Quotes about calm
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“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, Chance

“These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Quincy Adams (19 January 1780)
Context: These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.
Context: These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Life, Time

“Consolation

Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Source: New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

“There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion

Pain

“They were more severely infected than the men, because while men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Women, Men, Appearance, Rage

“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Serenity
Source: As a Man Thinketh

Wisdom, Law, Beauty, Knowledge

“Calm down, Horus said.
"Don't tell me to calm down!"
Bast frowned. "I didn't."
"Talking to him!" I pointed at my forehead.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Time, Indifference, Forgetting

“The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, "It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Source: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Peace, Passion, Perfection

“Be calm. Be Zen. You are Buddha.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Nevermore

“How can you stay so calm?"
It helps if you're terrified.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Battle for Skandia

Help

“The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!”

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach

St. 1
Dover Beach (1867)
Source: Dover Beach and Other Poems

Light, Sea, Night

“Before embarking on important undertakings sit quietly calm your senses and thoughts and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Sense

“Don't show it and don't panic. Do like the ducks; on the surface stay calm, and below it paddle lile hell”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Hell

“Be calm. God awaits you at the door.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

God

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Variant: I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds no outlet in our quiet life.
Source: Family Happiness

Love, Life, Chance

“Did you really JUST fall, Jeffrey?
Why does everybody in my family talk in these dramatic CAPITAL LETTERS all the time? Why am I the only calm one?”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Family, Time

“What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Beauty, Feeling, Sense

“He wasn't handsome. That was too calm a word. He was intensely masculine. He was sexual. He attracted.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

“It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Cinna to Katniss Everdeen, p. 67
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)
Context: "I want the audience to recognize you when you're in the arena," says Cinna dreamily. "Katniss, the girl who was on fire."
It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.

“You many have noticed I have a temper… but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

World

“My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Heart

“Why the hell would I bring?" she exclaimed. All her anger turned at his presumption. It was a sign of her agitation that she'd sworn.
"Because," he said, face calm, "I can teach you how to stake a Strigoi."
"THE HELL YOU CAN," I said aloud to no one.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Hell, Anger

“I like autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves. A dangerous time; of violent rages and deceptive calm, of fireworks in the pockets and conkers in the fist.”

Joanne Harris (1964) British author

Source: Gentlemen and Players

Autumn, Rage, Time

“I love her passionately with a morbid intensity; madly as one can only love a woman who never responds to our love with anything but an eternally uniform, eternally calm, stony smile.”

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch book Venus in Furs

Source: Venus in Furs

Love, Smile, Passion

“I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Feeling, Sleep

“I’m full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Fear

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, Life, Chance

“I didn’t care about anything except her and the way touching her drove me wild, even as her calm and steady presence soothed the storms that raged within me.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Way, Rage

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pain, Fear, Hope, Feeling

“All I could say was, "I don't know what to do." I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Truth, Smile

“Retire to the center of your being, which is calmness.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

“How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

~ "Sea Calm”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Way, Water, Sea

“We were restless for ages… After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Love, God, Age, Thinking

“The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

Source: Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

Night, Indifference

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Books, Way, Error, Motivation

“Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

God, Sea

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

“Most men don't seem to get that telling a pissed-off woman to calm down is like throwing gunpowder on a fire.”

~ Liberty Jones”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Men

“In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: The Silver Gryphon

Question, Fish, Dead

“Despair has its own calms.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Jonathan Harker
Source: Dracula (1897)

Despair

“Keep Calm and Carry On”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Suicide Note:
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
-Langston Hughes”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Kiss, Suicide

“Keep calm and carry on.
Also, stay in and hide because the Ripper is coming.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Name of the Star

“They offered you a choice between the death of your principles and the death of your body. You said you'd rather die. You faced the fear of your own death, and you were calm and still.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Death, Fear

“Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Imagination

“I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love… I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Love, Friendship, Beauty, Thinking

“The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”

Richard Louv (1949) American journalist

Source: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Nature, Sense

“if something does go wrong, here is my advice… KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.”

Maira Kalman (1949) Israeli American artist and creator of children's books

Source: The Principles of Uncertainty

“She went from angry to calm so fast that he wondered if she wasn’t the Ferrari of moms. Her top speed had to be.65 nanoseconds.’ (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Moms, Speed

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Books, World, Summer, Housing

“You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”

Tracy Chevalier book Girl with a Pearl Earring

Source: Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Funny, how one good cookie could calm the mind and even elevate a troubled soul.”

Dean Koontz book False Memory

Source: False Memory

Soul

“The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting.”

Confucius book Analects

Source: Analects of Confucius

People

“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: The Works Of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. Iii

Faith, Knowledge, Tree, Dead

“I am calm. That's why I can fight you!~Uryu Ishida”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Fight

“What’s a little calming distraction for your girlfriend in the midst of world entertainment domination?”
“I’d stop the world from spinning for you.”
That silly line oddly touched me. “I love you.”
“Liked that one, did you?”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love, World

“It was a clear, starry night, dead calm. Whenever I see a sky
like that, I wish I could write music”

Henning Mankell book Italian Shoes

Source: Italian Shoes

Music, Night, Dead

“What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Beauty, Sense

“The god’s expression was calm and content, as if he’d just come home from a lovely evening strolling through the Fields of Punishment, enjoying the screams of the damned.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, God, Home

“The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your ‘soul mate’ you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation.”

Monica Drake (1967) American writer

Source: Clown Girl

Feeling, Soul, Heart

“A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT Please, be calm, despite that previous threat. I am all bluster - I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, roe to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Waiting

“Books console us, calm us, prepare us, enrich us and redeem us.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Books

“Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Star, Nature

“I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Madness

“When I'm with you, I feel a kind of calm I've never felt in my life. I'm tangled up in you and you're tangled up in me and it feels right. Like it was meant to be. I love you, Maddie, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to say it to you again.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Tangled Up In You

Love, Life, Feeling

“Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.”

Gregory Maguire book A Lion Among Men

Source: A Lion Among Men

Dead

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to his Italian friend, Philip Mazzei (1796)
1790s

Men, Sea

“I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Wall

Source: The Wall

Way

“A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.”

Alfred De Vigny (1797–1863) French poet, playwright, and novelist

Un désespoir paisible, sans convulsions de colère et sans reproches au ciel est la sagesse même. <br class="br"> Page 32 http://books.google.com/books?id=BVdHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Un+d%C3%A9sespoir+paisible,+sans+convulsions+de+col%C3%A8re+et+sans+reproches+au+ciel+est+la+sagesse+m%C3%AAme%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage. <br class="br">Journal d'un poète (1867)

Wisdom, Despair

“For death and life, in ceaseless strife,
Beat wild on this world’s shore,
And all our calm is in that balm—
Not lost but gone before.”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

Not lost but gone before (c. 1863).

Life, Death, World

“Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Letter to Boswell. Dec. 8, 1763
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.”

Charlotte Brontë book Shirley

Source: Shirley (1849), Ch. 1: Levitical

Thinking, Passion

“The now famous slogan 'keep calm and carry on' poster from 1939 was designed as a motivational poster for people living in cities expecting to be bombed by the Nazis. But the UK wasn't just 'keeping calm': we had taken a stand like no other country in the world and declared war on a barbaric regime which was a global threat to peace and security. Today, as we wait to hear news from Manchester following the slaughter and maiming of innocent children, we have people calling for us to do nothing. But it's not the same 'carry on' as in 1939: they want us to accept terror attacks as a part of life we should now accept. Well, I don't accept it. How many people are we going to sacrifice on the alter (sic) of political correctness before we build up the courage to confront what most people will happily admit to their friends and family: that we are facing a continuing threat from radical Islam which hashtags and tea lights will not stop?”

Jane Collins (1962) British politician

Jane Collins MEP responds to terror attacks in Manchester http://jane-collins.org/news.php?id=79. Item on official website (May 23, 2017).

Life, War, Children, People

“I will contemplate the spectacle of your sea. The viewpoints of our mountains also offer us the limitless spectacle of immensity. The unfillable void has a calming effect... The sea! The sea with its charms saddens me. In its joyful moods, it makes me think of the laughing tiger; in its sad moods it recalls the crocodile’s tears, and in its roaring fury, the caged monster that cannot swallow me up.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote in Courbet's letter to Victor Hugo, 28 November 1864; as cited in Chu, Letters, p. 249; quoted in 'Paysages de Mer - Courbet's The Wave', by Anthony White https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/paysages-de-mer-courbets-the-wave/ <br class="br">1860s

Sadness, Mountain, Mood, Thinking

“Blessed are they who, in the calm moments of retirement, of worship, of prayer, of silent waiting, have found that to "the weary and heavy laden " Christ can indeed give rest; that compared with the heavy bondage of the world or the exactions of human systems, His yoke indeed is easy, and His burden is light.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 98.

World, Light, Waiting, Christ

“Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong, it calms me.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El mal, débil, me agita; fuerte, me calma.
Voces (1943)

Strong

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“p>The Way is calm and wide,
Not easy, not difficult.
But small minds get lost.
Hurrying, they fall behind.Clinging, they go too far,
Sure to take a wrong turn.
Just let it be! In the end,
Nothing goes, nothing stays.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

The Hsin-hsin-ming of Seng-ts'an, lines 61–68
Translations, Trust in Mind (2008)

Way

“The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. "Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character, which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold — yea, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money seeking looks in comparison with a serene life — a life that dwells in the ocean of Truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the Eternal Calm!”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Serenity

Love, Life, Wisdom, Money

“A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky:
There eke the soft delights that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh;
But whate'er smack'd of noyance or unrest
Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious nest.”

James Thomson (poet) The Castle of Indolence

Canto I, Stanza 6.
The Castle of Indolence (1748)

Pleasure, Dreams, Summer

“Never more than to-day were needed the men of calm and resolute faith. Brothers, to your knees and to your ranks! To your knees in humblest supplication; to your ranks in steadfast bravery which no foe can cause to quail. Stand forth in courage and in gentleness for the truth which you believe to be allied to Freedom and Progress and God. Be so strong that you are not afraid to be just. Cherish a tender humanity and a catholic heart. Then take your stand, calm and moveless as the stars.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 222.

Men, God, Truth, Faith

“Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing…”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

Feeling, Joy

“If there is any thing that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples, and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to it in all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is a simple, free, and child-like repose in the arms of God.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 446.

Love, God, Fear, Soul

“True courage…has so little to do with Anger, that there lies always the strongest Suspicion against it, where this Passion is highest. The true Courage is the cool and calm. The bravest of Men have the least of a brutal bullying Insolence; and in the very time of Danger are found the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a Coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in Fury, or Anger, can never be plac’d to the account of Courage.”

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) English politician and Earl

Vol. 1, p. 66; "Sensus Communis".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Men, Courage, Rage, Passion

“There was a white man sitting at the kitchen table, warming his hands by wrapping them around a hot cup of tea. He had kind of an oblong face, curly red hair piled on top, a close-cropped but dense red beard, shocking blue eyes that always looked wide open. He face was ruddy with the outdoors, and the way he was sitting there with that tea, he looked so calm, so centered, almost like he was in meditation. When I came in, he looked at me and smiled just a trace, without showing his teeth…”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

The legendary S.T. finally meets the legendary Hank Boone (proto-Enoch Root character), end of chapter 24
Zodiac (1988)

Smile, Way, Tea

“Another common, unspoken assumption is that spirituality is about calm and peace, and conflict is unspiritual. Which of course makes it hard to integrate the spiritual with the political, which is all about conflict.
In New Age circles, a common slogan is that "What you resist, persists." Truly spiritual people are never supposed to be confrontational or adversarial — that would be perpetuating an unevolved, "us-them" dualism.
I don't know from what spiritual tradition the "what you resist, persists" slogan originated, but I often want to ask those who blithely repeat it, "What's your evidence?" When it is so patently obvious that what you don't resist persists like hell and spreads all over the place. In fact, good, strong, solid resistance may be the only thing that stands between us and hell. Hitler didn't persist because of the Resistance — he succeeded in taking over Germany and murdering millions because not enough people resisted.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)

People, Age, Peace, Hell

“One thing one can't help noticing is the efficacy of religion before the nineteenth century at dealing with these problems and answering some of these unanswerable questions. By the time of the Great War, religion is practically dead. By the time of the Second World War, it's no help at all.
The chaplains that were attached to the infantry that I was in practically never did spiritual work because they knew they'd be ridiculed. What they did was to apply bandages and surgical scissors, assisting the medics and calming people down psychologically. But everybody recognized that religion was no help whatever.”

Paul Fussell (1924–2012) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Humanities interview (1996)

War, People, World, Religion

“Maybe you are the “cool” generation … If coolness means a capacity to stay calm and use your head in the service of ends passionately believed in, then it has my admiration.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Baccalaureate address as President of Yale (12 June 1966)

Passion

“Come, blessed Darkness, come and bring thy balm
For eyes grown weary of the garish day!
Come with thy soft, slow steps, thy garments gray,
Thy veiling shadows, bearing in thy palm
The poppy-seeds of slumber, deep and calm.”

Julia Caroline Dorr (1825–1913) American writer

Darkness, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm
Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.
The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm,
Its chimneys steady against the mackerel sky.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

"Devonshire Street W.1" line 1, from A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954).
Poetry

Hope, Housing

“Normally, foreign media organizations and others from the developed countries do not see anything good on the African continent. Those of us, who are well-traveled, know better. In their countries, the only news you get or hear about Africa is negative news… However, due to the good work done by our electoral bodies, the exemplary conduct of our defence and security organs, and your calmness and patience, we denied them the bad things they wanted to write about.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

2007-01-01 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4572438.stm <br class="br">2006

Travel, Patience, Country

“Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."”

Louis Nizer (1902–1994) American lawyer

And all of the noise and the clamor in the library ceased, and there was a hush in the library, for all of the books knew who the real master of the library was.
"Ministers of Justice", Address delivered at the Eighty-Second Annual Convention of the Tennessee Bar Association at Gatlinburg, June 5, 1963; published in 31 Tennessee Law Review 1 (Fall 1963), p. 19.

Books, World, Communication, Lying