"Placate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the car, and got a man with a moving-wagon; and before twelve o'clock Ellen Robinson saw a goodly load of household furniture start for her own home; and, being somewhat anxious as to how it would be disposed on its arrival, she took the car, and sped away to placate Herbert. She really felt quite triumphant at the ease with which she had secured several valuable pieces of mahogany which she knew had always been ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... et fac bonum' [Psalm 36(37):27] (Avoid evil and do good). Following this precept let you act kindly towards the miller and that charity of yours will move him to charity towards you and ye shall yet be steadfast friends." Things went on thus for three days—the monk doing all he could to placate the miller. Nevertheless the miller did not cease his persecution, nor the brother his hate of the miller. On the third day Mochuda directed the brother to confess to him again. The brother said: —"This is my confession, Father, I do not yet love the miller." ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... pacify and placate, then to win and hold those worse than neutrals, was the work of John Jay. While Washington was in the field, Jay, with tireless pen, upheld the cause, and by his speech and presence ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... in the solemn procession which his Lordship held in Manila on Trinity Sunday, in thanksgiving to God for the victory. It troubled me, however, on the day when we climbed the hill, that I had not time to search for my beads, which I had lost on the day of the assault—when, to placate the wrath of God, I tore my cassock hastily down the middle. But the next day God chose to console me; for, on my return from visiting the sick at the camp, his Lordship gave me my beads. He had recognized them in the hand of a soldier who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... Francis till the King o' Scots was placated or wooed by treachery to be a prisoner, as the King would have made him if James had come into England to the meeting. Well would the King, to save his soul, placate and cosset his wife. But that he never dare do whilst James was ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... the stone, but it remained as before. The two poor old fellows regarded it with perplexity while furtively watching the officer. It was pitiful to see the expression of simulated mortification on their faces, which was meant to placate ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... where guilt was decided by ordeal of poison and boiling oil; where scores of people were murdered when a chief died, and his wives decked themselves in finery and were strangled to keep him company in the spirit-land; where men and women were bound and left to perish by the water-side to placate the god of shrimps; where the alligators were satiated with feeding on human flesh; where twins were done to death, and the mother banished to the bush; where semi- nakedness was compulsory, and girls were sent to farms to be fattened ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... falling, his face is bruised, his eyes are dull. Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him. Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... existed in the deep undercurrents of German politics a most remarkable whirlpool of discord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz was a severe tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Foreign Office, for it was they who had to invent all sorts of plausible excuses to placate various ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... placate the malevolent antoh by the gift of food. A Penihing informant said that the evil one also eats the sacrificial blood, including that which is smeared on the patient, and ultimately may leave satisfied. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... endorsement of a great Democratic meeting which was held in New York. It looked, therefore, as if the party of political evasion had an anchor to windward, and that, in the event of their losing in Kansas, they intended to placate their Southern wing by the annexation ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... reconciliations, and to Mrs. Farnshaw peace meant far more than principles. She gave little thought to the rightness of her husband's demands, but bent every faculty toward coaxing her family to accede to them. If he were angry, all must move in cautious attempt to placate his temper, and if his feelings were hurt no principle must be permitted to stand in the way of excuse and explanation. She was rejoiced when Elizabeth mentioned her father's name and forced upon her at once the necessity of asking pardon for the luckless ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... of poverty and starvation; the dread of savage and civilized races alike of the incomprehensible factor in the universe which wreaks destruction, that original and ultimate evil which all the world's religions recognize, interpret, and offer to placate—the force that is hostile to man and the happiness ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... better draw in here," said Robert. "This is undoubtedly an outpost, and, likely, an officer of some importance is in charge. Ours is a mission of peace, and we want to placate as many people as ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... deity or protector of his tribe, or locality over which he ruled. Other chieftains are added to him in course of time, and soon we have a veritable pantheon of gods, good and evil, whom it is necessary to placate by certain offices and functions, very much as it is necessary to covet the favour of powerful men on earth. Whose duty shall it be to perform such rites? Naturally, it falls to the head of the family ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... defeated, Mr. Silas Bingo saw that it would be policy to placate his rival's just anger against him. He called upon him at his office the day ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... happen, and was on the verge of hysterics. Every one was moved and strove to coax her into quietness, while an officer even accompanied her off the boat with her husband. On the quay efforts were repeated to placate her and to induce her to allow her husband to proceed. But all in vain. At last, drawing the lady forcibly away, though with no greater force than was necessary, the officer himself attempted ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... located a man called Robinson working upon a farm close by. I ventured to ask him if he had any marks upon him by which he could be recognized. He adopted a threatening attitude, and replied that if I wanted any he could give me some. With the aid of half-a-crown I managed to placate him. Putting my inquiry in another form, I asked if he had any moles. A regrettable misunderstanding, which led to a fruitless journey to another part of the village, was eventually cleared up, and on my return I satisfied myself ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... young nobleman into the next room. Hoddan locked the door and pocketed the key as Fani came into view again. She was splendidly attired, now, in brocade and jewels. Ghek had evidently hoped to placate her after marriage by things of that sort and had spent lavishly ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... round a room from which there was no escape. Hamlet, being one of the wisest of dogs, very quickly discovered that Mary hated him. He was not a sentimental dog, and he did not devote his time to inventing ways in which he might placate his enemy, he simply avoided her. But he could not hinder a certain cynical and ironic pleasure that he had of, so to speak, flaunting his master in her face. He clung to Jeremy more resolutely than ever, would jump up at him, lick his hands and tumble ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... was still in mourning, a filmy and diaphanous kind of mourning, beautiful enough to placate the angel Azrael himself. A filmy and diaphanous creature was Mrs. Patton also—one could never have dreamed of so exquisite a black butterfly. She was very sweet and sympathetic, and told Thyrsis how ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... or three days he would work terrifically, then, his weight besetting, he would placate himself with long tissue-feeding sports. I told him that he had everything to build upon; that true strength really begins where physical strength ends; that all that he had in equipment must be set in order and integrated with his ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... ancestors, that the land which allows that crime is bound down by wretchedness and misfortunes until its infamy is purged by the rigorous chastisement of the offender. There is no other means which can placate the wrath of heaven. Consequently, when they suffer long droughts, or other general plagues from heaven, they immediately attribute them to this. A case of that nature came to my notice in the year fifty-one, when the drought was general, and so great that even the water of the rivers failed, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... been perfectly natural for the prehistoric potters to have desired to placate the presiding divinity, not so much perhaps out of gratitude for the clay as to avert his displeasure and fend off bad luck in baking pottery. It is well known that the best pottery of the Incas was extremely fine in texture. Students of ceramics are well aware of the uncertainty ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... given him power, and he had let it slip through his fingers for the sake of reprisal where it was not needed. Let him go, then, to the treadmill; they were through with him. He had played his game like a tyro. They must placate this young woman whom the people believed was their queen, but who they knew was the plaything of politics ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Mr. Clay ready "for a war three years longer," and anxious "to begin to play at brag" with the Englishmen. His colleagues, more complaisant or having less confidence in their own skill in that game, found it difficult to placate him; he "stalked to and fro across the chamber, repeating five or six times, 'I will never sign a treaty upon the status ante bellum with the Indian article. So help me God!'" The next day there was an angry controversy ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the Germans to go to hell. That's the only way to get on with Germans. They are used to being sworn at. They will quit you then. If you don't, they will keep you trotting to Headquarters for six months. If you try to be nice, try to placate them, you'll simply get into hotter water. They don't understand such things. They think they are uncovering a vast conspiracy. Cinderella Cotillion Coterie! Gad, of all the farcical happenings I have come ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... a "Number Two" Company, so to placate his pride and to give distinction to the enterprise, Daniel put Georgia Cayvan, leading lady of the Madison Square Theater, at the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... smilingly across the table as she addressed her father, offering him not the ingratiating and seductive smile which he was accustomed to see women—his wife among the rest—employ when they wished to placate him. Kate's was the bright smile of a comradely fellow creature who asked him to play a straight game. It made him take fresh stock of his girl. He noted her high oval brow around which the dark hair clustered engagingly; her flexible, rather large mouth, with lips well but not seductively arched, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... with France. His inaugural address announced unmistakably his intention to preserve neutrality between the belligerents of Europe, and to treat France with impartiality but with a sincere desire for her friendship. Between the lines may be read also an equally sincere desire to placate the opposition and to free himself from all imputation of a bias toward Great Britain and a monarchical system. From the first news of Pinckney's dismissal, President Adams was disposed "to institute a fresh attempt at negotiation": he even approached ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... hostilities, stand-down; breathing time; convention; modus vivendi[Lat]; flag of truce, white flag, parlementaire[Fr], cartel|!. hollow truce, pax in bello[Lat]; drawn battle. V. pacify, tranquilize, compose; allay &c. (moderate) 174; reconcile, propitiate, placate, conciliate, meet halfway, hold out the olive branch, heal the breach, make peace, restore harmony, bring to terms. settle matters, arrange matters, accommodate matters, accommodate differences; set straight; make up a quarrel, tantas ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... its full effect. Obsequious to the last degree, the landlord was so profoundly touched, when Pereo, not displeased with this evidence of his power over his countrymen, condescendingly offered to click glasses with him, that he endeavored to placate him still further. ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Beattie had held out to him, he remembered, with a sorry smile. Esther, Madame Beattie had cheerfully determined, was to help him placate the little gods. Now Esther herself was offering her own abetment in almost the same terms. He saw no way even vaguely to resolve upon what he felt able to do, except by indirection. They ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... the glade. It went over Migul's head and fell short of our cage. Migul turned, and a rain of arrows thudded harmlessly against its metal body. I heard the Robot's contemptuous laugh. It made no answering attack, but stood motionless. And suddenly, thinking it a god whom now they must placate, the savages ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... dissatisfied with the Declaration. It was too forceful for him. He would tone it down, that it might soothe the king, placate the Duke of Monmouth, condone the Indulged ministers, and restore Weir to the ranks. He presented a new Declaration as a substitute for the one already in force. For two weeks, even till the enemy was lining up for battle, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... farinaceous foods in exchange. It may be against your laws, and I am well aware that for the treaty I must wait, but I beg you in the name of humanity to point out to his excellency a way in which he can at the same time relieve our necessities and placate ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... story; all he said when he handed in his commission and went back to his work was that the man was killed in a fair fight. Hate him! No wonder they hate him—the Williams Cache gang and all their friends on the range! Your cousin thinks it policy to placate that element, hoping that they won't steal your cattle if you are friendly with them. I know nothing about that, but I do know something about Whispering Smith. It will be a bad day for Williams Cache when they start him up again. But ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... contractor who had questioned us near the railway encampment along the way, and had offered us directions; but his manner was as different now from then as a bully's in and out of school. Then he had sought to placate, and had almost cringed to Monty. Everything about him now proclaimed the ungloved ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... knew Sir William liked him: and that Lady Franks didn't. One day he might have to seek help from Sir William. So he had better placate milady. Wrinkling the fine, half mischievous smile on his face, and trading on his charm, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Haley coming in to mail a letter, they'd get curious; you couldn't tell but what they might wrastle with him and grab the letter. In a day or two maybe he could get into Mormons Landing, where he wasn't so well known, and mail it there. To placate Garland he promised him a paper; the man at the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... von Bissing and his German governing staff in Belgium, together with most of the men of the military General Staff at Great Headquarters. Von Bissing tried, in his heavy, stupid way, to placate the Belgians; that was part of his policy. So he would offer them food—always for work—with one hand, while he gave them a slap with the other. He wanted Belgium to be tranquil. He did not want to have openly to machine-gun starving mobs in the cities, however many unfortunates ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... his voice had drawn out in a snuffling appeal, but he simply had to placate this ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the powerful Viceroy and the auditors, and rendered himself inaccessible to any possible overtures from the more reasonable and moderate men of the opposition, whom it should have been his first duty to placate by ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Nanteuil was only moderately distressed by this, and she excused her daughter by reflecting that the young girl had as yet no experience of life. And Monsieur Bondois, whom Felicie inspired with a superhuman terror, strove to placate her by signs of respect and ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... The attitude of hostility and defiance had gone. She looked at him silently, pleadingly, like some helpless dumb animal trying to placate its master's wrath. Brockton glanced at his watch, walked over to the window and then came back to where she stood. Shaking his fist at her, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... much," admitted her husband evidently anxious to placate her, for Marm Parraday was her ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... business is bought out something has to be given over and above the old iron value of the concern for the value of the connection and other intangible assets. Wherever an entirely new industry is started it has to meet certain initial expenses. It has to placate, to use the unpleasant American word, various interests in order to get to work, or it has to lay out money, in building up a concern by advertising or otherwise. It is impossible that every penny which is put into ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... the word "resigned" in describing Pogson. To-day that word notably covered him. Our friend appeared depressed; yet bland in his depression, anxious to mollify and placate rather than reproach. His attitude touched me. I hardly deserved it after my neglect—to which, by the way, he made no smallest reference. But as I unfolded my plans, he increasingly threw off his depression and generously entered into them. Would have me fetch an atlas and trace ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... and they were married there, Mrs. Browning returning at once to her own home, where she remained till a week later, when she started for Italy with her husband. The wedding was then announced. Throughout her father's life Mrs. Browning endeavored to placate him, for she devotedly loved him and she had been his favorite child, but in vain. He would never see her again, he returned her letters unopened, and he would not allow her to be spoken of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Everything pointed to it. Even the golden bees of Napoleon! Were there not three B's in his own name? The shameful truth is that he had been christened "Bunker Bunker Bean." His fond and foolish mother had thus ingenuously sought to placate the two old Uncle Bunkers; unsuccessfully, be it added, for each had affected to believe that he took second place in the name. But the three B's were there; did they not point psychically to the golden bees of the Corsican? Indeed, an astrologist ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... that his weariness could placate even momentarily such reflections, but at last he slept again. He was aroused by the tramping of men around the house, and strange, harsh voices. He raised himself on his elbow and glanced from the window. It had long been daylight. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... to see him trying to placate both women at once. Both women watched him, Hermione with deep resentment and pity for him, Ursula very impatient. He was nervous and apparently in quite good spirits, chattering the conventional commonplaces. Ursula was amazed and indignant at the way he made small-talk; ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... fell on Sunday, I tried to placate the agricultural poet by sowing half on the 24th and the other half on the 26th, but it was no use. Whether the turnip god was offended by the fractured rule and refused his blessing, or whether the dry August and September prevented full returns, is ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... than did they, but we said that Lake Gladys Doolittle Batt was the first, hoping to placate that ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... villainous counsellors!" But there is yet time, dearest mother, to avert the judgment of God. Return to the obedience of Holy Church: know the ill that you have wrought: humble you under the mighty hand of God; and God, who has regard to the humility of His handmaid, shall show mercy upon us: He will placate His wrath over your faults; through the mediation of the Blood of Christ, you shall be grafted and bound in Him with the chain of that charity in which you shall know and love the truth. The truth shall set you free from lie: it shall scatter all shadows, giving you light ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... to say that no Roman soldiers took part in what followed. It was the soldiers of the auxiliaries who crowned and cloaked Jesus, put the reed of sovereignty in his hand, and, kneeling, hailed him King of the Jews. Although it failed, it was a play to placate. And I, looking on, learned the charm of Jesus. Despite the cruel mockery of situation, he was regal. And I was quiet as I gazed. It was his own quiet that went into me. I was soothed and satisfied, and was without bewilderment. This thing had to be. All was well. The serenity of Jesus in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... ingenuity inveigling men of letters to his house on another evening every week, to make them his aides, or at least keep them from openly attacking him, so soon as his candidacy—an entirely clerical affair—should be announced. It was probably to attract and placate his adversaries that he had contrived these baroque gatherings to which, out of curiosity as a matter of fact, the most utterly different kinds ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Pretoria by special train yesterday. This was the man who offered his service as Mediator and was accepted by both Uitlander and Boer. To placate the Boer he refrained from visiting Dr. Jameson and his men imprisoned at Pretoria, nor did he permit Sir Jacobus de Wet to visit them. He never acquainted himself with the terms of Dr. Jameson's surrender. He commanded Johannesburg to disarm ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... to placate the kilted officer. He tapped his swagger stick against the side of his leg while he ran his eyes up and down Joe Mauser and the others, as though memorizing them ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... scallywags rushed into the courtyard, shouting "Long live the King! Down with France and England!" fired a few revolver shots in the air, and bolted. Immediately M. Zaimis hastened to the Legation and expressed his regrets. But that did not suffice to placate the outraged honour of the French Republic. Despite the objections of his colleagues, M. Guillemin had a detachment of bluejackets landed to guard the Legation; and next day a Note was presented to the Greek Premier demanding that the perpetrators of this grave breach of International Law should ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... shelter were desperately lucky chances. Not having attained as yet to a conception of the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of communication with ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Lucien thought it time to come forward to support Joseph, but that he also wished to placate the rising wrath of the Consul. So he ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... second volume was slowly printing, he received an intimation from his publisher that the work might grow to a length that would endanger the profits. The author hereupon adopted a course which is itself a proof of how much stranger is fact than fiction. To placate the publisher and set his mind at rest, the last chapter was written, printed, and paged, not merely before the intervening chapters had been composed, but before they had been fully conceived. It was fair to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... countries, moreover, began to take the United States more seriously. The open hostility which they had shown on the first entrance of this nation into world politics changed, on second thought, to a desire on their part to placate and perhaps to win the support of ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... the time of Sir Michael Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by a leading Tory light as "a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be left to be managed by ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... had ever done during the whole course of his life. It was a serious and delicate position. His reputation, his position, perhaps even his profession, depended on the result. He must sound his companion and placate her at ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... of the censor; what has been hitherto repressed will now succeed in finding its way to consciousness. But as the censorship is never absent, but merely off guard, certain alterations must be conceded so as to placate it. It is a compromise which becomes conscious in this case—a compromise between what one procedure has in view and the demands of the other. Repression, laxity of the censor, compromise—this is the foundation for the origin of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... is no reason to doubt it. Even Oldmixon grudgingly reports that Swift had promised "the Whigs that they shall come in if they will." However violent his partisanship at times, Swift could and did respect merit; and Harley was always ready to placate individual members of the Opposition. There is therefore no need to take seriously, as Oldmixon and the authors of The British Academy pretend to do, the list of potential members of the Academy printed ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... hoped at the Congress at Amritsar—I am speaking God's truth before you—when I pleaded on bended knees before some of you for co-operation with the Government. I had full hope that the British ministers who are wise, as a rule, would placate the Mussalman sentiment that they would do full justice in the matter of the Punjab atrocities; and therefore, I said:—let us return good-will to the hand of fellowship that has been extended to us, which I then believed ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... and some of the committee were so set on it that he doubted his ability to balk them. He finally remarked, however, he might possibly do something, if Edwards, himself, would meantime take a course calculated to placate the insurgents and disarm their resentment. Being rather anxiously inquired of by the storekeeper as to what he could consistently do, Perez finally suggested that Israel Goodrich was going to have a husking ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... of duellists includes a score of prominent Englishmen, Frenchmen and Americans, many of them contemporary with Hamilton, and some of them as profoundly admired, who succumbed to its tyranny. Proof of his valour at Monmouth and at Yorktown would no more placate the popular contempt and obloquy sure to follow an avoidance of its demands than would the victory at Waterloo have excused Wellington had he declined to challenge Lord Winchilsea. All this did not ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... material from the vital point, are necessarily expensive out of all proportion to their effectiveness. Both the Germans and ourselves made the initial mistake of organizing large local defence systems partly to placate public opinion. During the German offensive of 1918 a further development of night fighting took place in the bombing and low strafing of enemy troops and unlighted transport with ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... there were, as it would appear, two main objects in life: (1) to promote fertility in cattle and crops, for food; and (2) to placate or ward off Death; and it seemed very obvious—even before any distinct figures of gods, or any idea of prayer, had arisen—to attain these objects by magic ritual. The rites of Baptism, of Initiation (or Confirmation) and the many ceremonies of a Second Birth, which we associate with fully-formed ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... force in the face of which the native interest did not count. What that force was, he said, could only be surmised. General Hertzog, who had always advocated some such measure (though he had never been able to carry it out), had just been excluded from the Botha Cabinet; to placate his supporters, who were very angry over his dismissal, the Government carried out this alleged policy of his, so that while General Hertzog in office was not able to bring about the enslavement of the blacks, General ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... should pay the king L20,000 (supposed to be the value of a third of the total crop of Virginia tobacco) and import at least forty thousand pounds weight of Spanish tobacco. Though this last was a condition demanded by the king doubtless to placate the Spanish court, with whom he was negotiating for the marriage of his son Charles to the infanta, the contract on the whole was displeasing to Count Gondomar, the Spanish minister. He fomented dissensions in the company over the details, and Middlesex, the patron of the measure, being a ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... discomfiting revelation to the Whigs, who had certainly labored as industriously as the Democrats, to placate the Saints of Nauvoo. From this moment the Whigs began a crusade against the Mormons, who were already, it is true, exhibiting the characteristics which had made them odious to the people of Missouri.[141] Rightly or wrongly, public opinion was veering; and the shrewd Duncan, who ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... of a thousand men was made from three Massachusetts regiments, to which, in order to placate General Putnam, two hundred Connecticut soldiers were added under his friend, Captain Knowlton. This small body of militia, with a few field pieces as artillery, was to sally forth to rouse the British lion in his lair. The detachment ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... War of Sections. He broke away from Pierce and retired from the editorship of the Washington Union upon the issue of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, to which he was opposed, refusing the appointment of Governor of Oregon, with which the President sought to placate him, though it meant his return to the Senate of the United States in a year or two, when he and Oregon's delegate in Congress, Gen. Joseph Lane—the Lane of the Breckenridge and Lane ticket of 1860—had brought the territory of Oregon in as ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... of the fugitives, and satisfied the denizens of Cabul, as well as the wild clans en route thither, that a retreat was wisdom. The government of Cabul became uneasy for the consequences, and Dost Mohammed Khan took measures to placate the British government, whose policy was not to pursue the war into Affghanistan. The government of Calcutta annexed the Punjaub to British India, and thus terminated the Sikh war. The governor-general issued, on the 29th of March, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a sort of chart, superimposing the different religions as I described them, with a pin run through them all, as it were; their common basis being a Dominant Power or Powers, and some Special Behavior, mostly taboos, to please or placate. There were some common features in certain groups of religions, but the one always present was this Power, and the things which must be done or not done because of it. It was not hard to trace our human imagery of the Divine Force up through successive stages of bloodthirsty, sensual, ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... Enryaku-ji (Hiei-zan), jealous that a privilege which they alone possessed should be granted to priests of another monastery, repaired to the Court en masse to protest. Shirakuwu yielded to this representation and despatched Oye no Masafusa to placate Raigo. But the abbot refused to listen. He starved himself to death, passing day and night in devotion, and shortly after his demise the little prince, born in answer to his ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... playwright of to-day cannot help plagiarizing his technique, many of his situations, and even his plots from earlier plays; consequently, he tries to conceal his borrowings, to placate public opinion by changing the names and the environment of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... there was a thunderstorm, but he wants to placate Dering. 'I suppose I just thought there was one. Perhaps it was some thunderstorm of long ago that I heard. They ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... stated that Parnell's retention of the Irish leadership would be fatal to his own continued advocacy of the Irish cause. In December, the majority of the Irish Party threw over Parnell in order to placate the "Nonconformist conscience," and retain the co-operation of the Liberal Party under Gladstone's leadership. During the months following, Parnell and his adherents suffered a series of defeats at by-elections in Ireland. In June 1891, immediately on the ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... broken Chief Vngngn's personality taboo. And, among what was left of these that had passed, he encountered what was left of one who had not yet passed. Truly had the bush-folk named themselves into the name of the Red One, seeing in him their own image which they strove to placate and ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... avoid revolution, others must make the compromise. The Queen then appointed Lord John Russell as Prime Minister and ordered him to form a new Cabinet and give an office to Cobden. Lord Russell tried for four days to meet the issue, and endeavored to placate the people with platitude and promise. Cobden refused all office, and informed Lord Russell that he preferred to help the Crown by remaining ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Black Hills country was reserved for their exclusive use, no settling by white men to be allowed. In 1874 gold was discovered, and the usual gold fever was followed by a rush of whites into the Indian country. The Sioux naturally resented the intrusion, and instead of attempting to placate them, to the end that the treaty might be revised, the government sent General Custer into the Black Hills with instructions to intimidate the Indians into submission. But Custer was too wise, too familiar with Indian ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... said Kitty, her heart trying to burst through. It seemed impossible that Karlov should not hear the thunder. To placate him, to answer his questions, to keep ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Alloway who was master of the great guns with which they hoped to smash the palisades around the settlements. Complete cooperation between white man and red man was necessary for the success of the expedition, and sometimes it was necessary for one to placate the other. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... diplomatic and financial device, which was invented by these famous Popes of Avignon, was the system of the "Commende," which enabled relatives of nobles and all those whom it was desirable to placate, not alone ecclesiastics, but mere laymen and bloody barons, to become "Commendatory Abbots" or "Commendatory Priors," and to receive at least one-third of the monastery's revenues, without being in any way responsible for the monastery's welfare. This care was left ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... theirs. The two parties cemented their friendship and feasted happily together. But the sacrifice at the Diasia was a holocaust:[14:2] every shred of the victim was burnt to ashes, that no man might partake of it. We know quite well the meaning of that form of sacrifice: it is a sacrifice to placate or appease the powers below, the Chthonioi, the dead and the lords of death. It was performed, as our authorities tell us, meta stygnotetos, with ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Usually, he was among the first. But a certain delicacy, new to him, seemed to whisper to him to-night that he would do well not to thrust himself obtrusively into the family circle. Perhaps, also, a vague desire to placate the "powers that be" had made him pay unusual attention to his face and nails and hair. He was very well groomed—for Teddy—and he tried to assume a perfectly casual air, as he came ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... mischief, where? He seemed to remember thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nature and to which every eye and hand must submit if even a semblance of expression is to be sought for. One of them is truth. In this all schools concur, each one demanding the truth, or at least enough of it to placate their consciences when they add to it a sufficient number of lies of their own manufacture to make the subject interesting to their special line of constituents. Among these I do not class the lunatics who are to-day wandering loose outside of charitable asylums especially ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... her chair and went to him. Her desire to placate her brother supported her determination to know his precise attitude toward her husband. She placed her hand on ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... and the Walker-Otis Bill - Attempt to Placate the Machine Weakened Position of Its Supporters - Most Serious Criticism Came from Advocates of the Direct Primary Idea - What the Original Measure Provided - ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... myself, assailing his good nature, to cajole him into printing some piece of youthful extravagance which he well knew—and I knew—and he knew that I knew—would infuriate a hundred staid readers of The Speaker and oblige him to placate in private a dozen puzzled and indignant correspondents. For those were days before the beards had stiffened on the chins of some of us who assembled to reform politics, art, literature, and the world in general from a somewhat frowsy upstairs ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no doubt that Charles entertained increasingly sinister suspicions of his guest. He thought the king might either try to enter the city ahead of him and manage to placate his ancient allies by a specious explanation, or else he might succeed in effecting his escape without fulfilling his compact. At last Charles appointed Sunday, October 30th, for an assault. On the 29th, his own quarters were in a little suburb of mean, low houses, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... necessary, and that while the Government should retain the fee of these lands, the miners should have the entire control of them under regulations prescribed by themselves. This, it was believed, would placate the miners and settle the question; but the introduction of the measure referred to, and the agitation of the question, had made some form of legislation inevitable, and the question now was to determine what that legislation should be. Senators Conness of California, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... that consecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of making the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. He was driven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the desire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... the lover or husband of Milly Erne. She believed that through her an evil man might be reclaimed. His allusion to what he called her blindness terrified her. Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter, fatal mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man; she knew the die was cast, and that if Lassiter did not soften to a woman's grace and beauty and wiles, then it would be because she could ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... admitted. "Both Seaman and I have endeavoured to reason with her, but, as you are doubtless aware, the Princess is a woman of very strong will. She is also very powerfully placed here, and it is the urgent desire of the Court at Berlin to placate in every way the Hungarian nobility. You will understand, of course, that I speak from a political point of view only. I cannot ignore the fact of your unfortunate relations with the late Prince, but in considering the present position ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... popular women's temples in every quarter of the city, there must he public sacrifices of cattle, sheep and swine, there must be solemn and gorgeous processions; every sort of ceremonial traditionally supposed to mitigate the wrath of the gods, to placate them, to win their favor, must be carried out with every detail of care, with ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... see the assistant engineers, with their eyes on the pointers that stood out against two white dials. He could see the Chief, the Chief whom he would so soon have to buy over and placate, moving about nervous and alert. Then he heard the tinkle of the telegraph bell, and the repeated gasp of energy as the engineers threw the levers. He could hear the vicious hum of the reversing-engines, and then the great ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... expedient of impatient hope or hurried despair. There are few men whose premature death could influence human affairs more than on the surface. The deeper stream of causes depends not on individuals who, like the mass of mankind, are carried on by a destiny which no murder has ever been able to placate, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... thy word as thou Hast ever been obedient to the voice Of Rimmon. Let thy fiery captain wait Until the sacrifice has been performed, And he shall have the jewel that he claims. Must we not first placate the city's god With due allegiance, keep the ancient faith, And pay our homage to the Lord ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Bannockburn it had been their clan privilege to hold the post of honour on the right. The blundering Irishman assigned this position to the Athole men in forming the line of battle, and stubbornly refused to reform his line. The Duke of Perth, who commanded on the left wing, endeavoured to placate the clan by vowing that they would that day make a right of the left and promising to change his name to Macdonald after the victory. Riding to the Duke with a message from the Prince I chanced on a man lying face down among the whin ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Cortez' time, with their comparatively high civilization, tolerated human sacrifices. But their human sacrifices were merciful compared with ours. What is cutting out a man's heart on an altar to propitiate a god, to hounding him to death through miserable years in a prison to placate the spite of an accuser, the justice of a court, or the grudge of ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... had gone to his supper, and the owner of the shop was trying to placate four men who wished to be shaved at once. Reifsnyder was very garrulous—a fact which made him rather remarkable among barbers, who, as a class, are austerely speechless, having been taught silence by the hammering reiteration of a tradition. It ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... 1893, there came the definite organization of the Reformist party, with aims not differing greatly from those of the Autonomistas. But Spain delayed until Marti and his followers struck their blow. Official efforts to placate them failed utterly, as did efforts to intimidate them or to conquer them. The Autonomists declared their support of the existing Government, and rebuked the insurgents in a manifesto issued on April ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... apron covering her gown and her sleeves rolled up, was like an ice-box, and the naked babies when laid on the scales shrieked like demons. One male child, I remember, sat up perfectly straight and bellowed his protest with an insistent fury and a snorting disdain at all attempts to placate him that betokened the true son of France and a lusty long-distance recruit for the army. All the children, in fact, although their mothers were unmistakably poor, looked remarkably ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... be called studying. Sometimes the head-master would break into the room just in time to see the conclusion of a scuffle. Jimmy's clothes are white with dust. "Johnny, did you throw chalk at Jimmy?" "No, sir," says Johnny, and then under his breath to placate God's penchant for truth, "I threw the chalk-eraser." Once in Portland, Maine, I ordered iced tea at an hotel. The waitress brought me a glass of yellowish liquid with a two-inch collar of foam at the top. No tea I had ever seen outside ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... further at that time. A large number did not wish to do even that, and an equally large number fearing that Pompey might renew the strife regarded this as quite enough for Caesar and expected that it would be a fairly simple matter to placate Pompey on account of it. Moreover, when he died, they would not believe this news till late, and until they saw his signet that had been sent. (On this were carved three trophies, as on that of Sulla.) [-19-] But when he ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... and supreme means of coercion, Spain refused to America the right of navigation on the Mississippi and so deprived the Westerners of a market for their produce. The Northern States, having no immediate use for the Mississippi, were willing to placate Spain by acknowledging her monopoly of the great waterway. But Virginia and North Carolina were determined that America should not, by congressional enactment, surrender her "natural right"; and they cited ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... diagnose the case or even to make a good guess. The conscientious medical practitioner has to postpone actual treatment until the symptoms are well defined. Meanwhile he applies expectant treatment as it is called in medical parlance, that is, he gives a purgative or a placebo, something or other to placate, or to make the patient and his friends believe ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... effect. It was also due mainly to Magyar influence that all attempts of the Czechs to weaken German influence in Austria were frustrated. Francis Joseph always promised to be crowned King of Bohemia when he wished to placate the Czechs in times of stress for Austria: in 1861, 1865, 1870 and 1871. But he never carried out his promises. In this he was guided not only by considerations of dynastic interest, but also by the advice ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... the purchase in Florida in 1819 been recognized as the Sabine River, west of this lying the then foreign country of Texas. France had claimed the Rio Grande as Louisiana's western bound, but Mr. Monroe, to placate the North in the Florida annexation, had receded from this claim. Texas and Coahuila became a state in the new Mexican republic, which Spain recognized in 1821; but in 1836 Texas declared itself independent. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... unseen agencies. The darkness is peopled with hosts of spirits. On the desolate rocks, in the untrodden jungle, on the dark mountain tops, in gloomy caves, by mad torrents, in deep pools, dwell invisible powers whose enmity he must avoid or whose good will he must court, or whose anger he must placate. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... had been afraid to have him in the house? It was a fact that he alone knew her relations with Holliday, he alone had always to an annoying extent seen through her. He recalled with a feeling akin to nausea her recent attempts to placate him, to turn him from an enemy into an ally. Had she done that in order to blind him the more completely to what was going on? The idea suggested a degree of calculating inhumanity appalling to contemplate. He lived over again the moment when she had clung to him caressingly and ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... in sufficient number the Port Elizabeth lines had to be swept almost bare, although the supply of the troops round Naauwpoort junction and Colesberg largely depended on that railway. It may, therefore, be imagined how hard it was to placate the zealous civil officials, who, without understanding why it was done, found themselves deprived of the very instruments needed for their work, and had as best they could to make bricks without straw. All the organisation of this fell upon Colonel Girouard, who had promised ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... Aaron." Sim now spoke with a flattery intended to placate ruffled pride. "Ther boys thet's gittin' restive air kinderly lookin' ter you ter call thet council. Caleb Harper hain't long fer this life—an' who's goin' ter take up ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... superiority of an enfranchised over a disfranchised class. It was not that the convention had more respect for the workingman, per se, but they feared his vote and so adopted the greenback plank in order to placate him, and then nominated for President the most ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... wanderings—had he really encountered them under commonplace conditions and his over-stimulated brain had supplied the incongruities? However that might be, a sudden, elating thought caused him an intense joy. Nearly all of us have, at some point in our lives—either to excuse our own stupidity or to placate our consciences—promulgated some theory of fatalism. We have set up an intelligent Fate that works by codes and signals. Tansey had done likewise; and now he read, through the night's incidents, the finger-prints of destiny. Each excursion that he had made had led to the one paramount finale—to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... to placate them. If that fails, some of you draw them off in order to permit the others to enter the house and destroy the whiskey. It's a tough job, but you may succeed. If the crowd turns ugly as it may, being drunk, come back. No need to take the risk of broken heads or being ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very meek this morning. That showed! The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with women. He was tempted to insane daring: the rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the passage, how Odysseus meets that great spirit among the shades and would placate it, would 'make up' their quarrel on earth ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... littoral provinces. Ill-blood had arisen between the two peoples before this, and a Japanese colony had been driven out of Ningpo by force and not without bloodshed a few years previously. Kia-tsing (d. 1567) was not equal to such emergencies, and his son Lung-king (1567-1573)sought to placate the Tatar Yen-ta by making him a prince of the empire and giving him commercial privileges, which were supplemented by the succeeding emperor Wan-li (1573-1620) by the grant of land in Shen-si. During the reign ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... notions of Berlioz made him no favorite with the dons of the Conservatoire, and by the irritable and autocratic Cherubini he was positively hated. The young man took no pains to placate this resentment, but on the other hand elaborated methods of making himself doubly offensive. His power of stinging repartee stood him in good stead, and he never put a button on his foil. Had it been in old Cherubini's power to expel this bold pupil from the Conservatoire, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the fruitlessness of his mission there and promptly responded. Jay's experience in Spain and his knowledge of Spanish hopes had led him to believe that the French were not especially concerned about American interests but were in fact willing to sacrifice them if necessary to placate Spain. He accordingly insisted that the American Commissioners should disregard their instructions and, without the knowledge of France, should deal directly with Great Britain. In this contention he was supported by Adams when he arrived, but it was hard to persuade Franklin ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... awfully bad year—losses have been terrific," stammered the underwriting executive, anxious to placate ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... accept; the Mother Superior did for me, because he's the Mayor of San Francisco visiting your uncle, and she's always anxious to placate the powers that be. And I thought he might have some information that I could get out of him. And it was better than being in the convent all day. And I thought I could stand ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte |
