"Unimpassioned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fashion of their age and unconsciously exaggerated; the only wonder is that they did not exaggerate more, for we must remember that even though the Apostles themselves be supposed to have been more judicially unimpassioned and less liable to inaccuracy than we have reason to believe they were, yet that from the very earliest ages of the Church there would be some converts of an inferior stamp. No matter how small a society is, there will be bad in it as well as good—there was a Judas ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... still clear, And all give ear. Like a silver thread through the golden afternoon, Equably the voice discloses All that age-old wisdom; like an endless tune Aristonoe's voice wavers among the roses, Level and unimpassioned, Telling them how of nothing love is fashioned, How it is but a movement of the mind, Bidding Celia mark That light skirts fluttering in the wind, Or white flowers stuck in dark Glistening hair, have fired the dull beholder, Or telling Anais That faint indifference ere now hath bred a kiss ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... not sulky—a style of behaviour for which she had too little histrionic talent; she was simply very patient. Of course she was thinking over her situation, and she was apparently doing so in a deliberate and unimpassioned manner, with a view of making the ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... could scarcely repress a bitter smile as he remembered the accepted idea of Todos Santos' inviolability—that inaccessible port that had within six weeks secretly summoned Perkins to its assistance! And it was there he believed himself secure! What security had he at all? Might not this strange, unimpassioned, omniscient man already know HIS secret as he had known ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... back, as a rider strives to restrain an unruly horse. Maggie was able to notice these things, because during the first moments her Aunt Anne entirely held the stage. She advanced to the fireplace with her halting movement, embraced the little lady by the fire with a soft and unimpassioned clasp. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... did not even throw a little additional warmth into his utterance of the general thanksgiving, as he might have done had he been a more effusive man; but, on the contrary, read it with a more than ordinary calmness, and preached to the excited people one of those terse little unimpassioned sermons of his, from which it was utterly impossible to divine whether he was in the depths of despair or at the summit and crown of happiness. People who had been used to discover a great many of old Mr Bury's personal peculiarities in his sermons, and who, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... cosmos started in an abstract something, which self-produced two great principles; but this pair once obtained, matters proceeded after the analogy of mankind. The two principles at work were themselves abstract enough to have satisfied the most unimpassioned of philosophers. They were simply a positive essence and a negative one, correlated to sunshine and shadow, but also correlated to male and female forces. Through their mutual action were born the earth and the air and the water; from these, in turn, was ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the clear, rich, mellow, unimpassioned tones of his voice rolled over that mass of human heads, penetrating every ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the rapture of her happiness, found this an unimpassioned greeting from one who had gone to unusual lengths to recover her companionship. Staring, she saw that Manuel had all the marks of a man in middle life, and spoke as became appearances. For it was at the price of his youth that Manuel had recovered ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... any army at all; while Stanton actually tried to frighten the President by a petty threat of personal consequences. But this was foolish. The crisis was of the kind which induced Mr. Lincoln to exercise power, decisively. On this occasion his impersonal, unimpassioned temperament left his judgment free to work with evenness and clearness amid the whirl of momentous events and the clash of angry tongues. No one could say that he had been a partisan either for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... those who are well worthy of attention: but that soft and stay-at-home love, spending all its time in women's bosoms and beds, always pursuing effeminate delights, and enervated by unmanly, unfriendly, and unimpassioned pleasures, we ought to condemn as Solon condemned it: for he forbade slaves to love boys or to anoint them with oil, while he allowed them to associate with women. For friendship is noble and refined, whereas pleasure is vulgar and illiberal. Therefore, for a slave ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... prosaic, broad daylight lying harsh upon the page, making his delicately toned auroras seem but a patch of grey, and himself for a moment, with a sigh of disgust, of self-reproach, to be his old unimpassioned monastic ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... him strikingly like ourselves—-with the same faculties, the same sensibilities, though not in the same degree. The secret of his power over us lies, of course, in our having the capacity to appreciate him. Yet we seeing him in the unimpassioned moods of daily life, it is more than probable that we should see nothing in him but what was ordinary; nay, in some qualities he would seem inferior. Heroes require a perspective. They are men who look superhuman ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... and astonishing effort of genius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady Macbeth; but to delineate such a character in the poetical form, to develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of description: to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon our sympathy and our imagination; and out of this exterior calm, produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and internal power:—it ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... noontide heat, The captives go their limbs to lave, And in sequestered, cool retreat Yield all their beauties to the wave, No stranger eye their charms may greet, But their strict guard is ever nigh, Viewing with unimpassioned eye These beauteous daughters of delight; He constant, even in gloom of night, Through the still harem cautious stealing, Silent, o'er carpet-covered floors, And gliding through half-opened doors, From couch to couch his pathway feeling, With envious and unwearied care Watching ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... enter the COUNTESS TERZKY, pale and disordered. Her utterance is slow and feeble, and unimpassioned. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... easy letter to write. He wants to be calm and just, and that makes it sound cold and utterly unimpassioned. Beyond doubt she would be far happier with a fury of reproaches, cutting sarcasm, and page after page of indignant denial. He also wants to be tender when he thinks of what he has not had to lavish on ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... required more vigorous argument. The praefect was appealed to against the recalcitrant. Then the harsh unimpassioned voice with its curious intonation in the pronouncing of the Latin words, would give a brief order and the lictor's flail would whizz in the air and descend with a short sharp whistling sound on obstinately bowed shoulder or unwilling hand, and the auctioneer ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... caressing motion. Gradually the high tone of then disputant subsided, and his words had in them less of personal rancour. Still, the discussion went on; and I noticed that the maiden's hand, which rested on the temple when unimpassioned words were spoken, resumed its caressing motion the instant there was the smallest perceptible tone of anger in the father's voice. It was a beautiful sight; and I could but look on and wonder at the power of that touch, so light and unobtrusive, yet ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... bade her sharply go and change her dripping garments, and what Fanny calls 'a decidedly queer' expression came into his face. He could not say anything, poor old chap! and he always behaved with great courtesy to me. I am sure he divined that I was a most unimpassioned actor in that high-comedy plunge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... expression of countenance; his hair was of an iron-gray, and his piercing gray eye shone from under his shaggy eye-brows like a spark of fire. It was the only thing that looked like life about him; and when he first rose he began to speak in a slow, distinct, unimpassioned manner, and without the ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... cut as a cameo, pellucid as a mountain brook. It may be derided as trite, borne, unimpassioned; but in its own modest sphere it is, to our thinking, extraordinarily successful, and satisfies us far more than the pretentious mouthing which receives ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense. Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws; ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... never saw the gentlewoman, I cannot be understood to have bound myself to have spoken the just truth.' He is always the casuist, always mentally impartial in the face of a moral problem, reserving judgment on matters which, after all, seem to him remote from an unimpassioned contemplation of things; until that moment of crisis comes, long after he has become a clergyman, when the death of his wife changed the world for him, and he became, in the words of Walton, 'crucified ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... when roused to action, is a very different being from the barbarian at rest. "The Turk," says Mr. Thornton, "is usually placid, hypochondriac, and unimpassioned; but, when the customary sedateness of his temper is ruffled, his passions ... are furious and uncontrollable. The individual seems possessed with all the ungovernable fury of a multitude; and all ties, all attachments, all natural and moral obligations, are forgotten or despised, till his ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... cold, academic manner was galvanised into emphasis. His listeners, who were still smarting under Watson's words, and had been restless at the unimpassioned tone of Van Derwater's reply, began to feel the grip of his slowly ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... Method is demonstrably a failure; his attempt to convert James and Buckingham to his views resulted in his own unjust disgrace with contemporaries and posterity. The truth is, that, cool, serene, comprehensive, and unimpassioned as he appears, he was from his youth actuated by a fanaticism which seems less intense than the fanaticism of a man like Cromwell only because it was infinitely more broad. Had he succeeded in the design he proposed to himself, his intellectual domination would not be confined ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... more powerful and original poet, hidden away, in part, under those weaker elements in Wordsworth's poetry, which for some minds determine their entire character; a poet somewhat bolder and more passionate than might at first sight be supposed, but not too bold for true poetical taste; an unimpassioned writer, you might sometimes fancy, yet thinking the chief aim, in life and art alike, to be a certain deep emotion; seeking most often the great [64] elementary passions in lowly places; having at least this condition of all impassioned work, that ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... of this position a contrast might be drawn between the policy of Athens in Melos, as set forth by Thucydides in the singular dialogue of the fifth book, and the part assigned to Justice by a writer equally impersonal, grave, and unimpassioned—the author of the Politics—in the recurrence throughout that work of such phrases as "The State which is founded on Justice alone can stand." "Man when perfected (teleothen) is the noblest thing that lives, but ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... had measured so accurately on Putney Heath, presented itself again over the woods of Chiswick Grove, reminding me of the cares of the busy world, and producing a painful contrast to the tranquillity of nature, to the silently gliding Thames, and to the unimpassioned simplicity of the vegetable creation. Man, I reflected, brings upon himself a thousand calamities as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls EVIL:—He compromises every natural pleasure, to acquire fame ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... rested upon a quiet-looking blonde near the hostess. Yet the lady not only did not seem to be aware of it, but her face was more often turned towards the consul, and their eyes had once or twice met. He had been struck by the fact that they were half-veiled but singularly unimpassioned eyes, with a certain expression of cold wonderment and criticism quite inconsistent with their veiling. Nor was he surprised when, after a preliminary whispering over the plates, his hostess presented him. The lady was the young wife ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... spoke rapidly, and seemed affected. I looked at him, and could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... form of the English and the Continental German narrative poetry should prove itself fit for extended and continuous epic narrative; it was inevitable that the Norse intolerance of tame expression, and of everything unimpassioned or unemphatic, should prevent the growth of any of the larger and slower ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... looking at Alma. She, through the unimpassioned arraignment, stood with eyes fixed upon her enemy, rather as if lost in thought than listening; her mouth was tortured into a smile, her forehead had the lines of age and misery. At the sound of Hugh's voice, she turned to him, and spoke like ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... to her companion. He was writing rapidly, and seemed absorbed in his subject. He was frowning slightly, his face was pale and set, and he looked older by ten years than when he had spoken last, and seemed cold and unimpassioned as a judge; but Ideala thought again that the face ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... from dislike of his independence and integrity. Under Louis Philippe he held no higher position than as a member of the Chamber of Deputies. As deputy he had always been and continued to be fearless, patriotic, and sometimes eloquent. His speeches were clear, unimpassioned, sensible, and he was always listened to with respect. He took great interest in the wrongs of all oppressed people; and exiles from Poland, from Spain, and from Italy found in him a generous protector. His house was famous for its unpretending hospitalities, especially to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... During both periods he was pure as ice, lofty in thought, noble in deed,—an inspiration toward the True Life to all who watched his course. No errors of passion or of overheated blood did he have to mourn over, even in youth; yet he was not cold or unimpassioned, as his deep devotion throughout life to the woman of his choice proved. He led emphatically the intellectual life, with as little admixture of the flesh as possible; yet the warm currents of feeling were never dried up in his nature, but bubbled up freshly to the end. He lived largely on ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... was making against the North at the moment:—Sectionalism, radicalism, giving undue prominence to the slave question, stirring up insurrection among slaves, refusing to allow constitutional rights, and to each he had an unimpassioned answer inpregnable with facts. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... he is unimpassioned and affected; [55] and he has not even preserved the coarse features of nations and of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... they hinted at a more serious purpose than their style seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance, "Pharaoh" (which in the original is entitled "A Hall Mood") without detecting the revolutionary note which trembles quite audibly through the calm and unimpassioned language? There is, by-the-way, a little touch of melodrama in this tale which is very unusual with Kielland. "Romance and Reality," too, is glaringly at variance with the conventional romanticism in its satirical contributing of the pre-matrimonial and the post-matrimonial ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Miss Triscoe together before the evening ended; but Miss Triscoe merely stopped with her father, in quitting the saloon, to laugh at some features of the entertainment, as people who take no part in such things do; Burnamy stood up to exchange some unimpassioned words with her, and then they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and splendor is rising for us, and your ambition, which has been weary and ready to die, will now revive, and raise its head proudly on high! That which I have long sought for is at last found. The king is too young, too ardent, too much the genius and poet, to be completely unimpassioned. Even Achilles was not impenetrable in the heel, and Frederick has also his mortal part. Do you know, Fredersdorf, who will discover the weak point, and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... met his eyes—now cold and unimpassioned—looking into the very depths of her own. He saw the sudden scarlet that mantled her face, and knew—knew she loved him. And his heart went out to her, for he was attached to the russet thing, an attachment heretofore unnamed, but now—now suddenly christened ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Paullus, at this strange burst of feeling on the part of one usually so calm, so self-controlled, and seemingly so unimpassioned as that sweet lady, may be more easily ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... unimpassioned and prosaic tone of the time, was the low state of religious feeling, and the degeneration of the church, both in its own organization and in public esteem. The upper classes of society, as a rule, were lukewarm and insincere in any form of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... country Judge in Wisconsin, and afterwards a member of Congress. When the war commenced, he enlisted as a common soldier, but public sentiment forced the State Government to make him a Major. Emory was a mild, reflective, unimpassioned gentleman,—too modest to be eminent, too scrupulous to be ambitious. The men were opposites, but both capital companions, and they were seized with the fever about the same time. The Major was removed to White House, and I visited him one ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... brilliant complexion, rich chestnut hair, delicately arched brows, and dark blue eyes. Though only eight years of age, a most unchildlike self-possession distinguished them. The expression of their countenances was haughty, disdainful, and supercilious. Their beautiful features seemed quite unimpassioned, and they moved as if they expected everything to yield to them. The girl, whose long ringlets were braided with pearls, was ushered to a seat next to her father, and, like her brother, who was placed by Mrs. Ferrars, was soon ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... which followed he was not so much interested. The officiating clergyman delivered a long homily in a dull unimpassioned manner, which failed to awaken his interest. Already disposed to be drowsy, it acted upon him like a gentle soporific. He tried to pay attention as he had always been used to do, but owing to his occupying a back seat, and the ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... age of the world needs, is a phrenologist who will paw around among the intellectual domes of free-born American citizens, and search out a few men who can milk a cow in a cool and unimpassioned ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... was a thorough woman of the world. Judging her out of her own circle of limited diameter, you would imagine her to be cool, unimpassioned, cold-blooded, narrow-minded; but, she could be, at the same time, bigoted enough in regard to all that concerned herself, her social surroundings and her belongings—an advocate, as warm as Demosthenes, as logical as Cicero:—a partisan amongst partisans. Warm ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all respects an excellent woman, and an admirable wife for her calm, philosophic and unimpassioned husband. Franklin never had a journeyman in his office who performed his functions more entirely to his satisfaction, than his wife discharged her responsible duties. She was always amiable, industrious ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... to live in a serene and cheerful spirit, for the day and in the day. His work, his relations with colleagues and pupils, had all amused and interested him; he had cared for people, he had many friends; but it was all a cool, temperate, unimpassioned kind of caring. People had drifted in and out of his life; with his frank and easy manner, his excellent memory for the characteristics and the circumstances of others, it had been easy for him to pick up a relationship where he had laid it down; but it was all a very untroubled ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... or statisticians, while commenting on the subject of the relative longevity of the sexes, attribute the supremacy of woman in the matter to the well-known cause, namely, that in general she leads a more calm and unimpassioned existence than a man, whose life is so often one of toil, trouble, and excitement. Setting aside these theories, however, the census of French centenarians is not devoid of interest in some of its details. At Rocroi ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... you personally satisfied"—Mary's voice broke in clear and unimpassioned—"are you personally satisfied, Mr. Manderton, that Mr. Parrish ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... in the courtship, but throughout their long wedded life, appears to have been singularly calm and unimpassioned. He was an admirable scholar, and counted among his intimate friends Addison and Steele. The second volume of the Tatler was dedicated to him in an epistle probably ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist |
