. He says, in a letter to the duke's steward, "If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke, Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in prison, may I beg that he will have the goodness to return certain little things of mine, which his Most Invincible, Most Clement, and Most Serene Highness ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... him in perplexity and astonishment. It was Johnny Bellchambers, but he had a different look. Upon his smooth-shaven face was an expression of ineffable peace, of rapturous attainment, of perfect and complete happiness. His form was proudly erect, his eyes shone with a serene and gracious light. He was as neat and well-groomed as in the old New York days, but how differently was he clad! Now he seemed clothed in but a single garment—a long robe of rough brown cloth, gathered by a cord at the waist, and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry |
