"Unruffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... phantom said, "You'll have all this, You'll know no kind of huffiness, Your life will be one chubby bliss, One long unruffled puffiness!" ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... and other improvements. The novelty of their presence did not disturb the serenity of the polling-room or unnerve the ladies who were exercising their right to vote for the first time. They were calm, direct and as unruffled as though it were the usual order of things. Those who voted are of the highest social standing. They received the utmost courtesy at the polls and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... her, being too cramped and miserable to take more than a querulous interest. In another half-hour the snow ceased, and as they glided down the long hill on the other side of the plateau in a bed of fresh, unruffled wool, the sun struck out with a suddenness that seemed to tear the sky in two, and turned the blue snow into a sheet of light which stretched far below them into a country of pine woods and pits of shadow. Down, down they ran, till ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... at that instant she seemed to me so much above all of us, there was such bright intelligence, and such power about her unruffled brows, that I thought: 'You are ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... as Pluto passed beneath, dropped her upon his back. It looked fearfully dangerous; all depended upon the exact time at which each movement was executed. The whole audience caught its breath, but Mignon did not seem to be frightened. Her little face was quite unruffled as the strong men tossed her to and fro, her limbs and dress fell into graceful lines as she went through the air; it was really like a bird's flight. Alice's hands were squeezed tightly together, she could hardly breathe. Ah!—Pluto was an instant too late, or M. Joachin a second too soon,—which ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... hundred and thirty-five miles. The journey was not without its dangers. The Slave river has a varied course: at times it broadens out into a great sheet of water six miles across, flowing with a gentle current and carrying the light canoes gently upon its unruffled surface. In other places it is confined into a narrow channel, breaks into swift eddies and pours in {77} boiling rapids over the jagged rocks. Over the upper rapids of the river, Mackenzie and his men were able to run their ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... after defilement, pleasure in everything whether in prosperity or adversity, renouncing food when hungry, and keeping down the body. Thus delivered from these four enemies of the flesh, he resembled the unruffled flame of the lamp, and by Brahmagnana, or meditating on the Deity, placing his mind on the sun, moon, fire, or any other luminous body, or within his heart, or at the bottom of his throat, or in the centre of his skull, he was enabled to ascend from gross images of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... in a choking deep in the throat. Bauer was dead. He had paid the last great penalty. Blaine, still cool and unruffled, continued his search until he was in possession of all the two men had that was worth the trouble of taking. Among these were maps, air-craft photos of the Allied trenches and one valuable map the communicating transport ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... thin sheet of the water hung like a transparent curtain over the edge of the rocks. It was so smooth and unruffled that it seemed stationary, like a film of glass, but, after striking the stones below, it broke into foam, whirlpools and eddies, which helped to form as lovely and picturesque a scene as the most devoted lover of nature could long ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... more sought after than any one else," Lois returned, unruffled. "Every one has to help in the work ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... his hat; turning it mechanically round he stood looking a moment hard at its unruffled perfection. Then very angrily honestly and gallantly, "Hand it to the devil!" he broke out; with which he clapped the hat on his ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... without a passionate outburst was not by any means due to amiability. Carson was of too strong a character to be continually amiable. He merely exercised his philosophy in meeting trouble. He boiled within, but presented a calm, unruffled front to the world, simply because to do otherwise would involve an expenditure of nervous force which he did not consider ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... no more? You think he did not add, 'nor to myself?'" And with her soft, calm, inward voice, the dame Unruffled answered, "No, sweet heart, not he: What need he care?" "And why not?" Muriel cried, Longing to hear the answer. "O, he knows, He knows, love, very well": with that she smiled. "Bless your fair face, you have not really thought He did ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... is true, Mr. Okada." Don Miguel's voice was unruffled, his manner almost benignant. "The old man is outside, and absolutely broken-hearted. His honor appears to be quite gone. I imagine," Don Mike continued, with a fleeting and whimsical glance at the potato baron, "that he has evolved some primitive plan for making his honor whole again. Direct ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity; it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... present Journal, was I not placing myself in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another, {2,}—resumed my usual functions. But I too soon discovered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within. ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... was most instructive; calmly imparting knowledge to Helena and me; calmly embroidering a little calm-looking shirt for her married daughter's baby, with calm, cool white fingers. She seemed very content with the world, and the way it is behaving. She looked as unruffled as one of the swans on the Haff. All the sedition and heretical opinions she must have heard Kloster fling about have slid off her without leaving a mark. Evidently she pays no attention to anything he thinks, on the ground that he is a genius. Geniuses are privileged ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... heaven. Take any period of calm and rest in the life of the world or the history of the arts. Take that period which great historians have agreed to praise as the happiest of human ages—the age of the Antonines. How benign and unruffled it was! What bland and leisurely culture could be enjoyed in exquisite villas beside the Mediterranean, or in flourishing municipalities along the Rhone! Many a cultivated and comfortable man must have wished that reasonable peace to last for ever. The civilised world was bathed ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... The unruffled existence into which Edward Lynde had drifted was almost the reverse of the career he had mapped out for himself, and it was a matter of mild astonishment to him at intervals that he was not discontented. He thought Rivermouth one of the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the trees without;—the austere constrains and heavy drowsiness of warm churches, filled with the droning echoes of a voice preaching incomprehensible things;—the progressively augmenting weariness of lessons in deportment, in dancing, in music, in the impossible art of keeping her dresses unruffled and unsoiled. Perhaps she never had any reason ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... of his kingdom, obliged to fly from province to province, and a thousand times in danger of his life.(934) Being supported, says the historian, by the divine protection, he was afterwards favoured, till his death, with a perpetual series of prosperity, unruffled by any sinister accident: for he not only recovered his own kingdom, but added to it that of Syphax his enemy; and extending his dominions from Mauritania, as far as Cyrene, he became the most powerful prince of all Africa. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... handspikes, and sponge-staves in place, gunners stripped to the waist, powder-boys ready for the word like sprinters on the mark. Forty-five of them against a hundred and fifty, and Captain Haraden, debonair, unruffled, walking to and fro with a leisurely demeanor, remarking that although the Achilles appeared to be superior in force, "he had no doubt they would beat her if they were firm and steady and did not throw ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... must say I don't happen to be a mind reader, Peg. Suppose you tell me," replied the unruffled Bob, who had taken the measure of the other, and knew he might be set down as a great boaster, but one not particularly dangerous when it came to ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... a great many places, almost impassable, making marching with equipments very laborious. However, we arrived at Bayubao about 2 p.m. and rested for refreshments on the top of a high hill, which over-looked the fort and the unruffled waters ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... the delicate flowers in orchard and close, with something of the same pleasure that I experience to-day. The same wonder that I feel, the same gentle thrill speaking of an unattainable peace, an unruffled serenity that lies so near me in the spring sunshine, flashed, no doubt, into those elder spirits. Perhaps, indeed, their heart went out to the unborn that should come after them, as my heart goes out to ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unworthiness, the more did his imagination ennoble the one he loved. He now looked to the moment of meeting her, as that whence he would date his moral regeneration. "Thank God!" thought he, "a sure haven is yet mine. There will I—my feelings steadied, my affections concentrated—enjoy a purified and unruffled peace. What a consolation to be loved by one so good ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... 12, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)—It was early on Monday that the unexpected arrival of the German cruiser Emden broke the calm of these isolated little islands, which the distant news of the war had hitherto left unruffled. One of the islands is known as Direction Island, and here the Eastern Telegraph Company has a cable station and a staff engaged in relaying messages between Europe and Australia. Otherwise the inhabitants are all Malays, with the exception of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... boundless happiness that awaited true believers in the next—of the unutterable mercy of God, in removing us from a scene of trouble whilst our views were cloudless, and our hopes sure and abiding. Yes, charmed by the unruffled air, the angelic look, I could forget even my mortality for a moment, and feel my living soul in deep communion with a superior and brighter spirit. It was when she recalled me to earth by a reminiscence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... eyes! Then said, "Who art thou, and why com'st thou here?" To which King Robert answered with a sneer, "I am the king, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The angel answered with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the king, but the king's jester; thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape And for thy counselor shalt lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... Savoy Restaurant. Penelope felt a little shiver when she saw him coming down the stairs. Somehow or other, she had dreaded this meeting, yet when it came, she knew that it was a relief. There was no change in his manner, no trace of anxiety in his smooth, unruffled face. He seemed, if possible, to have grown younger, to walk more buoyantly. His eyes met hers frankly, his smile was wholly unembarrassed. It was not possible for a man to bear himself thus who ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I was not alarmed," he said eagerly, turning round to the young officer, who was rather red in the face but otherwise unruffled. "The first time that one has been so close to me. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... years G———- continued to enjoy this clear, unruffled evening of his days. Neither misfortune nor age had been able to quench in him the fire of passion, nor wholly to obscure the genial humor of his character. In his seventieth year he was still in pursuit of the shadow of a happiness which he had actually possessed in his twentieth. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... cracking peal of thunder burst in stunning loudness just over his head, and the forked and flashing lightning at brief intervals threw its vivid fires around him. This, too, in its turn passed away, and left the sea once more calm and unruffled: the moon (nearly full) again threw a more brilliant light upon the waters, which the storm had gone over without waking from their slumbers. His next effort was to free himself from his heavy laced boots, which greatly encumbered him, and in which he succeeded by the aid of his knife. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... previous, and had not yet come up to the dock. The air came up the bay fresh and invigorating from the sea beyond, and the water sparkled as it dripped from the oars, which, with monotonous regularity, broke the almost unruffled surface of the bay. Some of the ship's sails were shaken out to dry in the morning sun, and the cordage hung loosely and carelessly from the masts and yards. A few sailors lounged idly about the deck, and leaned over the side to watch the ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... (during all the countless ages of its experience it had never touched woman's hand before),—even she, when her lazy heart and overbearing spirit were at length aroused and quelled by the voice rather of a master than suitor, was deceived by forsaken Manetho's unruffled face, gentle voice, and downcast eyes. She told herself that his love had never dared be warmer than a kind of worship, like that of a pagan for his idol, apart from human passion; such, at all events, had been her understanding of his attentions. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... window, gazing vaguely on the sea, then unruffled by a breath, and realizing all the images of evening serenity, a flight of curlews shot screaming by, and awoke me from my reverie. I took my gun, and followed them along the shore. My sportsmanship was never of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... All unruffled by this act, from which I gathered that Yvonne the strong had tutored Genevieve the frail concerning me, I consigned my horse to a groom of the chateau, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... not," he answered, with some vehemence. "I do not call that love which never made the voice tremble, or the heart beat. Is that love which never betrays itself by emotion, Ellen? Can love leave the soul calm, and the spirits unruffled?" ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... point of sight above the surface. 'As five miles, then, to eight thousand,' would express the proportion of the earth's area seen by me. In other words, I beheld as much as a sixteen-hundredth part of the whole surface of the globe. The sea appeared unruffled as a mirror, although, by means of the spy-glass, I could perceive it to be in a state of violent agitation. The ship was no longer visible, having drifted away, apparently to the eastward. I now began to experience, at intervals, severe pain in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... level ground above the beach the tents and caravans are drawn up in orderly array. Stretching away from the shore is the bay, lying calm and unruffled under the summer sky, except when its glassy surface is rippled by the dip of an oar or churned into froth by the restless pulsations of a passing steamer. Across the bay the hills rise beautiful and purple-blue through the evening glow, throwing out encircling ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Fliedner, who was a lover of children, took great interest in both these institutions, and in his school for infant-school teachers prepared deaconesses especially for the duties that are required in teachers of this class. The motherly heart, the gift of story-telling and singing, a pleasant and unruffled demeanor, the quiet but firm inculcation of order and obedience—these and other qualities Fliedner sought to develop in instructors ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... with something akin to awe. In the quiet unemotional tone of his voice, in his unruffled manner and the stony calm of his face, there was something much more impressive, more fateful, than there could have been in the fiercest threats or the most passionate denunciations. I felt that in those softly spoken words he had pronounced the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... his mother's unwise policy, pressed too hard upon his integrity or his indignation; and he would then free the barrier and present the shut-out truth in its full size and proportions before his mother's shocked eyes. It was in vain to try to coax or blind him; a marble statue is not more unruffled by the soft air of summer; and Mrs. Carleton was fain to console herself with the reflection that Guy's very next act after one of these breaks would be one of such happy fascination that the former would be ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... them, Mr. Crane," the detective was quite unruffled, "only I hold that the poison we've just found is quite as likely to be Mr. Thorpe's as ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... property had been growing every minute. It was an exquisite autumn afternoon. From where they sat he could behold the line of shore on either side with its background of dark green woods. Below the wavelets lapped the shingle with melodious rhythm. As far as the eye could see lay the bosom of the ocean unruffled, and lustrous with the sheen of the dying day. Accustomed to prevail in buying his way, he could not resist saying, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... which stood in the sitting-room. Gem had nothing to do but copy her composition, and yet she consumed the whole day in a battle with the ink, and came out with a blotted page at the last. Tom had disappeared; no one knew where he was. Sibyl came down to dinner in her usual unruffled state, but Bessie's curly hair stood on end, and there was a deep wrinkle between her eyes. "Well, Sibyl, have you made a commencement?" she asked, as her cousin took ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... called, or polished bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing about the man. Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the old-school gentleman, in whose presence the milkmaid was as much at her ease as the countess, but something far finer than this. These are the people of unruffled demeanor, who never forget it for a moment, and never let you forget it. Their presence is a constant rebuke to society. They are never "jolly;" their laugh is never anything more than a well-bred smile; they are never betrayed into any enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as the unruffled surface of a clear watery mirror to which the lovely blossom of Italian music inclined to see, to know, to love itself therein. It was but the surface of a deep and infinite sea of longing and desire rising from fathomless depths to gain form and beauty from the gentle greeting of the ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... setting sun were deepening the yellow tints of yet early autumn, and many of the trees looked as if steeped in liquid gold. In the distance, the ocean, quiet, calm, unruffled, was sleeping beneath the sober sky, and not a breeze wafted its murmurs to the little streamlet by the side of which that old man sat. He was but one of a group; four healthy and handsome children crowded around him, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... legible in her face, a countenance still pretty and pleasing in its unruffled placidity. She talked very little, but what she did say was sensible, and proved how attentively she understood how to listen. So she was welcome among Barine's guests. Even the most distinguished ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Nellie had for her precious family. Her unselfish zeal never flagged. She flitted from one want to another as naturally as she breathed and with as little consciousness of the process. Her household machinery ran no more smoothly than many another's, but Nellie met and surmounted all obstacles with an unruffled brow. Her outward calm was the result of some great inward peace. She simply had developed naturally from the girl we had known before we grew up and went away ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... glad of anybody's prayers," she returned, quite unruffled, "but I am afraid, Mr. Floyd, yours are merely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... flying things, no tree dwelling reptiles or animals, no disturbance of any water creature on the unruffled surface of the lake. Yet the sensation of life, inimical life, lurking in the depths of the wood, under the water, ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... chambers, leaving the ships of men to flap their idle sails. Then the ocean ceased to fume, though its agitated bosom still continued for some time to heave. Gradually the swell went down and soon the unruffled surface reflected a dimpling smile to ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... joy, and asked him whither he had been so early, to which he replied, with a smile, "I have just buried the corpse of my dearly-loved Froda, who, this very night, has passed away to his golden-haired mistress." Then he related the whole history of Aslauga's Knight, and lived on in subdued, unruffled happiness, though for some time he was even more silent and thoughtful than before. He was often found sitting on the grave of his friend, and singing the following song ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... disclosed that he had made up his mind to resign the Speakership and retire from public life had his party failed to support him. For three days, the House was a bedlam, but the Speaker bore himself throughout with unflinching courage and unruffled composure. Eventually he had his way. New rules were adopted, and the power to count a quorum was established.* When in later Congresses a Democratic majority returned to the former practice, Reed gave them such a dose of their own medicine that for weeks ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... returned Fielding with unruffled complacency, 'that I aimed at an allegory rather than a pedantic narrative of facts. I was endeavouring to explain Clarice Le Mesurier on the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Trussit was even more interesting. She had apparently discovered at an early age that the golden rule of life was never to confess yourself defeated by any question whatever, and there was therefore nothing that he could ask her for which she had not an immediate answer ready. Her brow was always unruffled, her black shining hair brushed neatly back and parted down the middle, her large flat face always composed and placid, and her voice never raised above a whisper. The only sign that she ever gave of disturbance was ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... nature as it is commonly seen. This is the characteristic feature of the class. Whether, like Richardson, they analyse character from within, or, like Miss Austen, develop it in the outward particularities of an unruffled life—whether they describe, like Fielding, the buoyancy of a generous animalism, or, like Miss Edgeworth and Miss Burney, the precise decencies of conventional morality—they deal simply with eighteenth-century life as seen by eighteenth-century eyesight. ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... Archbishop Whately that we ought not only to cultivate the cornfields of the mind, but the pleasure-grounds also. A well-balanced life is a cheerful life; a happy union of fine qualities and unruffled temper, a clear judgment, and well-proportioned faculties. In a corner of his desk, Lincoln kept a copy of the latest humorous work; and it was frequently his habit, when fatigued, annoyed, or depressed, to take this up, and read a chapter ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... soul. Hafiz was an Epicurean without the atheism or the despair of Epicurus. The roses in his feast are ever fresh and sweet and there is nothing of bitterness in the perennial fountain of his Delight. This unruffled serenity, this joyful acceptance of material existence and its pleasures are not in the Persian poet the result of the carelessness and shallowness of Horace, or the cold-blooded worldliness and sensuality of Martial. The theory of life which Hafiz ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the Senator, Mrs Barton, with temper serene and unruffled, and Signor Henrico Socola of the Sardinian Ministry, were in the party. Dick Welford and two boys were already in Virginia with their regiments. Tom was in New Orleans with Raphael Semmes, fitting out the little steamer ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains. I could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells which danced multitudinously before the ear as fireflies come and go before the eyes; for all through a fine summer's night the cattle will feed as though ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... years, Or twenty? By my faith, I know not which, For happy lives glide on like seaward streams Which keep their peaceful and unruffled course So smoothly that the voyager hardly notes The progress of the tide. Ay, two years 'tis, And now it seems a day, now twenty years, But ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Austrian end of the lake. The afternoon was lovely, and the panorama of mountain mirrored in the water, with picturesque villages and hamlets nestling at the water's edge, was inexpressibly grand. The deep azure of the unruffled water stood out in contrast to the dazzling snow above, and as the steamer, hugging the shore, rounded one rocky point after another, the scene was certainly, as the Italian contadino puts it, "a bit of Paradise ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... world to wear her heart on her sleeve, she had been happy to believe that she and Ned understood each other, and could count on a mutual affection. She did not know which hurt the more, the suggestion of her own indifference or the unruffled serenity with which it was made. As she sat opposite Ned at dinner, she studied his face, to see if she could find there a reflection of the depression which was stealing over her own heart, but looked in vain. Truth ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... him was the stronger and surer for that quiet face, that air of knowledge and unruffled confidence. The clustering lights threw a score of shadows of him upon the maps, great bunches of him, versions of a commanding presence, lighter or darker, dominated the field, and pointed in every direction. Those shadows symbolised his control. When a messenger came from ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... worn door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this. They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to bear—or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief in establishing the fact. He ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... the midst of the water, that was crowded with human beings, and seemingly so incorporated with the element oh which it floated as to grow out of its bosom; an image that the fancy was not slow to form, aided as it was by the reflection of the mass that the unruffled lake threw back from its mirror-like face, as perfectly formed, as unwieldy, and nearly as distinct, as the original. To this picture of a motionless rock, or island, the spars, sails, and high, pointed beak, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... one of the streets which unite Cavendish Square with Oxford Street, as a busy babbling rill connects the unruffled lake with the roaring river. It is composed both of shops and private houses, the latter of which in some cases deign, notwithstanding their genteel appearance, to accommodate visitors by the week ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... amusement. Her two children lay in the litter at her feet. On her right hand marched Tatho gorgeously apparelled, and with a beard curled and plaited into a thousand ringlets. On the other side, plying her industry with unruffled defence, walked Ylga, once again fan-girl, and so still second lady in ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... suicide by shutting his head into a carpet bag. At that time he was an obscure man, known only for a witty speaker at street corners and in Park demonstrations. He had, with an assumed truculence and fury, cold logic, an universal gentleness, an unruffled courtesy, and yet could never close a speech without being denounced by a journeyman hatter with an Italian name. Converted to socialism by D..., and to anarchism by himself, with swinging arm and uplifted ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... day like this, the scholar sailed at Bivona over a sea so unruffled that the barque seemed to be suspended in air. The water's surface, he tells us, is "unie comme une glace." He sees the vitreous depths invaded by piercing sunbeams that light up its mysterious forests of algae, its rock-headlands and silvery stretches of sand; ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... least to me. I dropped my half eaten asparagus stalk and fork at the same time, and looked up to see my companion quietly going on as before. One or two others had stopped eating too, but the majority appeared quite unruffled. I concluded that it was the parrot to which my friend ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, their infants slighted,—themselves deluded by artifices—they cannot, like the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... in his study. The maid, coming in next morning to "do" the grate, found him still asleep. She stood contemplating him in awe; a broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl. He lay with his face resting on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as if he had not stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and his booted feet protruded beyond it. To her young eyes he looked rather appallingly neglected. She gazed with interest at the hollows in his cheeks, and the furrows ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... illness is borne, and the extremity of peril from which apparently, in consequence of that patience, a complete recovery takes place. Much, indeed, is no doubt due to the activity of the reparative powers in early life, but much also to the unruffled quiet of the mind. No sorrow for the past, no gloomy foreboding of the future, no remorse, disappointment, nor anxiety depresses the spirits and enfeebles the vital powers. The prospect of death, even when its approach is realised—and this is not so rare as some may imagine—brings ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... Not a bit of it. Nothing excites a Finn. Although he is very patriotic he cannot lightly rise to laughter or descend to tears; his unruffled temperament is, perhaps, one of the chief characteristics of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... cross-examination, he awaited with unruffled good humour the next question to be put by this amazingly collected and direct young person. But Sofia hesitated. She didn't want to be rude, and Karslake seemed to be telling a tolerably straight story; still, she couldn't altogether believe in him ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... which bedimm'd the soul, That oft have bid the joys it treasur'd fly, Now, like th' unruffled waves of Ocean, roll With gentle lapse—their ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... without injury to the present campaign, or loss of honor to himself. To most men, the lofty airs and pretensions of Capt. Mackay and his Independents would have been unbearable; but he kept his temper unruffled, and, with a prudence beyond his years, forbore to do or say any thing that would lead to an angry outbreak between them; and as they chose to encamp outside the fort, and have separate guards, he deemed it wisest not to trouble himself ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... strolled to the window and looked out upon the Chesapeake, lying blue and unruffled beneath the dazzling sunshine; to the mantel-piece, and smelt of the roses in the blue china bowl; to the spinet, and picked out "Here's to Royal Charles" with one finger;—and finally brought up before a corner cupboard, found the key in the door, turned it, and came ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... became in the mechanism of the thing, and the more animated was his explanation of the relative merits of the P.L.M. engine and the North-Western engine. He was always given up as lost, and yet always stepped in as the train was on the move, his manner aggravatingly unruffled, his talk pursuing the quiet tenor of his thought about engines or about what we should do the week ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Then the unruffled advance resumed, again some resource was interposed against it, again it was checked for an instant and again it overcame its adversary, careless of obstacles, impartially taking to itself gouty roominghouses and pimping frenchprovincial ("17 master bedrooms") ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... she replied in unruffled tones. "That's why I got in. I, too, have every intention ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... shallow belt that the villages were built. The sites of twenty-four settlements are known. We are told that on "calm days, when the surface of the water is unruffled, the piles are plainly visible. Few of them now project more than two feet from the bottom, eaten away by the incessant action of the water. Lying among them are objects of bone, horn, pottery, and frequently even of bronze. So ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... round. It was Pye. The little man fixed his gold glasses on his nose with two fingers in his nervous way, and blinked through them at us, unruffled as a ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... was suddenly thrown open, and an English clergyman, unruffled and full of dignity, stood in the entrance. Sharp was a bold, untutored man; but he dared not force his way past ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... is the old master's vain attempt to infuse into the chosen subject the measure of Dionysiac vehemence that it requires. An atmosphere of unruffled peace, a grand serenity, unconsciously betraying life-weariness, replaces the amorous unrest that courses like fire through the veins of his artistic offspring, Giorgione and Titian. The audacious gestures and movements naturally belonging to this rustic festival, in which the gods ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... consciousness that was irretrievable, came over him. He rose awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts, and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes out of these crucial moments unruffled. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... this effrontery and defiance of the beautiful girl Ruler of Oz, whom all until now had obeyed without question. But Ozma, still unruffled and dignified, looked at ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... by toppling convent crowned, The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep, The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned, The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep, The tender azure of the unruffled deep, The orange tints that gild the greenest bough, The torrents that from cliff to valley leap, The vine on high, the willow branch below, Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Diggs, who, from his eminence, had hitherto viewed the scene with unruffled complacency; who, in fact, derived from these not unusual exhibitions the same agreeable excitement which a Roman emperor might have received from the combats of the circus; began to think that affairs ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... reason I suggest traveling by sled instead of dragging them behind us," said Mark, unruffled. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... Wallace's first inquiry was for Lady Helen. The earl informed him he had received intelligence of her having slept without fever, and that she was not awake when the messenger came off with his good tidings. That all was likely to be well with her was comfort to Wallace; and, with an unruffled brow, riding up to the squadron of Southrons which was headed by De Warenne and De Valence, he immediately approached the latter, and drawing out the dagger, held it toward him: "The next time, sir earl," said he, "that you draw this dagger, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... blew, and all the living sea Beneath the flower-soft colours of the sky, Now like a myriad-petalled rose and now Innumerably scalloped into shells Of rosy fire, with dwindling wrinkles edged Fainter and fainter to the unruffled glow And soft white pallor of the distant deep, Shone with a mystic beauty for those twain Who watched the gathering glory; and, in an hour, Drake and sweet Bess, attended by a guard Of four swart seamen, with bare cutlasses, And by the faithful ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... apparently unruffled by the discourtesy he met, bowed profoundly towards the Prince, cleared his ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... gay according mind, Upon the sparkling stream we din'd; As shepherds free on mountain heath, Free as the fish that watch'd beneath For falling crumbs, where cooling lay The wine that cheer'd us on our way. Th' unruffled bosom of the stream, Gave every tint and every gleam; Gave shadowy rocks, and clear blue sky, And double clouds of various dye; Gave dark green woods, or russet brown, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... Love and pleasure seemed to have moulded the flower-like lips; but an infinite carelessness shone in the still blue eyes. They seemed like two seas that had never known what winds and tempests mean, but which bask for ever under unruffled skies lulled by a ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... suffered more. As I had condemned myself to remain in Paris, I reflected that I must compel Brigitte to speak at any price. In vain I tried to think of some means of forcing her to enlighten me; for such power I would have given all I possessed. What could I do or say? She sat there calm and unruffled, looking at me with sadness. I heard the sound of the horses' hoofs on the paving as the carriage drew out of the court. I had merely to turn my hand to call them back, but it seemed to me that there was something irrevocable about their departure. I slipped ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... saw that the speaker's countenance was perfectly unruffled, and his next words convinced him that he was speaking in ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... people around her, won upon her day by day, and hour by hour. The pleasant idleness of the drawing-room, with its books and music, and unstrained chatter of family voices, grew upon her as so many new charms. To come down with bright ribbons and clean unruffled muslin to breakfast, with nothing to do which need ruffle them unbecomingly, and then to dress for dinner with silk and gauds, before ten days were over, had made life beautiful to her. She seemed to live among ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... her hands. This was better than Connecticut or Indiana. A woman here might successively marry all the men whom she might successively fancy, and thus enjoy a perpetual gush of the affections and an unruffled current of happiness. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... at this. Yet he was strangely unruffled. He saluted with quietude, as equal to equal, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... lovingly in studying the effect of successive design. Trees of grace and beauty arose on every side in exquisite drapery, while softly curved outlines added harmony to the whole, teaching the wondrous and creative skill of the Divine. The picturesque river flows gently on, calm, placid, and unruffled save by an occasional splash of oars of the pleasure seekers, whose small white boats dotted the silvery surface and were reflected in ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... calmness, which prayer confers upon care confessed. But now, he sees it, he knows it; there is, indeed, good cause: how miraculously the white marble face grows into resemblance with hers! the same sainted look of delicate unearthly beauty, the same white cheek, so still and unruffled even by a smile, the same turn of heavenly triumph on the lip, the same wild compassion in the eye! Great God—he loves again!—that staid, grave, melancholy man, loves with more than youthful fondness; the image is now dearer than the most sacred; there is a halo ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
