"Placidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little alteration in the sleeve," said Lady Caroline, with the placidity which Janetta had always attributed to Margaret as a special virtue, but which she now found was merely characteristic of the house and family in general, "but Markham can do that to-morrow. There are some people coming in the evening, and the ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... long he walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess. The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himself placid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power of commonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice say: "What a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most celebrated rocking-chair two inches nearer the door, and whisking a few invisible particles of dust from the centre table. Every time any one of importance comes our way, or is distantly likely to come our way. Harriet resolves herself into an amiable whirlwind of good order, subsiding into placidity at the first sound of ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... breast of a hashed fowl from a dish that was before her. This she did with considerable care,—I may say, with a show of care; and then, though she did not absolutely call Clara by her Christian name, she did call her 'my dear'. Clara saw it all, and felt that the usual placidity of the afternoon would be broken by some special event. At three o'clock, when the carriage as usual came to the door, Belinda was out of the way, and Clara was made to understand that she and Lady Aylmer were to be driven out without any other companion. 'Belinda is a little ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... a venturesome boatman, and generally confine my aquatic outings to the smaller lake, but that Saturday night there was not a breath of wind, and the water was placidity personified, so I drifted in my small skiff through the channel that connects the smaller with the larger body of water. On the sandy point jutting out at the mouth, upon an old stump, sat a solitary maiden, the picture ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... this placidity had been already solved by our captain, whom I had asked what price I should bargain to pay from the steamer to the shore. "There is a tariff," said he, "and the boatmen keep to it. The Neapolitans are good people, (buona gente,) and only needed ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... that Grandma woke up first. And whereas Grandpa, when the avenging pin pierced his shins, recovered himself with a start and an air of guilty confusion, Grandma opened her eyes at regular intervals, with the utmost calm and placidity, as though she had merely been closing them to engage in a few ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... are screened against the flies. Here the white-clad, smooth-shaven milkers do their work with scrubbed and manicured hands. You will note that all these men are studiously low-voiced and gentle in movement; for a cow, notwithstanding her outward placidity, is the most sensitive creature on earth, and there is an old superstition that if you speak roughly to your cow she will earn no money ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... happy humour is assailed at Marseilles. His placidity and stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers, like rapacious bats, hover around the emigrant and before his purse is opened for ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... a thought besmirch Blood over all our soul, How should we see our task But through his blunt and lashless eyes? Alive, he is not vital overmuch; Dying, not mortal overmuch; Nor sad, nor proud, Nor curious at all. He cannot tell Old men's placidity ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... fragile that they must certainly have been broken to pieces had they ever been subjected to the influence of currents, or to the pulverising violence of waves. Hence the conclusion that the bottom of the sea is in a state of perpetual rest and placidity. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... who was ill—an old woman who had been in her service for years, in the old days. Unlike her friend she was fond of young people and invalids, but she was less interesting to Laura, except that it was a sort of fascination to wonder how she could have such abysses of placidity. She had long cheeks and kind eyes and was devoted to birds; somehow she always made Laura think secretly of a tablet of fine white soap—nothing else was so ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... his brow, as if by an effort; but the trouble was too deep-seated that its placidity should at once return. He said, however, that which fitted the occasion, that "he could not have the happiness of forgiving, because she who commanded him to do so could commit no injury ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... feeling of balance. Hence (from the lack of unimpeded movement on the short side) the feeling there of 'intensity,' or 'concentration,' or 'greater significance.' Hence, too, the 'ease,' the 'simplicity,' the 'placidity' of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... mind, placidity of conduct and control of passion rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and tyranny, making him always master of the human midgets or vultures ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... friends; he was alone with her, and his unusually agitated manner betrayed that he had been conversing upon some subject of the deepest interest. Madeleine, too, looked paler than usual, and the troubled expression which had displaced the wonted placidity of her countenance was, doubtless, owing to this ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... become quite the 'go' if she went to London. But she knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventy pounds, of which nobody knew anything. She would move soon, as soon as she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparent placidity and calm, was ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... traces upon her countenance which are the outward emblems of internal conflict and an unquiet soul. A chaste melancholy had refined and softened her expression, and her loss of sight had been compensated for by that placidity which comes upon the faces of the blind. With her silvery hair peeping out beneath her snow-white cap, and a bright smile upon her sympathetic face, she was the old Mary improved and developed, with something ethereal ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance,—teaching the hand to be jealous of the eye. Beneath her hair, which was soft and feathery and worn in many curls, the brow, which might have been traced by a compass so pure was its modelling, shone forth discreet, calm to placidity, and yet luminous with thought: when and where could another be found so transparently clear or more exquisitely smooth? It seemed, like a pearl, to have its orient. The eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid as the eyes of a child, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... week had passed since the two young men had startled Lady Merceron by their unexpected arrival, and since then the good lady had been doing her best to entertain them; for, as she could not help noticing-, they seemed a little dull. It was a great change from the whirl of London to the deep placidity of the Court, and Lady Merceron could not quite understand why Charlie had tired so soon of his excursion, or why his friend persisted with so much fervor that anything was better than London, and the Court was the most charming place he had ever seen. Of the two Charlie ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Essendine himself, entering the hotel to explain matters to the lady, finds (1) that she is the wife who divorced him before marrying Greville; (2) that she has just died of heart disease. Next, being of a placidity almost inhuman, he decides to bury the corpse as that of his wife, and not worry anyone with explanations. What he didn't know then, or I either, was that another lady was at the moment gadding about London in one of Mrs. Greville's cast-off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... any foreign reader, simply means that he is not always where we can get at him; and therefore his venerable visage is missing from our celestial portrait gallery. One fact we have found out, which we fear will ripple the pure water placidity of some of our best friends; but ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... description much superior to that of his poorer fellow-countrymen.[1] His countenance was open and dignified, and so calm that it appeared like a rock which nothing could move. Not that it had any character of sternness in it; on the contrary, it possessed a placidity, blended with firmness, which was anything but forbidding. The moment Miaoulis came on deck, he cordially shook hands with Lord Cochrane, and a broken conversation commenced between them in Spanish, Miaoulis ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... was milk-white and rose-red after an old-fashioned rule of colour, too crude perhaps for modern artistic taste. Sometimes these delightful tints go with a placid soul which never varies, but in Elinor's case there was a demon in the hazel of the eyes, not dark enough for placidity, all fire at the best of times, and ready in a moment to burst into flame. She it was who had to be in the forefront of the interest, and not her mother, though for metaphysical, or what I suppose should now be called psychological interests, the elder lady was probably the most interesting of the ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Richie's quiet life with her son had kept her forehead smooth, and her eyes—eyes the color of a brook which loiters in shady places over last year's leaves—softly clear. There was a gentle placidity about her; the curious, shy hesitation, the deep, half-frightened sadness, which had been so marked when her landlord knew her first, had disappeared; sometimes she even showed soft gaieties of manner or speech which delighted her moody neighbor to the point of making him ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... my—of my—I stammered. The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He cut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an immense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of spirits—"Altogether my mistake." I marvelled greatly at this expression: he might have been alluding to some trifling ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... into security by her mother's placidity and Bela's apparent simple friendship, hardly was conscious of the precise moment when the siege against her passive resistance was once more resumed. It was all so gradual, so kind, so persuasive: and she had so little to look forward to in the future. What did it matter what ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... their sufferings or the agonies they had experienced during their labour and long walk. I got the story from one of the guards who had accompanied them. But even these thick-skinned disciples of "kultur" and brutality were not disposed to be communicative. The stoicism, grim determination and placidity of the Reverend Fathers constituted something which their square heads and addled brains failed to understand. They had never experienced ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... weariness in her expression. Harry Colston made a model husband in some respects, but he had his limitations. His virtues were commonplace and sometimes tedious; his intelligence was less than his wife's. Muriel was fond of him, but his unwavering good-nature and placidity irritated her. She was inclined to be sorry for her ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... by the procession of cars occasioning a stoppage of about three-quarters of a mile in length, as nearly as I could judge. His Majesty, however, entreating me not to be discomposed by the contingent uproar, smoked with great placidity, and surveyed ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... windows. But an hour from that glare, confusion, din, riot, and insanity, to the soothing sights and sounds of this rural paradise! And after looking at it till my spirits have subsided into something like kindred composure and placidity, I open my letter-case, and find your last unanswered epistle lying on the top of it. "If Cunard and Harnden have proved true," you must have received by this time our reply to your proposition touching the Coster ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... acts—amused—as if he were years and years older, and we were babies playing in a sand box or making mud pies." It was clear that his amusement amused her, just as her mother's admonition amused her: nothing annoyed or disturbed her,—her serenity was too deep for that. Her fine placidity was lighted now with an inner flame, but she was very quiet about her happiness; she was not very articulate in ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... either here or at the parsonage. When, however, she is in society, one would fancy her a very ignorant person, so little does she say and so anxious does she appear to conceal her information. Her modesty is disturbed by no vanity, and the placidity of her meditations is interrupted by no vulgar commotion. One might almost fancy her a stranger to this world, indifferent to its calculations, lost to its joys, and submitting without effort to its sorrows. I have never seen her smile, but I have never heard her ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... head, to indicate that she has been even conscious of its passage. Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country; and while the body is borne forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar alley that leads towards the town; they are left behind with the signalman as, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her tender feet, and her snowy skin was in more than one place visible through the rents of her frock. The old man looked at them, from time to time; and there might have been observed, notwithstanding the sweetness and placidity of his smile, a secret expression of inward agony—the physical and natural feelings of the parent and the man mingling, or rather struggling, with the great principle of dependence on God, without which he must at once have sunk down prostrate ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... astonishment. At times, the river was overhung by dark and stupendous rocks, rising like gigantic walls and battlements; these would be rent by wide and yawning chasms, that seemed to speak of past convulsions of nature. Sometimes the river was of a glassy smoothness and placidity; at other times it roared along in impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here, the rocks were piled in the most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another place, they were succeeded by delightful valleys carpeted with ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... increased in numbers, their weird groups being crowded together, piled up and overturned on one another. We tried to hold on with our hands and feet, but we slid on their slippery asperities. The cliff was so very high that it quite frightened us to look up at it. Although it crushed us by its formidable placidity, still it fascinated us, for we could not help looking at it and it ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... dropped from her fingers; she sat up. Then he saw that she too was agitated. There was an unusual spot of colour in her cheeks, her breathing was certainly less regular. The variance from her habitual placidity encouraged him. He scarcely hesitated ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated the misgivings he did not care to express. "Have you got the celery ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... lent David books to read; but he rejoiced secretly, for though his old bookman's heart warmed at the thought that he should in good time hear, from one who had seen with his own eyes, of the wonders of the East, it became him to assume a ponderous placidity—for Framley had always been doubtful of his bookishness and its influence on such as David. They said it boded no good; there were those even who called Fairley "a new light," ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of their miseries by Constitutions. Whether that will cure their miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's-cordial to stop their whimpering, and in the end worsen all their miseries, may be a sad doubt to us. One thing strikes a remote spectator in these Colonial questions: the singular placidity with which the British Statesman at this time, backed by M'Croudy and the British moneyed classes, is prepared to surrender whatsoever interest Britain, as foundress of those establishments, might pretend ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Nonsuch rode concealed was so completely land- locked that not a breath of air stirred within it as the boats left the ship's side, the surface of the water was mirror-like in its absolute placidity, and it was only when the men began to descend into the boats, rocking them more or less as they entered them, and so sent a few ripples undulating away across the glassy surface, or when some fish stirred in the depths below, that the phosphorescence latent in the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... all their cares. The Blessed Virgin also, as she sat at table with the other women, looked most placid and calm. When the other women came up, and took hold of her veil to make her turn round and speak to them, her every movement expressed the sweetest self-control and placidity of spirit. ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... her wide, candid gaze, with the unrancorous placidity of the young, who are still used to being snubbed. Nan, she knew, would tease and baffle, withhold and gibe, but would always say what she thought in the end, and what she thought was always worth knowing, even though she ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... advantages his considerable holdings of the bank's stock, and it is easy to comprehend how in spite of his youth he had come to stand next to Masters and Farnsworth. The dissensions between these two were disagreeable to one who had a decided preference for quietude and placidity of manners; but he kept aloof from their quarrel, though he must have had private grievances against a superior so ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... a dry smile twinkling in the placidity of her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then you can explain to ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... the martyr, though I found the market at the foot of the statue given over, not to flowers, as the name of the place might imply, but to such homely fruits of the earth as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above all, onions. There was a placidity in the simple scene that pleased me: I liked the quiet gossiping of the old market-women over their baskets of vegetables; the confidential fashion in which a gentle crone came to my elbow and begged of me in undertone, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the Townsleys ever since their marriage, excitedly entered the parlor ten minutes after the events narrated, it was empty. Mary was a comely maiden of forty-three, of comfortable proportions and goodly to look upon. Her cheeks were still attractively round; her glossy black hair was, with much placidity, smoothed over her temples, cunningly brought above her ears, and twisted in an alluring knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were of that deep peculiar blue which generally is such a menace to the peace of the sterner sex, and over which lovers are wont ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... insulter in a moment, or crushed him to death in his brawny arms, as I never remember to have seen a figure so powerful and muscular; but he was evidently slow to anger, and long-suffering; not a resentful word escaped him, and his features retained their usual expression of benignant placidity. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... come to an end, the squire replied, with great placidity and good sense, "That Mr. Rickeybockey had behaved very much like a gentleman, and that he was very much obliged to him; that he [the squire] had no right to interfere in the matter, further than with his advice; that Jemima was old enough to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by monotonously, routine merely varying to give place to pipe-in-mouth idleness. But the third night out came an occurrence to break the placidity of the voyage for Kendric, and both to startle him and set him puzzling. He was out on deck in a steamer chair which he had had the lazy forethought to bring, his feet cocked up on the rail, his eyes ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... retained its usual placidity. In the distance, over the waste lands, the shepherd Tringuesse was following his flock of sheep, which occasionally scattered over the fields, and then, under the dog's harassing watchfulness, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... plausible enough reason," admitted Mr. Westlake, folding his fat hands across his equator and leaning back in his chair with a placidity which seemed far removed from any thought of gain. "How did you ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... up," said Emmy Lou's Aunt Cordelia, a plump and cheery lady, beaming with optimistic placidity upon the infant populace seated in parallel rows at desks ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... before the quarrelsome stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen, they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better halves until they dropped down to sleep ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... that she had folded her hands in an attitude of sorrowful resignation, which showed her thoughts were far from the scene which lay before her. When she saw that her abstraction was observed, she resumed her former placidity of manner; and having given me sufficient time to admire this termination of our sober and secluded walk, proposed that me should return to the house through her brother's farm. 'Even we Quakers, as we are called, have our little pride,' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Hazel was fully occupied, and Bill dwelt largely with his books, or sketched and figured on operations at the claims. Their domestic affairs moved with the smoothness of a perfectly balanced machine. To the very uttermost Hazel enjoyed the well-appointed orderliness of it all, the unruffled placidity of an existence where the unexpected, the disagreeable, the uncouth, was wholly eliminated, where all the strange shifts and struggles of her two years beyond the Rockies were altogether absent and impossible. Bill's views he ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... she said with unwonted placidity, "the world is so full of treachery that men and women absorb it ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... venomous things such as tarantulas and centipedes, scorpions, rattlers, hydrophobia skunks. Not so many of them that they are a constant menace, but occasionally to be reckoned with. Great sprawling dry lakes ominous in their very placidity; dust dry, with little whirlwinds scurrying over them and mirages that lie to you most convincingly, painting water where there is only clay dust. Water that is hidden deep in forbidding canyons, water that you must hunt for ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... me under a serious misapprehension. When I asked her I was in a position to which I had no——" He interrupted himself, frowning a little. Not even now was he ready to say that. "In a position which I no longer occupy," he amended, recovering his placidity. "All the world will know that very soon. I am no longer ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... not long in discovering that if he had improved his fortune by marriage he had not improved his temper, or increased his happiness. Fortunately for his wife, her imperturbable placidity and want of acute feeling prevented her from appropriating many hard hits from her husband that ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... eager faith came back with a rush. "I'll start for England at once. I'll know the worst or the best of it before three months are out." The Honourable's slow placidity turned. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had his love story, or that which in the life of such a man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... domestic rabbit. In consciously selecting the largest and most flourishing individuals and the best and most prolific mothers, he must have unconsciously selected those rabbits whose relative tameness or placidity of disposition rendered it possible for them to flourish and to produce and rear large and thriving families, instead of fretting and pining as the wilder captives would do. When we consider how exceedingly delicate and easily disturbed yet all-important a function is that of maternity ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... introduced her to his scholars at Sunday-school. But she threw plates occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath-school a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution, that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... at it, doubtless,—that provoked me; and I was pleased to think of him waiting there still, after I should have escaped, until at last his beaming red face would suddenly grow purple with wrath, and his placidity change to consternation, on discovering that he had been outwitted. But I knew too well what he would do. He would report me to the police! Worse than that, he would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of masterly placidity changed before her sister Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of terror and distress ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in following. Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... time Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course. From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing, and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a corps of the Congregational ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... so charmingly lodged. It is said to be of extraordinary depth; and though stone-blue water seems at first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava, it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous antecedents. The winds never reach it and its surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you fancy it in communication with the capricious and treacherous forces of nature. Its very colour is of a joyless beauty, a blue as cold and opaque as a solidified sheet of lava. Streaked and wrinkled by a mysterious motion of its own, it ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... reason why Elizabeth does not dine with us?" said Percival, looking at his step-mother with an expression of deep hostility. But Mrs. Heron's placidity was of a kind ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the first meeting for some months that we have had the pleasure of seeing Comrade Norwood," said "Wild Bill", with venomous placidity. "Perhaps he knew that we were to be asked to raise a ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... young, and of very light make. But he was now bent by age, and walked with a staff. His hazel eyes still sparkled in a head of no striking development, and with a peculiarity of expression of his lips, gave him a striking expression of placidity in cunning. Hence his name, which was given by the Indians from some fancied resemblance to this animal, when jutting its head above water. He had, for forty years, made jeesuckawin (prophecying) for his people, when he was converted ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the thought of the wind and the thought of human life came very near together in my mind. Our noisy years did indeed seem moments in the being of the eternal silence: and the wind, in the face of that great field of stationary blue, was as the wind of a butterfly's wing. The placidity of the sea was a thing likewise to be remembered. Shelley speaks of the sea as "hungering for calm," and in this place one learned to understand the phrase. Looking down into these green waters from the broken edge of the rock, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Miss Liston's victims were always welcome to so much), and she had found them in Chillington and Pamela. The former appeared to my dull eye to offer no salient novelty; he was tall, broad, handsome, and he possessed a manner of enviable placidity. Pamela, I allowed, was exactly the heroine Miss Liston loved—haughty, capricious, difficile, but sound and true at heart (I was mentally skimming Volume I). Miss Liston agreed with me in my conception of Pamela, but declared that I did not do justice to the artistic possibilities latent in Chillington; ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... color, in spite of her golden hair. More than one artist, looking at the pure brow, the discreet, composed mouth, the delicate nose, the small ears, the long lashes, and the dark-blue eyes filled with tenderness,—in short, at the whole countenance expressive of placidity,—has asked the great artist, "Is that a copy of a Raphael?" No man ever acted under a truer inspiration than the minister's secretary when he married this young girl. Agathe was an embodiment of the ideal housekeeper brought up in the provinces and never parted ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... woman, with a soft voice, and in placidity and a certain cosyness of exterior somewhat resembled a large white cat. Some people declared she absolutely purred, and certainly her small blue eyes were ready to close on all occasions. She always dressed in gray,—a very unbecoming color to a stout person,—and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... lights at one time, twisting off in some new direction. Minus the lights and some yards of glistening rails, Scotland was only a blend of black and weird shapes. Forests which one could hardly imagine as weltering in the dewy placidity of evening sank to the rear as if the gods had bade them. The dark loom of a house quickly dissolved before the eyes. A station with its lamps became a broad yellow band that, to a deficient sense, was only a few yards in length. Below, in a deep valley, a ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... must be the principal source, and therefore they determined to trace it. They found it to be a most beautiful stream, averaging two and a half miles in width, evidently very deep, and with a full, steady current. After proceeding for several hours, they found that the general placidity grew less, the smooth surface occasionally became ruffled by projecting rocks and rapids, and the banks rose till the voyagers again found themselves in a ravine or canon. During their sojourn on Jupiter they had had but little experience with the tremendous winds that they knew, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... but that of the muskrats who burrow in its banks, or the kingfishers who break its glassy surface in pursuit of their prey. No busy factories are there; no rattle of machinery or feverish activity of commerce disturbs the general placidity; and the still valley lies between its enclosing hills as if it were, indeed, that happy Abyssinian vale my father fancied ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... permitted to ruffle this placidity. Gold! Our ears were tickled by the tale that good folks had actually thrilled when we slunk away to our Island. Rumour wagged her tongue, abusing God's great gift of speech, until scared Truth fled. She said—how cheap is notoriety!—that secret knowledge of hidden wealth which good ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... mountain-lion could not attack human beings when his hunger had been appeased, and from a noise she had heard in the cow-house just after retiring, she surmised that the brute had made a raid upon the cattle and glutted himself; this conjecture received confirmation from the placidity of the animal's demeanor. Resting upon this theory she finally maintained her original policy of perfect stillness, trusting that her husband would soon return. Her greatest fear now was that the infant might wake and cry, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... monument of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, which I think Addison ridicules,—the Admiral, in a full-bottomed wig and Roman dress, but with a broad English face, reclining with his head on his hand, and looking at you with great placidity. I stood at either end of the nave, and endeavored to take in the full beauty and majesty of the edifice; but apparently was not in a proper state of mind, for nothing came of it. It is singular how like an avenue of overarching trees are ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... handy as a camp-cook, far better in that respect than Mackenzie, who gladly turned the kitchen duties over to him and let him have his way. After supper they sat talking, the lusty moon lifting a wondering face over the hills in genial placidity as if sure, after all its ages, of giving the ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... am likely to suffer from ennui. Nor is Fanny any less active. Ill or well, rain or shine, a little blue indefatigable figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows, late for every meal. She has reached a sort of tragic placidity. Whenever she plants anything new the boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep anything for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has reached that pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she would almost say she did not mind. Anyway, her cabbages have succeeded. Talolo (our native ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happened was that Robin, who was trembling, kissed her hand. This she let him do with perfect placidity. Every German woman is used to having her hand kissed. It is kissed on meeting, it is kissed on parting, it is kissed at a great many odd times in between; she holds it up mechanically when she comes across a male acquaintance; she is never surprised at the ceremony; ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... little cow of most placid disposition. Nothing disturbs her placidity, incites her to hurry, or bewilders her. Cure the dove of its timidity and shrinking and you will have a good prototype of Parilla, who, taking life easily and affably, is fat and amiable. When she brought home her firstborn, mooing plaintively, he, big and fat for his age, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the stable and cow-house, running Aunt Hannah's errands with the donkey-cart to Clough End, helping in the haymaking and the sheep-shearing, or the driving of stock to and from the various markets Reuben frequented. All these things he had done with a curious placidity, a detachment and yet readiness of mind, as one who lends himself, without reluctance, to a life not his own. It was this temper mainly, helped, no doubt, by his unusual tastes and his share of foreign blood and looks, which had set him apart from the other lads of his own ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... daily routine of life amused these votaries of fashion—nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity, except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena—one of those unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which have for ever disgraced the glorious ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... more they could do, however, and that was to make the dinner a failure. They barely replied to the efforts of the men to "make things go" and gloom settled over the table. Madame Zattiany continued to talk with placidity or animation to the men beside her, and Clavering started a running fire with Anne Goodrich, who, almost as angry as himself, loyally helped him, on censorship, the latest books and plays, even the situation in Washington; and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... his studio, to summon up the calm routine of the old regime—as though the colourless placidity of ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... He stood looking down at his own hand that gripped the chair back so tightly. Emma sat back and surveyed her trim and tailored self with a placidity that had in it, perhaps, a dash of malice. His last speech had cut. Then she reached forward, helped herself to an olive, and nibbled it, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... are quite of the Grecian cast, and he has a placidity of countenance which shows that things went well with him when in life. Some gentlemen of great skill and talent, on inspecting his head, were convinced that the whole series of its features has been changed. Others again have hesitated, and betrayed doubts, not being able to make up ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... imagine," was the dry response; and then Mrs. Herrick made an effort to recover her wonted placidity. "Malcolm," she said, putting her hand through his arm, "we must go downstairs now or the Bishop will be arriving. I expect Anna is wondering what has become of us." Which ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... marrying at all," declared Judith sharply. Any reference to the "right one" always disturbed her placidity. The real root of the trouble was that Mrs. Theodora's "right one" and Judith's "right one" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... would blow away the remains of her ennui with a cry like that of a dazed wild beast, a sort of yawning roar which she called "the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which would drive the blood from the excellent Crenmitz's cheeks, taking her by surprise in her torpid placidity. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... seemed in her strolling life! With what self-possession she walked to the front of the stage! Ah! could she have seen the desperate, terrible glance fixed upon her down there in the hall, concealed behind a pillar, her smile would have lost that equivocal placidity, her voice would have sought in vain those wheedling, languorous tones in which she warbled the only song Madame Dobson had ever been ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet |
