"Passionless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while-worth that we should ever have sorrowed, because the scheme of time and creation is suchly big; had we grasped but its bigness, and the littleness of our span, should we have felt griefs? Nay, nay—nit,' like the street-youths say—would say the lady and gentleman now so passionless as to have philosophers become. And you, it should mean to you much. Humans are funniest when they weep and tremble before, like you say, 'the facts in the case.' Ha! I laugh to myself at them often ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... we ever meet in the Elysian Fields—where I cannot depict him to myself otherwise than attended in the distance by his flock of geese (birds sacred to Jupiter)—and he addresses me in the stillness of that passionless region, neither light nor darkness, neither sound nor silence, and heaving endlessly with billowy mists from the impalpable multitudes of the swarming dead, I think I ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... detail, placing it in its proper relations, and usually giving it a significance which, as long as it was kept isolated, failed to appear. This is done without a trace of ill-temper. He moves over the subject with the passionless strength of a glacier; and the grinding of the rocks is not always without a counterpart in the logical pulverisation of the objector. But though in handling this mighty theme all passion has been stilled, there is an emotion of the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... philosophy. Horace mingled in the society of the profligate and considering them as fools, laughed their folly to scorn. Juvenal looked down upon the corruption of the age from the eminence of his virtue, and punished it like an avenging deity. Persius, pure in heart and passionless by education, while he lashes wickedness in the abstract, almost ignores its existence, and shrinks from probing to the bottom the vileness of the human heart. His works comprise six satires, all of which breathe the natural ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... brought to England a mere wreck; & in due time, Lady Melbourne & my mother being seriously alarmed for me, brought me to town, and allowed me to see Lord Byron. Our meeting was not what he insinuates—he asked me to forgive him; he looked sorry for me; he cried. I adored him still, but I felt as passionless as the dead may feel.—Would I had died there!—I should have died pitied, & still loved by him, & with the sympathy of all. I even should have pardoned myself—so deeply had I suffered. But, unhappily, we continued occasionally to meet. Lord Byron liked others, I only him—The ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... cannot," the passionless creature returned, monotonously. "If you do not yield, you will long and pray for death, but you will not die unless Roger wills it. I was like you once. I also struggled, and I became what I am now—whatever it is. Here is your apartment. You will stay ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... womanhood had been devoted to patient, honest study, which was rewarded with success, and calm, passionless prosperity. She had married brilliantly, and left the stage, but after an absence of many years had returned to it to aid her husband in some reverse of fortune. Her married life had been tranquilly happy, for she had loved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... unsurpassable. The Achilles of the Iliad may speak scornfully of Briseis, as insufficient cause to quarrel on;[2] the silver-footed goddess, set above all human longings, regards the love of men and women from her icy heights with a light passionless contempt.[3] But in the very culminating point of the death-struggle between Achilles and Hector, it is from the whispered talk of lovers that the poet fetches the utmost touch of beauty and terror;[4] and it is in speaking to the sweetest ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... never-subdued ambition of Margaret and York, the patient suffering, amidst taunting friends and reviling enemies, of Henry, and, above all, the courage, the activity, the tenacity, the self-possession, the intellectual supremacy and the passionless ferocity ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the silence, so dreadful seemed that inhuman, snake-like man, so strange his aged, passionless councillors, and the place of council surrounded by a dizzy gulf, that fear took hold of them like the fear of an evil dream. Godwin wondered if Sinan could see the ring upon his breast, and what would happen to him if he did see it; while Wulf longed to shout aloud, to do ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... lamp, set on a slender table at her side, threw a stream of light across the court. Her face, lined with countless wrinkles, was bent upon a large book in her lap; from its pages she read in a low, steady voice—the passionless, almost terrifying voice of great and ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... tremulous air, of how the poet loved his mistress long ago, and pressed on her the flight of time, and told her how white and quiet the dead lay under the stones, and how the boat dipped and pitched as the shades embarked for the passionless land. Yet a little while, sang the poet, and there shall be no more love; only to sit and remember loves that might have been. There is a falling flourish in the air that remains in the memory and comes back in incongruous places, on the seat of hansoms or in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distance we could hear him approaching as usual, the passionless monotone of his voice growing ever nearer and more distinct, as he flapped methodically first one rein, then the other, over the unhurried action of his horse, sagely admonishing him to "G'long! ye old fool! Git up! ye ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of his pride; brought home to him the cardinal truth that all the beauty and terror of life spring from the inexorable law of duality that links man and woman, act and consequence, with the same passionless unconcern. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... moustache was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The outline of his head and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was the chief editor of "La Reforme," the name of which indicates its character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de France," yet the very next day published ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... power was sympathy, that He must bring Himself to feel the burden that He will roll away? That sigh proves that His cures were the works, not without cost to the doer, of a sympathising heart, and not the mere passionless acts of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... she waited a long time before the summons came. Then she heard him call, "Esther!" It was a doctor's call, cool, passionless, commanding. She flew up the stairs, closing Jane's door as she hurried by. The door to her mother's room was open. It was brightly lighted. The shade of the lamp had been removed and its garish yellow fell full upon the bed and ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... range of his all-compassing vision. Therefore, all was mine, not merely the lion—for he was only the means to an end—but the stupendous, unnameable thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains in the shades of its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming pale, passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of beauty exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by right of presence, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... existence somewhere of a strong and alert personality; a genius along mechanical and scientific lines; a creature of abnormally developed mentality and correspondingly defective ethical nature; an intelligence absolutely passionless and ruthless, playing the game entirely for its own sake, and equally indifferent to the end and to the means used to attain it—in other words, a monster. Quite an elaborate theory, you observe; but the difficulty was to fit it to the individual. Looking ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... like a clock—passionless, regular, meditative. Weldon shrugged his shoulders distastefully; he had never been able to conquer his dislike of steady, measured sounds. It was an unreasonable weakness, but incurable. He twisted uneasily in his white flannels ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... discovered by stripping off all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He can only be reached by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of personality, and sinking or rising into our "uncreated nothingness"; and He can only be imitated by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the passionless "apathy" of an universal which is nothing in particular. Thus we see that the whole of those developments of Mysticism which despise symbols, and hope to see God by shutting the eye of sense, hang together. They all follow from the false notion of God as the abstract ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... O Spirit, passionless, but kind, Is there in all the world, I cry, Another one so base and blind, Another one so weak as I? O Power, unchangeable, but just, Impute this one good thing to me, I sink my spirit to the dust ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... admirably: I have known him for a long time," said I. In fact, I had known the adjutant for several years; more than once I had seen him in the full swing of a game, surrounded by officers, and I had remarked his handsome, rather gloomy and always passionless calm face, his deliberate Malo-Russian pronunciation, his handsome belongings and horses, his bold, manly figure, and above all his skill and self-restraint in carrying on the game accurately and agreeably. More than once, I am sorry to say, as I looked at his plump white hands with a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... and rape What I am alive in my solemn shape? Shrill, shrill, Over the hill! The hunter is hot - this is the kill! The heart of the home Is a fury of foam; The storm is awake, and the billows comb. But though I be Their frenzy of glee, I am also the passionless ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... this, then, the man who gave utterance to those cries of woe! is it possible? The face seems so passionless; but the pallor of those features bears witness ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... really of another character than it had previously been. The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sense of helplessness when he heard that soft mechanical voice. He remembered it now. The passionless voice knew all, understood all, and forgave nothing. That artfully manufactured voice had spoken to him, had listened, and then had judged. In his dream, he had personified the robot-confessor into the figure of ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... bounding with delight, and invariably answered them, in such impassioned, glowing language as only his warm southern temperament could suggest, and contrasted with which even Josephine's missives seemed a little cool and passionless. ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... city? Against whom do ye will to fight? Against your brethren? What victory will ye gain?—none other than weeping!" The words fell on deaf ears, and the smoke of burning streets, slaughter, and exile forced Dino to look to the stranger. There is something strangely touching in the dry, passionless way in which he tracks Henry of Luxemburg from city to city, the fire of his real longing only breaking out here and there in pettish outbursts at each obstacle the Emperor finds. The weary waiting came to nothing. Dino leaves us still looking for Henry's coming; ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... nothing of her lover's letter that night. It was not thought desirable that the tranquillity of the evening should be disturbed. Lady Caroline would have sacrificed a good deal sooner than the harmonious influences of a well-appointed dinner and the passionless refinement of an evening spent with her musical and artistic friends. Mr. Adair's sisters were women of cultured taste, and she had asked two gentlemen to meet them, therefore it was quite impossible (from her point of view) ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... here" (she seemed to have forgotten my name) "exactly like his mother?" and she gave her husband a glance which forced him to guess what she wanted. Accordingly he approached me with his usual passionless, half-discontented expression, and held out to me an unshaven ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... to linger, but Sansome threaded his way toward the farther corner. As Keith passed near one of the close groups around a gambling table, it parted momentarily, and he looked into the eyes of the man in charge, cold, passionless, aloof, eyes neither friendly nor unfriendly. And he saw the pale skin; the weary, bored, immobile features; the meticulous neat dress; the long, deft fingers; and caught the withdrawn, deadly, exotic personality of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... that all means of defence was gone from him, and the only thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was passive and without hope. He closed his door, and sat down with his hand in that of Reine Allix and his arm around his wife. "There is nothing to do but wait" he said sadly. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... chloroform, anaesthetize^, put under; assify^. inure; harden the heart; steel, caseharden, sear. Adj. insensible, unconscious; impassive, impassible; blind to, deaf to, dead to; unsusceptible, insusceptible; unimpressionable^, unimpressible^; passionless, spiritless, heartless, soulless; unfeeling, unmoral. apathetic; leuco-^, phlegmatic; dull, frigid; cold blooded, cold hearted; cold as charity; flat, maudlin, obtuse, inert, supine, sluggish, torpid, torpedinous^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... little yellow water-lily, golden stars rising from the cool floating leaves; far ahead ran a low wooded ridge, with house-roofs clustering round a fantastic church tower, with a crown of pinnacles. Cattle grazed peacefully, and the whole scene was brimful of sweet passionless life, ineffable content. If he could only have shared it! Yet the sight of it all filled him with a sweet hopefulness; he travelled on, a lonely pilgrim, eager and wistful, desiring knowledge and love and serenity. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... burning emotion that thrilled in her veins as she submitted to the ministrations of her maid. She had not even troubled to tell her father, although the elderly peer was her only near relative. Not until he was seated at breakfast did she inform him in level, passionless tones of what had happened. Even then she said nothing of her suspicions of Ralph Fairfield. But for her pale face she might have been speaking of something in which she was ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... it did not quite curl, the ends tumbled about loosely, framing in the face with their dusky purplish tint. It was very clear now, and a little pale; the old brilliant coloring had not all returned; the passionless grace, the deep eyes with their steady lights, the mouth suggesting mobility and warmth and passion, rather than defining it, the droop of the white lids, the unruffled brow, and the pose of the bowed head and slightly-yielding ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... increasing famine preceded the fall of the doomed city. The siege was a blockade. No assaults by the enemy, nor sorties by the inhabitants, are narrated, but the former grimly and watchfully drew their net closer, and the latter sat still in their despair. The passionless tone of the narrative here is very remarkable. Not a word escapes the writer to show his feelings, though he is telling his country's fall. We must turn to Lamentations for sighs and groans. There ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... give,' he said in his mincing, passionless voice, 'the cost price of premises, stock, and fixtures, and for goodwill seven times your net annual profits. In addition, we should be anxious to secure your services as managing director for ten years at five thousand a year, plus a percentage ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Far to the south the steady intonation of the cannon vibrated, a vague sustained rumour, no louder, no lower, always the same monotonous measure, flowing like the harmony of flowing water, passionless, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... fellow, with large, clearly-cut features and gray, thoughtful eyes. In a conversation that interested him his face lighted up with a singularly beautiful animation, but usually it was as still and passionless as if the soul was away on a dream or a visit. Even the regulation cravat and coat could not destroy his individuality, and Louis looked admiringly at him, and said, "You are still Franz Mueller. No one ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... increased; her mind appeared to have subsided into a stagnant and almost death-like calm. For the greater part of the time, her eyes were closed; her face almost as fixed and passionless as that of a corpse. She no longer took any notice of surrounding objects. There was an awfulness in this tranquillity, that filled her friends with apprehensions. The physician ordered that she should be kept perfectly quiet; or that, if she evinced any agitation, she should be gently lulled, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... dull, red, slumbrous eyes. "Don't you go to lose your best holt, Mr. Ford—and that's kam. Keep your kam—and you've allus got the dead wood on Injin Springs. I ain't got it," he continued, in his slowest, most passionless manner, "and a row more or less ain't much account to me—but YOU, you keep your kam." He paused, stepped back, and regarding the master, with a slight wave of his crippled hand over his whole person, as if indicating some personal adornment, said, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... laborers with whom he was hired. A bitter smile crossed his lips as his eyes hovered over the cold, rugged fields before him. Yet he knew that they had saved him. The unaccustomed manual labor in the open air, the regular hours, the silent, heavy, passionless nights, the plain but wholesome food, were all slowly restoring his youth and strength again. Temptation and passion had alike fled these unlovely fields and grim employment. Yet he was not grateful. He nursed his dreary convalescence as he ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... rush of the multitude. Public curiosity was roused to its wildest height—every public sentiment had its full expression; and whether the acclamation was louder when Fox's corpulent frame was seen toiling its slow way through the pressure, or when Pitt's slender figure and passionless face was recognised, is a question which might have perplexed the keenest investigators of popular sentiment. All was that uproar in which the Englishman delights as a portion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... door opens and Kiryakov himself comes quietly and stolidly into the room. He sits down in the chair and strokes his whiskers. Silence reigns. Marya Petrovna looks timidly at his handsome, passionless, wooden face and waits for him to begin to talk, but he remains absolutely silent and absorbed in thought. After waiting in vain, the midwife makes up her mind to begin herself, and utters a phrase ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... like a sheet of ice, separating her heart from the society of those she saw. As yet no guest of her father had ever been of equal birth to hers; at least, her heart had never asked the question. It is probable, that her age—of careless, passionless youth—was the cause of this; perhaps the hour of love had already struck, and the heart of the inexperienced girl was fluttering in her bosom. She was hurrying to clasp her father in her embrace, when she had beheld a handsome youth falling like a corpse at her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... athanaton logikon opoudaion, hoste pasan asteian psychen theon huparchein, kan periechetai, allos de legesthai theon to kath' auto on zoion athanaton hos ta en anthropois periechomenas psychas me huparchein theous]). They still regarded the Gods as passionless, blessed men living for ever. The idea therefore of a [Greek: theopoiesis], and on the other hand, the idea of the appearance of the Gods in human form presented no difficulty (see Acts XIV. 11; XXVIII. ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a revolutionary; he possessed too many ideals and too little passion, he was essentially a passionless man—except of course the one historic occasion during his campaign against prohibition when he completely lost control, and flying low in a government aeroplane broke a bottle of green chartreuse over the head of the Statue ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... those words mean?" said the Martian in his slow, passionless, mechanical voice. "Who are you? ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... the unity of the First Cause. This is as far as reason can go. Huxley, looking out on the universe with this power, said: "There is an impassable gulf between anthropomorphism, however refined and the passionless impersonality underlying the thin veil of phenomena. I can not see one tittle of evidence that the great unknown stands to us in the light of a Father." Nor could he. Religious truth is conditioned in a way in which the apprehension of physical truth is not. There must be a certain condition ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... Society, as well as such acts of retributive justice as they themselves determined upon, and in this quiet and unostentatious manner maintaining peace and greatly purifying the entire province. In this passionless subservience to the principles of the Order none exceeded him; yet at no time have men been forbidden to burn joss-sticks to the spirit of the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... once said of a promising but passionless cantatrice—"She sings well, but she wants something, and in that something everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months she would be the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... trace of royalty about him, no kingliness of mien, or extra cleanliness; nor is there anything winning about his smile - nor any of their smiles for that matter. The Piute smile seems to me to be simply a cold, passionless expansion of the vast horizontal slit that reaches almost from one ear to the other, and separates the upper and lower sections of their expressionless faces. Even the smiles of the squaws are of the same ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... they rested on Eveena's veiled and drooping figure with a widely different expression. That look, as I thought, spoke a grave but passionless regret or pity, as of one who sees a child unconsciously on the verge of peril or sorrow that admits neither of warning nor rescue. That look happily she did not read; but we both saw the same object and in the same instant; we both ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... the heart, is the action by which Thou, Lord, hast proved Thy speech. Thy life has given Thee the right to speak of what Thou givest as Thy peace. So quiet wast Thou that, but for the wrong-doers that crossed Thy path, Thou wouldst have seemed to be passionless; yea, some have even spoken of Thee as the "cold Galilean," because of the marvellous rest of Thy ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... there could be no mistake. That cold gray of his passionless face, the steely glitter in his eyes, were read correctly by Kao. His eyes narrowed. For the first time a dull flame ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... the stairs, across the lawn, and out on the lonely beach, where the quiet moon and the passionless stars dropped down their crystal rain. The sweet south wind blew up cool from the sea, and afar off the tinkle of a sheep-bell stirred the silence of the night. The lamp in the distant lighthouse gleamed like a spark of fire, and at their feet broke the tireless billows, ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... battle with ice and snow and frozen hurricanes—these, alas! know well that the disease of Ivan was no pretence, but a reality, as grim, as terrible, as sullen, as the temperament of their peasant-brethren. And not one of them but had felt, to some degree, the same, deep, passionless, revulsive anger that was working in him, and turning him from the old, secret habits of spiritual meditation and high thought, into passions of blasphemy and atheism which burned ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Passionless as algebra, the genius of Maurice was ready for the task. Strategic points of immense value, important cities and fortresses, vital river-courses and communications—which foreign tyranny had acquired during the tragic past with a patient iniquity almost without a parallel, and which patriotism ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a corpse dimmers up through deep water, In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter, And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life Had gazed on his face with less ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... been successful—he made money at it. No man was ever more naturally endowed to succeed on the turf than was Banker Philip Crane. Cold, passionless, more given to deep concentrated thought than expression, holding silence as a golden gift—even as a gift of rare rubies—nothing drew from him an unguarded word, no sudden turmoil quivered his nerve. It was characteristic of the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... wire, Argo." He took the length of wire, gleaming white-hot, as the leering, gloating Argo turned the current into it—Tarrano took it, lashed it upon the poor wretch's naked back and legs. Welts arose, and the stench of burning flesh. A measured score of the passionless strokes made him writhe and ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... from the murmuring grass. They sit where their humble cottage stood, They walk by the waving edge of the wood, And list to the long-accustomed flow Of the brook that wets the rocks below. Patient, and peaceful, and passionless, As seasons on seasons swiftly press, They watch, and wait, and linger around, Till the day when their bodies shall ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... intensely. She is thin, thirty, colourless, bosomless. I should say she was passionless—a predestined spinster. She has never drunk hot tea or lived in the sun or laughed a hearty laugh. I remember once, at my wit's end for talk, telling her the old story of Theodore Hook accosting a pompous stranger on the street with the polite ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... statues in niches made to receive them,—the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome, in their cold, severe beauty, all passionless and pure, in spite of the glowing mythology that called them into existence. There were paintings, too, that became a part of my being, I took them in with such intense, gazing eyes. Indeed, the house was lined with them. I could not walk through a room without ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... magnitude of the sacrifice which the young novice was making appealed irresistibly to her admiration of the morally sublime. There was in that relinquishment of all the joys of earth a self-surrender to a passionless life of mortification, and penance, and prayer, an apparent heroism, which reminded Jane of her much-admired Roman maidens and matrons. She aspired with most romantic ardor to do, herself, something great and noble. While her sound judgment could not but condemn this abandonment of life, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... physiognomy in a very graceful way. We got once into a cab, about Charing Cross; I know not now whence or well whitherward, nor that our haste was at all special; however, the cabman, sensible that his pace was slowish, took to whipping, with a steady, passionless, businesslike assiduity which, though the horse seemed lazy rather than weak, became afflictive; and I urged remonstrance with the savage fellow: "Let him alone," answered Sterling; "he is kindling the enthusiasm of his horse, you perceive; that is the first thing, then we shall ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... as if she had not been—let her pass from your memory, as unworthy of ever having held a place there. Let your strong resolve of this morning, which I have both courage, zeal, and means enough to execute, be like the fiat of a superior being, a passionless act of justice. She ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... You have already chosen your life's path, and it lies apart from mine. Let me go quietly away." His voice was toneless, passionless. His fight of two days and two nights had left him exhausted. His apparent apathy chilled her to the heart. It was a supreme moment in their lives, and yet she could not fan her soul's fires into flame. He was tearing up the roots of his love ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... float the Cirri, Passionless, pure; Wild pile the Cumuli, Never secure; Low sweep the Rain Clouds Over the sky, Glooming ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... habitual blood-shedder in his eyes. His forehead showed symptoms of deep thought, and partially redeemed the somewhat mean effect of his other features. The sharp nose, the thin lips, the cold grey eyes, the sallow sunken cheeks, were those of a precise, passionless, self-confident man, little likely to be led into any excess of love or hatred, but little likely also to be shaken in his resolve either for good or evil. His face probably was a true index to his character. Robespierre ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... we are bidden to think of as passionless and unemotional. No wave of feeling ever ripples that tideless sea. The attribute of infinitude or sovereign completeness is dwelt on with such emphasis as to obscure all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... in St. Louis last fall," he said. His voice was quiet, even passionless. Then from the pocket of the coat he took a revolver and laid it on the table. Marsden watched him without ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... singularly handsome, even for the beautiful race to which he belonged, with a countenance very manly in aspect for his years, and with a more vivacious and energetic expression than I had hitherto seen in the serene and passionless faces of the men. He brought me the tablet on which I had drawn the mode of my descent, and had also sketched the head of the horrible reptile that had scared me from my friend's corpse. Pointing to that part of the drawing, Taee put to me a few questions respecting the size ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ladies of the court reading the New Testament instead of pagan poetry, or heard their voices chanting godly psalms rather than the old love-ballads. She did not object openly to the pious form of speech which was known as the "language of Canaan." She was a passionless woman, self-seeking but not revengeful, and adopted a certain degree of tolerance, no doubt, from her patriotic counsellor, L'Hopital, who resembled the Prince of ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... disputation were often undertaken by great masters all over the country for the purpose of defeating the teachers of the opposite schools and of securing adherents to their own. These debates were therefore not generally conducted merely in a passionless philosophical ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... suspicions, surmises, and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her singular companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference of the Past in his passionless eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... displeased with his younger brother. He did not distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or little, passionate or passionless, lasting or passing (he kept a ballet girl himself, though he was the father of a family, so he was lenient in these matters), but he knew that this love affair was viewed with displeasure by those whom it was necessary to please, and therefore ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... tale was told in the even, passionless voice of the native-born, mixed with quaint reflections, borrowed unconsciously from native foster-mothers, and turns of speech that showed they had been that instant translated from the vernacular. Kim watched, listened, and approved. This was not insipid, single-word ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... in his passionless way, 'we shall see a performance of this sort between you and Captain De Stancy, not so very long after our ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... connoisseur in doubt whether they are Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African. Quite as striking as this novelty of the material was the author's thorough mastery of it, and his unerring knowledge of the life he had chosen in its peculiar racial characteristics. But above all, the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes; and for his apparently reluctant, apparently helpless consent to let the spectator ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... them the teachings of morality common to the great faiths with, in addition, the spiritual unction, the passion of love and sympathy, self-devotion, and compassion, in which Buddhism and Christianity are alike pre-eminent. The negative side of Buddhism, with its passionless calm and self-renunciation, is the only one that has been realised in the West, and the teachings of Mahayana which have borne fruit and flower, visible to all the world, of happiness, courtesy, kindliness in the spiritual attitude of a whole ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... restrain a sob of envy. The child had so little to confess, a few puny errors which must excite a smile on the lips of the gentle priest, and her candid spirit was like snow. Margaret would have given anything to kneel down and whisper in those passionless ears all that she suffered, but the priest's faith and hers were not the same. They spoke a different tongue, not of the lips only but of the soul, and he would not listen to ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... little bells ring. Her face remains impassive as a beautiful mask, placid and sweet as the face of a dreaming Kwannon; and her white feet are pure of line as the feet of a marble nymph. Altogether, with her snowy raiment and white flesh and passionless face, she seems rather a beautiful living statue than a Japanese maiden. And all the while the weird flutes sob and shrill, and the muttering of the drums is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... hand, And Dream from Melancholy part wrests the wand And on this lady's heart, looked you so deep, Poor Poetry has rocked himself to sleep: Upon the heavy blossom of her lips Hangs the bee Musing; nigh her lids eclipse Each half-occulted star beneath that lies; And in the contemplation of those eyes, Passionless passion, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... son of Madame de Montespan, one of the most adroit courtiers of the old as well as of the new court, "honorless and passionless" (sans honneur et sans humeur), according to the Regent's own saying, took a severer view than Dubois of the arrangement to which he had contributed. "The councils are dissolved," he wrote in his memoirs; "the nobility will ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not to speak too suddenly at the next encounter, the two cheerful derelicts drifted along the sunny coast of Grand Avenue. A shining and passionless peace presided over the streets. A gentle clop-clop of hooves came trotting down the way: here was a man driving a white horse in a neat rubber-tired buggy without a top. He leaned back and smiled ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... exterior, than is often to be found under the wilder mirth of merrier beings. Ever ready to yield her wishes to those of her friends or companions, many persons imagined that she had little will, and no fixed wishes, or deliberate aspirations—passionless and pure as the lily of the vale, many supposed that she was cold and heartless. Oh! ignorant! not to remember that the hearts of the fiercest volcanos boil still beneath a head of snow; and that it is even in the calmest and most moderate ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... of her attitude to Harding Powell. It was passionless, impersonal. She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly. And never before had she been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped. It was nothing—unless it was a safeguard against vanity—that they didn't know it, that ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous, man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their schooling, the items ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... opinionative utterances. In some coarse, rude fashion they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world's work, which is not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation. We have to strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless tranquillity. Then we may hope to die. Meditation, if it be deep, and long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to understand the Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana. One infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... explain those things to you—not now. Some day, please God, I shall be able to, but till that day comes—trust me!" There was a depth of supplication and entreaty in his tone, but it left her unmoved. She felt frozen—passionless. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... thing he could do, in that awful waste of water. But its effect on the seamen was bad. It was like giving in. They got a little disheartened and flurried; and the cold, passionless water seized the advantage. It is possible, too, that the motion of the ship through the sea aided ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... sad—so deep—and hesitating broke The accents his scarce-moving pale lips spoke;[kv] But Lara's voice, though low, at first was clear And calm, till murmuring Death gasped hoarsely near; But from his visage little could we guess, So unrepentant—dark—and passionless,[kw] Save that when struggling nearer to his last, Upon that page his eye was kindly cast; 1110 And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceased, Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the East: Whether ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... temperament swings between the dead calm and passionless on the one hand, to the violent and maniacal on the other. The nation is still convalescent, its development is slow, and it is impossible to say how far new Greece will develop. But its strength lies in its serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... think it may safely be said that allowing for the freedom of boys and men, there is native to the male a more urgent passion than to the female. This would be biologically necessary, since upon him devolves not only courtship but the fundamental activity in the sexual act. A passionless woman may have sexual relation, a passionless ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... she was well known and had always been popular, she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and accomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent Dorset, and who was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrote that the coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very marble, he said, wept. [558] The lamentations of Cambridge and Oxford were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put on mourning. The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mantel-piece, if there was one near, his fingers going through their strange palmistry; and in this manner, never once stirring from his position, he would not unfrequently protract his discourse till long past midnight. An inexhaustible, undemonstrative, noiseless, passionless man, scarcely evident to you by physical qualities, and impressing you, for the most part, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... a beautiful countenance, far from it, yet most remarkable; the features were fixed and still as a statue, rigid, with a calm so passionless, that one might have thought the very soul had fled from that form, the more so as the whole of the marble face was overspread with the most extraordinary paleness. There was not a tinge of color in the cheek, scarce even on ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... frowningly and forbiddingly in the way, have no power over that love of Christ's which is close and tender, and clinging with all the tenderness and closeness and clingingness of a human affection and lofty and universal and passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calmness and eternity of a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... in my wife's conduct, this passionless change—for I felt instinctively that warm humanity had nothing to do with the transformation—took place three nights ago. These three last days Mar-got has been playing ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... traverse all seas,—surely none among the Immortals can escape Thee, nor indeed any among men who live but for a little space; and he who is possessed by Thee, there is a madness upon him." And when I had re-read that delicious chant, the face of Antigone appeared before me in all its passionless purity. What images! Gods and goddesses who hover in the highest heights of Heaven! The blind old man, the long-wandering beggar-king, led by Antigone, has now been buried with holy rites; and his daughter, fair as the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... her reply. She was so exquisite and so full of womanly allure, and yet so crystal-cold and passionless, that he knew his arguments thrown away, his entreaties mere ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... heard not one word or syllable of all this. The dead, passionless look had fallen over the powerful features, and the deep-set eyes were gazing, not on the actual Loch Roag before them, but on the stormy sea that lies between Lewis and Skye, and on a vessel disappearing in the midst of the rain. It was by a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... far from her. She had thought she knew him, all of him, and held him in the hollow of her hand; but this she did not know—this face of steel, this mouth of steel, these eyes of steel flashing the light and glitter of steel. It seemed to her the passionless face of an avenging angel, stamped only with the purpose of ...
— The Game • Jack London
... looked at him, and was beyond the power of his sounding. She grew vehement, full of still, passionless rage. She was like a goddess pronouncing a ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... a little, and when he spoke his voice was almost awful in its passionless sternness, in its despairing finality; it seemed to echo the irrevocable judgment which his words pronounced: "That the crimes against God and each other which had destroyed the parents' life should enter into the children's blood, and that never thereafter should there ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... lay long in the dark listening, and it seemed to her half awakened consciousness that this voice in the April dawn was like Creed Bonbright. These notes, lucid, passionless, that yet always stirred her heart strangely, and the selfless personality, the high-purposed soul that spoke in him, they were akin. The crystal tones flowed on; Judith harkened, the ear of her spirit alert ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... smashed over a table, and, swinging one-half of it, he made a formidable onslaught. Two of the waiters were knocked senseless and the leader's nose and teeth crushed in by the rude cudgel. The morose moon started up, a tragic hieroglyph in the passionless sky. Quell, seeing its hated disk, howled, his face aflame with exaltation. Then he leaped like a hoarsely panting animal upon the poet; a moment and they were in the grass clawing each other. And the moon foamed down upon them its magnetic beams until darkness, caused by a coarse blanket, enveloped, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... plain fact which every beat of our pulses might preach, and the slow creeping hands of every parish clock confirm. How awful that silent, unceasing footfall of receding days is when once we begin to watch it! Inexorable, passionless—though hope and fear may pray, 'Sun! stand thou still on Gibeon; and thou moon! in the valley of Ajalon,'—the tramp of the hours goes on. The poets paint them as a linked chorus of rosy forms, garlanded, and clasping hands as they dance onwards. So they may be to some of us at some ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now—eh, Jenny? I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss Richmond ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the intellect. It steals silently into the soul in the guise of friendship, asking nothing but loyal friendship in return; in the appearance of kindness which asks but a little gratitude; in the semblance of a calm and passionless trustfulness, demanding only a like trust as its equivalent pledge, a like faith as a gauge for its own, an equal measure of charity for an equal; and so love builds himself a temple of faith and charity, and trust and kindness, and honest friendship, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... mind of the monk a sense of relief and deliverance. He felt already, in the terrible storm of agitation which this confession had aroused within him, that nature was not dead, and that he was infinitely farther from the victory of passionless calm than he had supposed. He was still a man,—torn with human passions, with a love which he must never express, and a jealousy which burned and writhed at every word which he had wrung from its unconscious object. Conscience had begun to whisper in his ear that there would be no safety to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... of such tremulous sweetness, That (in spite of some faults) I am forced, in discreetness, To silence, lest mine, growing hoarse, should betray What I must not reveal—will she guess now, I say, How, for all his grave looks, the stern, passionless Tutor, With more than the love of her youthfulest suitor, Is hiding somewhere in the shroud of his vest, By a heart that is beating wild wings in its nest, This flower, thrown aside in the sport of a minute, And which he holds dear as though folded within it Lay the germ of the ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... looked forward to that awful hour, and kept the contemplation of future happiness and everlasting punishment immovable from their hearts, and pained themselves to labour, that they might not lose eternal glory. They became passionless as the Angels, and now they weave the dance in their fellowship, whose lives also they imitated. Blessed, yea, thrice blessed are they, because with sure spiritual vision they discerned the vanity of this present ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the Prophet, with passionless equanimity. "Please go in there and remain to guard ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... through their curtainless panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... of the winners (and these were few enough) scarcely expressed a trace of satisfaction, but seemed rather cast into some horrible trance in which they saw nothing but the piles of coin, the spinning needle, and the flashing hands of the woman that turned it. She all the while sat passionless and cold, looking on the scene as might ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good night as usual, but the excitement of a new experience had stirred Caroline's emotions, and Wilf's pride in her had also roused the possessive instinct in him, so that the kiss they exchanged was a little different from the almost passionless salute to which they had long grown accustomed. Wilf's eyes shone and Caroline's cheeks were flushed when they drew back from each other. She began to speak quickly, nervously. "Well, so long! They'll think ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... little later than he had intended, and, as he came up in the lift, the attendant informed him, in the passionless manner proper to such people, that the Mr. Kirkby who had been mentioned had arrived and was waiting ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... up to the cold embraces of that passionless egotist, who, as he perceived plainly enough, was casting his shining net all around her? Clement read Murray Bradshaw correctly. He could not perhaps have spread his character out in set words, as we must ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a flannel table-cloth, a row of such apparel hanging on a clothes-horse by the fire. Her face had been pale when he encountered her, but now it was warm and pink with her exertions and the heat of the stove. Yet it was in perfect and passionless repose, which imparted a Minerva cast to the profile. When she glanced up, her lineaments seemed to have all the soul and heart that had characterized her mother's, and had been with her a true index of the spirit within. Could it be possible that in this case the manifestation ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... as inquiries into the character of the Indian mind—if, indeed, it was thought the Indian had any mind at all. It was still supposed that the Indian was, at all times and in all places, "a stoic of the woods," always statuesque, always formal, always passionless, always on stilts, always speaking in metaphors, a cold embodiment of bravery, endurance, and savage heroism. Writers depicted him as a man who uttered nothing but high principles of natural right, who always harangued eloquently, and was ready, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... dealers in small merchandise. He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless gallantry. He sits at ease with greater enjoyment under the opaque vine and trellis of his own garden. He appears in the midst of his household as it bustles with preparation for the birthday feast ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman |
