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Placate   Listen
verb
Placate  v. t.  (past & past part. placated; pres. part. placating)  To appease; to pacify; to concilate. "Therefore is he always propitiated and placated."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Placate" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... 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 was extended to us ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... were 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

... annoying 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 ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... 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 ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... him, and, except Stephen La Mothe, no one knew how ready he had been to be deceived. Perhaps Saxe had also deceived the father? Yes, he would take that line, if necessary; Saxe was the evil genius of them all, but the first essential was to placate the boy with a generality. Liars and successful diplomatists are rapid thinkers, and no too obvious a silence ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... sanctioned after so much deliberation, were unreasonable, and enacted that to entitle a company to demand them, it should not be sufficient that the charge was within any limit fixed by an Act of Parliament." Thus Parliament, yielding to popular clamour, stultified itself, and in feverish haste to placate an angry and noisy public tied the hands of the railway companies, doing, I believe, more harm than good. This legislation naturally made the companies very cautious in reducing a rate because of the difficulties to be encountered should circumstances require them to raise ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... discipline. Monroe and I had always got on splendidly together; and even the once haughty Miss Anthea had at length thawed completely, even to the extent of singing duets with me and playing my accompaniments while I sang or fiddled. It was only the boy whom I seemed utterly unable to placate; he had taken a violent dislike to me from the very first, and not even the fact that I had undoubtedly saved his life seemed to make any apparent difference in his ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... answer. 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 ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... successful, and the revenue from this source remained indefinite. In the spring the students who had paid their dues were not given back the caution money they had deposited because "no funds were available." There is a record of one student, more persistent than the others, who was difficult to placate. He was finally promised that his "caution money would be refunded when possible," and he was assured that "funds would soon be available because the ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... left 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 to appease the Boer, and this ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond

... 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 ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... no favors to ask. The proposed testimonial was offered, perhaps, under the impression that he was needy or that his feelings were hurt, and the idea seems to have been that in giving him a benefit they would placate any resentment he might harbor and at the same time proclaim their own generosity. Anson, however, declined to be put in the position of a martyr or a suppliant. He replied: 'I refuse to accept anything in the shape of a gift. The ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... soiled from 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 pitiless, ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... it's mere class hate.' But what is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad? Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes. Moreover, I am a civilised man. I would never dream of directing you to organise a mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it. But I wouldn't expect from a butchery the result I want. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... 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

... Orleans either relaxed their vigilant severity against the river smugglers, or for the time being lowered the duties; whether this was done to encourage the Westerners in their hostilities to the East, or to placate them when their exasperation reached a pitch that threatened actual invasion. Wilkinson, in his protests, insisted that to show favors to the Westerners was merely to make them contented with the Union; and that the only way to force them ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... 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 of this sovereign, in the year 1592, the Japanese successfully ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... arms, suspension of 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

... priests of 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

... accomplish the desired end by an expedition from Fort Pitt. Pontiac, however, was known to be still plotting vengeance at that time, and it seemed advisable to break the way for the proposed expedition by a special mission to placate the Indians. For this delicate task Sir William Johnson selected a trader of long experience and of good standing among the western tribes, George Croghan. Notwithstanding many mishaps, the plan was carried out. With two boats and a considerable party of ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... to placate my only friend I almost accepted his offer. But not quite. Some little inherited difference held me back, perhaps. I wonder! At all events, the thing was dropped between us for the time; and, before he left, Ted promised he would tackle ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... 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 ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... 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 Hertzog out of office succeeded in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... and steadfast, but his hair was of that shade of brown which takes the tint of dull copper in certain lights, and he had a temper which went with the red in his hair rather than with the gray in his eyes. Wherefore his attempt to placate his assailant was something ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... what was at stake. Other 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 this new ...
— 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

... he left Utah, his recession might tend to placate the government and soften the severity of the prosecutions of the Mormons; and accordingly, on the night of February 12, 1886, he boarded a west-bound Central Pacific train at Willard. The Federal officers in some way learned of it; he was arrested, on the train, at Humboldt ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... "You mean of all time," corrected Diderot. They called her "the High Priestess of Letters," "the Minerva of Poetry," "Sappho Returned," and all that. Her commendation meant success and her indifference failure. She knew politics, too, and her hands were on all wires. Did she wish to placate a minister, she invited him to call, and once there he was as putty in her hands. She skimmed the surface of all languages, all arts, all history, but best of all she knew the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 - Machine's Plan ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... qui-hied for his breakfast at an unusually early hour next morning, for the courage of this resolve to placate, if possible, the hostility of Miss Mapp had not, like that of the challenge, oozed out during the night. He had dressed himself in his frock-coat, seen last on the occasion when the Prince of Wales proved not to have come by the 6.37, and no ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... the father of the wicked Esau.[74] And, again, if his power of vision had been unimpaired, he would not have blessed Jacob. As it was, God treated him as a physician treats a sick man who is forbidden to drink wine, for which, however, he has a strong desire. To placate him, the physician orders that warm water be given him in the dark, and he be told that it ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... neck to see how the policeman was taking it. When Ernestine fell to drubbing the Government, the old lady, in her agitation greatly daring, squeezed up a little nearer as if half of a mind to try to placate that august image of the Power that was being flouted. But it ended only in trembling and furtive watching, till Ernestine's reckless scorn at the idea of chivalry moved the ancient dame faintly to admonish the girl, as a ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... honour 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

... faith. True, these are the conditions on which His pardon is received by us, but they are not the reasons why it is given by Him. Nor does Moses appeal to any sacrifices that had been offered and were conceived to placate God. But he goes deeper than all such pleas, and lays hold, with sublime confidence, on God's own nature as his all-powerful plea. 'The greatness of Thy mercy' is the ground of the divine forgiveness, and the mightiest plea that human lips can urge. It suggests that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... things which happened to them. It began in the time of Egbert and Canute, and earlier, in the days of the Druids, when they used peacefully to allow themselves to be burned by the score, enclosed in wicker idols, as natural offerings to placate the gods. The modern acceptance of things is only a somewhat attenuated remnant of the ancient idea. And this is what I have to deal with and understand. When I begin to do the things I am going to do, with the aid of your practical advice, if I have ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... dear friend Sir Wemyss Reid; and once a week I would set 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 ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... there 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

... waved this aside. "And then you plan this masquerade. You plan to make me care for you so greatly that even when I know you to be Count Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to bind them to your interests. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me as a stepping-stone to safety—but was it fair to me?" Her voice rose now a little. She seemed to plead with him. "Look you, Count Eglamore, I was a child only yesterday. I have ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... commented Washington White, who, after his first fright, appeared to take it all as a matter of course. "But I hopes dat dey's got suffin' t' placate mah inner conscientiousness wid, 'case I'se gittin' ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... found himself 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 heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... there was nothing for it but to stand still till the flurry was over. My companion, however, would stamp his feet with rage, and I must admit that I myself regretted not having provided for our wearing a couple of false noses, which would have been enough to placate the just resentment of those people. We might have also joined in the dance, but for some reason or other it didn't occur to us; and I heard once a high, clear woman's voice stigmatizing us for a "species of swelled heads" (espece d'enfles). We proceeded sedately, my companion muttered ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... migrate, her pinions fluttered and her gaze was toward Fairyland. Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those pagan gods whose spite and vengeance he had most reason to fear. It seems that it was too late or a prayer too small to placate them, for there and then the stroke of midwinter came and the eggs hatched out in the roar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird was gone with her difficult eye and it was a bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I haven't the heart to tell ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... duty. Nevertheless, subterfuge seems to come too readily to him as we see in 2.2 when he makes a false offer to assassinate the King to test Onaelia, again in 3.3 when he pretends to agree to murder Sebastian and Onaelia in order to placate the Queen and finally in 5.1 when he tells the King that the murder has been carried out. Scene 3.3 shows a further unedifying side of Balthazar when he bursts in on the King and stabs a servant and refuses to express remorse as the servant is a mere groom. On a different note, the ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... small, superior and inferior, whom the devotees and practitioners of the hula worshiped and sought to placate were many; but the goddess Laka was the one to whom they offered special prayers and sacrifices and to whom they looked as the patron, the au-makua,[23] of that institution. It was for her benefit and in her honor that the kuahu was set up, and the wealth of flower and ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... alienated 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 every ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... 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 first in the Amsterdam Gazette ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... she pleaded. "You are acting like a child. You love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love him! Richard is such a dear boy!" She said this fawningly, with evident intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with flattery and fresh promises. "Now be a darling child and say that we'll have the wedding next week without ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... resemble in some administrations a feudal monarchy rather than a constitutional republic. As governor the president usually chose prominent men of the locality, either friends whom he wished to reward or opponents or rivals whom he was obliged to placate. The communal chiefs were also appointed by the president, though the governor's wishes were respected to a large extent, and here too men of influence were selected, such influence usually being reckoned by the possession ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... his best to heal the breach; but, being something of an ass, genus priceless, he finds it almost beyond his powers to placate "the man-eating fish" whom Providence has given him ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... of his early misdeeds toward this man and, if any such thing there be, to placate the spirit of his old enemy; and lastly better to secure his peace with ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... that she liked him when she most tried to stand out against him; he was so much the successful executive that she did not want him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called "parlor socialists" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly new) had a power which made her wish to placate his company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he demanded, "Would you like to associate with nothing but a lot of turkey-necked, horn-spectacled nuts that have adenoids and need a ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... reasonable enough not to quarrel with him finally. What was the good? She found means to placate him. The only means. As long as there was some money to be got she had hold of him. "Now go away. We shall do no good by any more of this sort of talk. I want to be alone for a bit." He went away, sulkily acquiescent. There was a room always kept ready for him on the same ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... philosophy, Seneca gives us the key to his character: the man wanted to be gentle and kind; he wished to affront neither his father nor society; so he compromised—he would please and placate. Ease and luxury appealed to him, and yet his cool intellect stood off, and reviewing the proceeding pronounced it base. He succumbed to the strongest attraction, and attempted the feat of riding two horses ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... remarking that the farmers 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

... 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

... "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 ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... 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 ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... dare to wage war upon 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 potent ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... 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 ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... 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

... future affairs, the chief remedy is to invoke God, endeavoring to placate Him by sacrifice and prayer, and beseeching Him to protect us by His powerful right hand. This duty devolves by special right upon the religious. Our duty is to threaten and strive to correct him ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... 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 you will, I ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... That stirred them to talk again, and they told me that the expeditions had been settled on, and that they would have to go, too. Orders had come from home that they must not fall out with Waldersee. It was highly important to placate the Germans because of South Africa. But the Americans would not go, neither would the Russians, nor yet the Japanese. It was to be a new arrangement. They went on talking in this wise for a long time, and I heard these ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... 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 that something is ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... equanimity in the presence of those he desired to placate; nothing exceed the frenzy of his wrath when angered by those whom he could harm without fear of reprisals. Blake was backed by a troop of horse and the conviction that Sancho was an unmitigated rascal; therefore ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... will be one satisfaction—Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil—always so humble in his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood —and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the lewd American scum around him—ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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 ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... that his voice had drawn out in a snuffling appeal, but he simply had to placate this female ogress in ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... respect and the plank put in as requested—offering the very strongest object lesson of the 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 ultra ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... death to the ranger! The imaginary savage with ready knife, the infuriated giant with blazing eyes, gave place to the actuality of this gentle, stricken; melancholy little sheepherder, who had no insane desire to avenge himself on any one, much less on Hanscom. Helen's resolution to meet and placate the dreaded Basque gave place to pity and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... religious habit. The chief becomes the tutelary 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 and the head of the State. They are the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... 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, he agitated the question. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... to waste much time and energy in 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 Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... oppose it, and at the outset Augustus did so. But then, either because Julia was able to bend him to her desires or because in the senate there was in truth a strong party which supported it out of hatred for Tiberius, Augustus at last yielded, seeking to placate Tiberius with other compensations. But Tiberius was too proud and violent an aristocrat to accept compensations and indignantly demanded permission to retire to Rhodes, abandoning all the public offices which he exercised. He certainly hoped to make his loss felt, for indeed Rome ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... the Anti-Mongolian feeling. They argued, at first, that no Congressional legislation was 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 ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... 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 ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne

... of no literary account which in usage either vary in the stress or take it on the latter syllable. Such are 'locate', 'orate', 'negate', 'placate', and perhaps 'rotate'. With most of these we could well dispense. 'Equate' is mainly a technical word. Dictionaries seem to prefer the stress on the ultima, but some at least of the early Victorian mathematicians said '['e]quate', and the pronunciation ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... to give you the nomination, Mr. Livingstone. You may have it, if you can find the means to placate offended voters for your behavior and your ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... sleeping state this may possibly occur through the negligence 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 many another psychological process, ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... the look of the great desert; the feathers of darkness fell later and later, until they began to appear with the dawn, and yet the river failed to rise; the priests went through their perfunctory rites to placate the god of the Overflow, and made their impotent sacrifices to tempt him to bless the harvest; but Hotep saw the Snowless Month, which should have ripened his grain, dawn upon fields that were dried to seas of drifting dust and void of all vegetation. His army of men, augmented by the Pharaoh's ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... quality of the rations they were receiving. It was early spring and the protest, as we well knew, was merely his way of saying that the Indians were no longer dependent on what the government offered but could now hunt their own meat. Our commanding officer endeavored to placate the old chief, who went back for a conference with his men. Then he re-appeared, threw down his rations, the others doing the same, and in a few minutes the entire encampment of Apaches was ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... giving 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 ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... small body of French troops which made the Pope prisoner at Agnani, but were subsequently expelled with great loss of life. The Pope was reinstated, but died shortly afterward from brain fever; he was succeeded by Benedict XI, whom the King of France sought to placate, but unsuccessfully. Within nine months Benedict died, presumably from poison, and Philip, by his intrigues, was enabled to secure the election to the pontificate of Bertrand de Goth, who became pope as Clement V, and was pledged to the service ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... a thing appears harsh, and seems like falling out with one saint to placate another, still it will seem an easy and very advisable measure to those who have seen that town, or know it close at hand—and there are several such persons here in this court. And even if it were not evident that the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... 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 own intrinsic powers, it being valueless otherwise. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... was granted on two conditions—viz., that they 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 ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... 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, divert, or arrest. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... merely the logical development of what in the nineteenth century had been known as grab-sharing. In the industrial warfare of that time, profit-sharing had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to placate the workers by interesting them financially in their work. But profit-sharing, as a system, was ridiculous and impossible. Profit-sharing could be successful only in isolated cases in the midst of a system of industrial strife; for if all labor and all capital shared profits, the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... defence, and that purely defensive measures, however efficient, by keeping men and 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 ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... to placate Kali, the Goddess of Destruction. There is not long now to wait for the great sacrifice for which she has waited all these weary years; and then, and only then, shall the plague, and the pestilence, and the famine be ended, and the people of India ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... myself, in a very humble way, an experience of this kind. In a domestic crisis it was necessary to placate a newly arrived and apparently homesick cook. I am unskilled in diplomacy, but it was a case where the comfort of an innocent family depended on diplomatic action. I learned that the young woman came from Prince Edward Island. Up to that moment I ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... 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 please with such ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... obtaining the 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... Mr. Pitkin with more graciousness than he expected. He felt that he must do what he could to placate Uncle Oliver, but he was more dangerous when friendly in his manner than when he was rude and impolite. He was even now plotting to get Phil into a scrape which should lose him ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... as he did or have permitted his ire to find expression in threats, but it cannot be denied that there was provocation for the resentment which he exhibited. The President has been blamed for not having sought more constantly to placate the opponents of the Covenant and to meet them on a common ground of compromise, especially during his visit to the United States in February, 1919. From the point of view of policy there is justice in blaming him, but, ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... gad! For I'm your Jupiter Most High now, myself; and Salvation, Fortune, Light, Gladness, Joy—they're all this identical I! So mind you placate this divinity by ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... 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 not ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... 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 ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... stranger, it was certain that it had 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 ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... a 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; ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... of course, by her ministers, in the desire to placate the Catholic party, which holds the balance of power in the Netherlands—dwelt most respectfully on the high functions of his Holiness, etc., etc., indicating, if not saying, that it was not the fault of her government that he was not invited ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... placate Olson with a smile and made a motion to offer his hand. The Scandinavian glared ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... 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

... stormed the big man, and once again the heavy whip fell on the yelling pack. They were pulling for all they were worth, their heads down, their shoulders squared. Their breath came pantingly, their tongues gleamed redly, their white teeth shone. They were fighting, fighting for life, fighting to placate a cruel master in a world where all was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... straightforward, dashing young French prince demanding the right of performing his military duty to the State, had him condemned, tardily resolved to pardon him, and wound up finally by sending him to Clairvaux to placate the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... to frown him down, and went on trying to placate me. But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in his collar a kind of double bass pizzicato: "Suffragettes! Fanatics! Hysteria! ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... an earlier date were perfectly satisfactory: the older gods have fallen below the common secular level, and can no longer be believed in. Today a deity who should require bleeding sacrifices to placate him would be too sanguinary to be taken seriously. Even if powerful historical credentials were put forward in his favor, we would not look at them. Once, on the contrary, his cruel appetites ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... this!" he muttered angrily, and stalked down the gangway, between the rows of Sirdars and notables. Gerrard beckoned hastily to the next man, mentally resolving to get the durbar over as quickly as possible, and then hurry after Sher Singh and try to placate him, but to his horror, Kharrak Singh remained immovable, and declined to notice the offering now held forth to him. Remonstrances came from behind the curtain at this, and Gerrard gathered that the boy had improved on his mother's instructions; but as if an evil spirit had taken possession of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... matter what might 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 ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... round and 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, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... it. He hasn't got a leg to stand on." Kennedy paused and looked Peter over coolly. Peter had been studying the situation critically, playing his game with some care, willing to placate his visitor and yet taking pains not to be too eager to gain his confidence. So he carefully lighted his cigarette while he debated his ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... 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 bushes. For ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... of his office upon hearing the uproar, and sought with soothing speech to placate his irate old friend and customer. But Mrs. Beach wasn't to be placated. She went out of the door and down the street like a hat on a ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... invite fear, apprehension, uncertainty and terror. This undissolved residuum is the nest-egg of superstition. The man who believes that God is the Whole, and that every man is a necessary part of the Whole, has no need to placate or please an intangible Something. All he has to do is to be true to his own nature, to live his own life, to understand himself. This takes us back to the Socratic maxim, "Know Thyself." No man ever expressed one phase of Monism so well and beautifully as Emerson has in his "Essay on Compensation." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... that Orton Campbell thought it might be best to placate him, even at the expense of a small extra sum. "Don't be a fool, Jones," he said. "You know very well that your demands are beyond all reason. I've treated you very liberally already, but I don't mind doing a little more. I'll ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... followed his natural inclinations, and sometimes, pricked too near the quick, frightened and broke her by a deep, tense fury which seemed to fix on him and hold him for days, and which she would give anything to placate in him. They were two very separate beings, vitally connected, knowing nothing of each other, yet living in their separate ways from ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... wanderers naturally nourished this superstition, and to permit one of its members to hobble off muttering threats or curses was looked upon as suicidal. Indeed, the mendicants were wont to boast of their feats of sorcery to the terrified peasants, who hastened to placate them by all the means ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... they began to smile over the coming scene when Jed and Timothy should discover it, and, worst of all, find out that it was actually directed against them. They would expect severity, or fear, or a desire to placate; but a twinkle—it was more than the school could decide what would happen under such circumstances. No one in that room would ever dare to laugh at either of those two boys. But the teacher was almost laughing now, and the twinkle had taken the rest of the room into the secret, while ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... annexation of Texas. The southwestern boundary of the United States had ever since 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

... rigorously. She chose to wear to-night a black gown that set off wonderfully the soft beauty of her face and the grace of her figure. Jack Kilmeny was to be there later for bridge, and before he came she had to dazzle and placate Verinder, who had been for several days very sulky at ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... to placate his defeated rival, Mr. Van Buren, tendered the appointment of Secretary of the Treasury to Silas Wright. He declined it, having been elected Governor of the State of New York, but recommended for the position Mr. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... Jehovah as subject to fits of anger which prompted many of the old sacrifices. It was not merely that Jehovah was greedy and could be bribed with gifts to grant favors, but also that he was dangerous when his anger was stirred and hence sacrifices were necessary to placate him. ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... dictated by the special interests which profited from the increases in duties. The Whig leaders accepted a retainer from the manufacturers of the North, and by legislating exclusively in their favor almost drove South Carolina to secession. Then after accomplishing this admirable feat, they agreed to placate the disaffected state by the gradual reduction in the scale of duties until there was very little protection left. In short, they first perverted the protectionist system until it ceased to be a national policy; and then compromised it until ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... lavishly, and then had, himself driven over to Little Deeping in the car, to Mr. Carrington's house. He found Mr. Carrington uncommonly bitter against his client; and he did his best to placate him by urging that the assault had been met with a promptitude which had robbed it of its violence, and that he could well afford to be generous to a man whom he had so neatly put to sleep with an uppercut ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... to the huge brute. "Don't you remember me? I am little Meriem. I used to ride on your broad back;" but the bull only rumbled in his throat and shook his tusks in angry defiance. Then Korak tried to placate him. Tried to order him away, that the girl might approach and release him; but Tantor would not go. He saw in every human being other than Korak an enemy. He thought the girl bent upon harming his friend and he would take ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... fulfilled the omen which portended that the wolves would be provided with a meal, and hence averted the necessity of one of the band being really devoured. In somewhat analogous fashion the Gonds and Baigas placate or drive away a tiger who has killed a man in order to prevent him from obtaining further victims. Some similar idea apparently underlay the omen of the dog running away with food. Perhaps the portent of hearing the kite scream on a tree also meant that he looked on them with a prescient eye as ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... 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 ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... disgust and an unconcealed aversion. Madame 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 ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... placate Mrs. Stanton. "It's only a rout and a rabble, Lana! The feminine element does not belong in it. My father dines his gentlemen and accomplishes his objects. And I think you have become one of ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... clear there, because both the higher doctrine as well as ordinary ceremonial and mythology are described under one name as Hinduism. But if a native of southern India occasionally sacrifices a buffalo to placate some village spirit, it does not follow that all his religious notions are of this ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... to placate his nervous questioner: "I'm just leavin' 'em here, Belle, while I go down 'n' get a load o' feed," he explained ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... 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

... 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

... 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 the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... O'Shea and Parnell. On November 24th, Gladstone, in a letter to John Morley, 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 decree nisi being made ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... arena of action, was a derision of the ancient moralities, a demonstration of the value of fear as an aid to success. Even his friends—and he had as many as he cared to have—had been drawn to him by the desire to placate him, to stand well where there ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... be caused by evil spirits, or it may be due to a desire on the part of the kalaloa to leave its present abode. In either case the man becomes ill and it behooves him to take immediate steps to placate the evil spirits or to convince his kalaloa to remain with him. This last can best be accomplished by bathing the sick person with water which has been heated in a good agong. A fine dish would do equally well, but should the hot water cause it to break ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... closely related to the Portuguese royal family, and in 1580 he laid formal claim to that kingdom. The duke of Braganza, whose claim was better than Philip's, was bought off by immense grants and the country was overrun by Spanish troops. Philip endeavored to placate the Portuguese by full recognition of their constitutional rights and in particular by favoring the lesser nobility or country gentry. Although the monarchies and vast colonial possessions of Spain and Portugal were thus joined for sixty years under ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... him extremely obnoxious to a powerful minority of his own party. After a protracted struggle, Mr. Van Buren, under the operation of the "two-thirds rule," was defeated, and Mr. Polk nominated. The convention, anxious to placate the friends of the defeated candidate, then tendered the nomination for Vice-President to Senator Silas Wright, the close friend ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... brought the Elector of Hanover to England, to succeed her as George I. It was not likely that King George would look with favor on his former Capellmeister, who had so long deserted his post. But an opportunity soon came to placate his Majesty. A royal entertainment, with decorated barges on the Thames was arranged. An orchestra was to furnish the music, and the Lord Chamberlain commissioned Handel to compose music for the fete. He wrote a series of pieces, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... 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

... of Castor and in the less 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 ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... 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 store would ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... thought it time to come forward to support Joseph, but that he also wished to placate the rising wrath of the Consul. So ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... 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 nature, to adhere ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... him alone. He had already taught them the excellence of letting a sleeping dog lie. Many of the men, who knew that they were in danger of his big bear-paw when it reached out for the honey vats, even made efforts to placate him, to get on the friendly side of him. The Alta-Pacific approached him confidentially with an offer of reinstatement, which he promptly declined. He was after a number of men in that club, and, whenever opportunity offered, he reached out for them and mangled them. Even the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... Athens and Sparta, especially at the Carneia, a great Spartan festival held at the full moon in the month Carneios (August-September). Who the ancient hero Carnos or Carneios was is not very clearly stated by the tradition; but at any rate he was killed, and the feast was meant to placate and perhaps to revive him. Resurrection is apt to be a feature of ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... came in. For some moments I was busy protesting my health. But it was useless; it wasn't until I had partaken of a few of the old nostrums that I could placate her. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... were not to him mere words to decorate sonorous messages or to catch and placate the hearers of his passionate speeches; they were the most real of all realities, moral agents to be used to clear away the deadlock into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... united force to 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 Warder. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... as much as two dollars stored away! But it was the twenty dimes that deferred slow starvation. Banks kept open through the night. Officials and clerks worked to exhaustion, satisfying demands, hoping to placate the mob and avert the unthinkable results of a riot. Countless soldiers swarmed the streets with fixed bayonets. But the bloodless witch has no claim to one single heart-beat of loyalty from the unpaid wretches who wear the Imperial uniform; and when by simply tying a white handkerchief on ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... could not be a mediator of God only, for God needs no mediator. Again, Moses could not be a mediator of the people only. He was a mediator between God and the people. It is the office of a mediator to conciliate the party that is offended and to placate the party that is the offender. However, Moses' mediation consisted only in changing the tone of the Law to make it more tolerable to the people. Moses was merely a mediator of the veil. He could not supply the ability to perform ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... agoin' tuh let us go free in the mornin'?" asked Ed Harkness, already on his knees, for he wished to placate that uneasy fat boy, who kept raising his gun again and again, as though anxious to press the trigger just a little harder all ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... this masterstroke was that the lady gave her a copper and let her go, wishing her a speedy recovery. The gift, although she took it, did not appear to placate Tilda. She hobbled up the next street with quickened pace, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... red face peering cautiously around her ample waist line made me wish to laugh, but an earnest desire to placate the irate female, who was evidently the real head of this household, enabled me to conquer the ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... evening, they omitted the holy sacrament in the Cathedral church of this city, because it had been stolen, together with the monstrance in which it was kept. Diligent search was made for it, arresting some and putting others to the torture, and making earnest prayers to placate the wrath of God, but no trace of the thief could be found in these or any other ways, even to the present ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... 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 4, 1895, six weeks after the outbreak. They only succeeded in antagonizing both sides, the Spanish ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... matter was vastly more important than the first to a man who did not hesitate to base his whole polity on the teachings of Machiavelli, legality being looked upon as only so much political window-dressing to placate foreign opinion and prevent intervention, whilst without money even the semblance of the rights of eminent domain could not be preserved. Everything indeed hinged on the question of ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... to the entreaties of Marguerite, Philip consented to withdraw the Spanish troops. This measure gave satisfaction to the people, but did not placate the grievances of the nobles and of the clergy. At the instigation of William of Orange, the States of Brabant openly supported the Council of State in its opposition to Granvelle and the Consulta. This was brought to a climax by the refusal of Orange, Egmont and ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... said Alice, joining with her sister, in an attempt to placate the old salt. "But ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... 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



Words linked to "Placate" :   placation, tranquillise, placative, lull, calm down, gentle, calm, tranquilize, quiet, tranquillize, conciliate, gruntle, quieten, pacify, assuage, appease, lenify, mollify



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