Crosby's fans talk about how "relaxed" he was, how "natural," how "casual and easygoing." By the time Presley began causing sensat...ions, the entire country had become relaxed, casual and easygoing, and its younger people seemed to be tired of it, for Elvis's act was anything but soothing and scarcely what a parent of that placid age would have called "natural" for a young man. Elvis was unseemly, loud, gaudy, sexual--that gyrating pelvis!--in short, disturbing. He not only disturbed parents who thought music was a soothing by Crosby, but also reminded their young that they were full of the turmoil of youth and an appetite for excitement. At a time when the country had a population coming of age with no memory of troubled times, Presley spoke to a yearning for disturbance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People who are born even-tempered, placid and untroubled--secure from violent passions or temptations to evil--those who have neve...r needed to struggle all night with the Angel to emerge lame but victorious at dawn, never become great saints.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian--ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a plac...id perfection unattainable by the highest art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I weren't reasonably placid, I don't think I could cope with this sort of life. To be a diva, you've got to be absolutely like ...a horse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature ...and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to fut...ure as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a few rods in width and man...y miles long, as if the surface were covered with a thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country pond.... Yet this same placid ocean, as civil now as a city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce, will ere long be lashed into sudden fury, and all its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro, break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws, and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will play with them like seaweed, distend them like dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, now low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble. This gentle ocean will toss and tear the rag of a man's body like the father of mad bulls, and his relatives may be seen seeking the remnants for weeks along the strand. From some quiet inland hamlet they have rushed weeping to the unheard-of shore, and now stand uncertain where a sailor has recently been buried amid the sand-hills.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Soon after John's death I listened to a music-box, and if, at any time, that event had seemed inconsistent with the beauty and har...mony of the universe, it was then gently constrained into the placid course of nature by those steady notes, in mild and unoffended tone echoing far and wide under the heavens. But I find these things more strange than sad to me. What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder? We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; for a great grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin on Arabian trees. Only Nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful if he is not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »