19 uses
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Definition
calm and untroubled
- This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapours among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine.Chapters 28-30 -- Ahab; (Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb); The Pipe (98% in)
- Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.Chapters 10-12 -- A Bosom Friend; Nightgown; Biographical (20% in)
- For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then.Chapters 10-12 -- A Bosom Friend; Nightgown; Biographical (67% in)
- In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.Chapters 34-36 -- The Cabin-Table; The Mast-Head; The Qarter-Deck--Ahab and all (40% in)
- But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float.Chapters 34-36 -- The Cabin-Table; The Mast-Head; The Qarter-Deck--Ahab and all (54% in)
- Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (42% in)
- It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow.Chapters 49-51 -- The Hyena; Ahab's Boat and Crew - Fedallah; The Spirit-Spout (57% in)
- These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.Chapters 49-51 -- The Hyena; Ahab's Boat and Crew - Fedallah; The Spirit-Spout (77% in)
- Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain.Chapters 58-60 -- Brit; Squid; The Line (31% in)
- So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake.Chapters 85-87 -- The Fountain; The Tail; The Grand Armada (78% in)
- And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight.Chapters 85-87 -- The Fountain; The Tail; The Grand Armada (90% in)
- When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family.Chapters 88-90 -- Schools and Schoolmasters; Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish; Heads or Tails (10% in)
- As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the smell of spring...Chapters 94-96 -- A Squeeze of the Hand; The Cassock; The Try-Works (6% in)
- When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue.Chapters 109-111 -- Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin; Queequeg in his Coffin; The Pacific (89% in)
- To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption.Chapters 109-111 -- Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin; Queequeg in his Coffin; The Pacific (93% in)
- Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around.Chapters 130-132 -- The Hat; The Pequod meets the Delight; The Symphony (71% in)
- As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread.Chapters 133-135 -- The Chase--First Day; The Chase--Second Day; The Chase--Third Day (7% in)
- No wonder there had been some among the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes.Chapters 133-135 -- The Chase--First Day; The Chase--Second Day; The Chase--Third Day (10% in)
- And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.Chapters 133-135 -- The Chase--First Day; The Chase--Second Day; The Chase--Third Day (10% in)
There are no more uses of "serene" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
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