"Dispassionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the warm September day, the calm trees, and the flowers that were pure untroubled beauty (how I envied them their dispassionate lives, their tranquil growth, their effortless attainment of perfection, and their unconscious dying!)—all these had a strangely harmonizing influence upon my discordant spirit. We spoke little, and of the war not at all. Indeed, the war suddenly seemed curiously remote and ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... or his passion, nor ever had treated any enemy as irreconcilably opposed to him. And to me it appears that this one thing gives an otherwise childish and arrogant title a fitting and becoming significance; so dispassionate a temper, a life so pure and unblemished, in the height of power and place, might well be called "Olympian," in accordance with our conceptions of divine beings, to whom, as the natural of all good and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... established as a substitute was founded on excellent grounds appertaining to the interests of the people and of good order in the heart of Paris; but the violence of absolute power and of hatred robs the best measures of the credit they would deserve if they were more disinterested and dispassionate. A lively reaction set in at Paris in favor of the persecuted Burgundians; even outside of Paris several towns of importance, Rheims, Chalons, Troyes, Auxerre, Amiens, and Rouen itself, showed a favorable disposition towards the Duke of Burgundy, and made a sort of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... so far, a melancholy picture of backward progress, and a family posting towards extinction. But the law (however administered, and I am bound to aver that, in Scotland, 'it couldna weel be waur') acts as a kind of dredge, and with dispassionate impartiality brings up into the light of day, and shows us for a moment, in the jury-box or on the gallows, the creeping things of the past. By these broken glimpses we are able to trace the existence of many other and more inglorious Stevensons, picking ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excite the wayward imagination and to guide the thoughts of the vast majority of those who will scan the finished work of the historian. It is here that some of the best writers of history have failed, Gardiner has written what is probably the best, and is certainly the most dispassionate and impartial history of the Stuart period. "With one exception," Mr. Gooch says, "Gardiner possessed all the tools of his craft—an accurate mind, perfect impartiality, insight into character, sympathy with ideas different from his own and from one another. The exception was ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... his duties. Odo knew this and was grateful for it. He knew that Trescorre, ambitious of the regency, had intrigued against him to the last. He knew that an intemperate love of power was the mainspring of that seemingly dispassionate nature. But death had crossed Trescorre's schemes; and he was too adroit an opportunist not to see that his best chance now lay in making himself indispensable to his new sovereign. Of all this Odo was ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the accounts in Hawthorne's diary are for the most part of a dispassionate objective character, as if he had come down from the moon to take an observation of mundane affairs. His letters to Miss Peabody were also dispassionate, but strongly subjective, and, like the one just quoted, mainly evolved from his imagination, like orchids living in the air. It was also about ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... has spent more time than Motley in searching the musty records and state archives of foreign lands for matter relating to Holland, it was impossible for a man of his temperament, convictions, and purpose to write a calm, dispassionate history. He is not the cool judge, but the earnest advocate, and yet he does not distort facts. He is just and can be coldly critical, even of his heroes, but he is always on one side, the side of liberty and justice, pleading their cause. His temperament ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... dispassionate view of their relation seems not to have brought any decision from Miss Owens; for three months later Mr. Lincoln wrote her an equally judicial letter, telling her that he could not think of her "with entire indifference," that he in all cases wanted to do right and "most ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... it is his fortune to attract the honourable regards of all who are distinguished as compeers. It is not my intention to offer any estimate of what I conceive to be his genuine worth, as he may be appreciated in a more dispassionate time; I speak of him only as a great man filling a very large space in the consideration of the empire. Judging from the throng of all classes upon this occasion, whose favour is desirable, no man is more popular * * *. The Chancellor took his place at a corner ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... has not yet arrived for a calm and dispassionate review of the acts and actors of that period and the events of the immediately succeeding years; but the incidents that took place and the experience so dearly purchased should not be perverted, misunderstood, or ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the impenetrable mask of that smooth, broad forehead of his. He looked into his eyes, but saw nothing there save a cold, steady light that he had often seen before when the doctor was discussing subjects that interested him deeply. As for his face, it was utterly impassive—the face of a dispassionate scientist quietly discussing the possible solution of a problem that had been laid before him. Whether his friend was really driving at some unheard-of and unearthly solution of the problem which he himself had raised, or whether he was merely ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... so sanguine and affectionate, that the very fondness was as much grief as joy. She could not believe that he took in the true state of the case, or was prepared to perceive that she could never be his wife, and she wanted Richard to write one of his clear, dispassionate statements, such as carried full conviction, and to help to put a ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained—namely, that each species has been independently created—is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable, but that those belonging to what ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... protected, instead of squandering it in vain activities. His carefully guarded hours had been devoted to the cultivation of a fine intelligence and a few judiciously chosen habits; and none of the disturbances common to human experience seemed to have crossed his sky. Nevertheless, his dispassionate survey of the universe had not raised his opinion of that costly experiment, and his study of the human race seemed to have resulted in the conclusion that all men were superfluous, and women necessary only because some ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Kennon said. Actually he didn't see at all. He looked curiously at the entrepreneur. Alexander couldn't be as easy as he seemed. Objectivity and dispassionate weighing and balancing were nice traits and very helpful ones, but in the bear pit of galactic business they wouldn't keep their owner alive for five minutes. The interworld trade sharks would have skinned him long ago ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... vast monopolies for his own private benefit. He imposed taxes arbitrarily. He levied them by military force. Some of his acts are described even by the partial Clarendon as powerful acts, acts which marked a nature excessively imperious, acts which caused dislike and terror in sober and dispassionate persons, high acts of oppression. Upon a most frivolous charge, he obtained a capital sentence from a court-martial against a man of high rank who had given him offence. He debauched the daughter- in-law of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and then ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was but a step to sublimity itself. His soul seemed separate from his body; he was dispassionate, superhuman, all-seeing and all-comprehending. Now he could see men as winged ants, crossing each other, nearing, drifting apart, interweaving, floating in a cloud, blown high, blown low by wafts of air; and here, presently, came one Manvers, and there, driven ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... of refined ideas rather than profound feelings, displayed in mourning his wife's loss the same gentle, dispassionate, and courteous persistency with which he had remained constant to his first impression of her charms. She had been a beautiful, high-hearted girl; she became a fascinating but wayward woman; she died a creature of such mingled ferocity and sentiment ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... There is a village near Chur in Switzerland, which has twice been wiped out by avalanches, yet each time re-built {117} on the same spot; year by year material is visibly accumulating for a third deadly fall, and when it takes place, as take place it will, men will speak of the dispassionate cruelty of nature. Time after time the lava from Mount Vesuvius has overwhelmed the localities that nestle on its slopes, but human heedlessness proves incurable. If the Sicilians, knowing the nature of the soil, had built their towns of isolated, one-storied, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... alone you would think so," Mr. Cupples answered. "But the way in which he uttered them gave me a strange and very apprehensive feeling. I received the impression that the man had formed some sinister resolve. But I regret to say I had lost the power of dispassionate thought. I fell into a great rage"—Mr. Cupples' tone was mildly apologetic—"and said a number of foolish things. I reminded him that the law allowed a measure of freedom to wives who received intolerable treatment. I made some utterly irrelevant references to his public record, and expressed the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... thought and impassioned eccentricity cut him off from the sympathy, and hence from the applause, of a vast section of humanity. But when contemporary prejudice and indifference shall clear up, and the question be summoned for final arbitration before the dispassionate tribunal of the future, we suspect that the name of Thomas de Quincey will head the list of English writers during the last seventy-five years. If we should apply to our author the rule which he remorselessly enforces against Dr. Parr, that the production of a complete, first-class ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have been much surprised to hear that his latter end was a subject of dispassionate contemplation to the little Frenchman. No subject was more remote from his own thoughts. He was in high feather, the hour was fast approaching which was to witness his triumph and his revenge; the gag would soon be taken from his mouth, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... the dead, uninspired, could not so well furnish. The appearance and words of a spirit would excite us, and make us afraid; we could not feel and act as well, under such influences, as we can under the calm, dispassionate, convincing, and persuasive influences of the Bible. One of the most intelligent and cultivated of women, the wife of a missionary in Turkey, in her last sickness, having heard her husband read to her several times, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... curious, for Abel Gallup was what he would himself have described as "a sincere Believer." Nevertheless, he was immensely attracted by the philosopher's Study of Sociology, and little Eloquent was made to learn and repeat many long bits from that dispassionate work. There was no portrait of Mr Herbert Spencer hanging upon the walls; he was not a living force, a real presence, like Mr Gladstone or Mr Bright; he spake not with the words of "a great soul greatly stirred"; yet there was something in his polished and logical ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... as an old woman—you, in whom reason ever sits serene and dispassionate on her throne, except when you ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... records of the human race,' though those records are far from being dispassionately written, on which account they are of less value than they otherwise might have been. There is too much passion in the Bible, too much violence; now, to come to all truth, especially historic truth, requires cool, dispassionate investigation, for which the Jews do not appear to have ever been famous. We are ourselves not famous for it, for we are a passionate people; the Germans are not—they are not a passionate people—a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... free to dispose of Nietzsche's attitude to Wagner, at any given period in their relationship, with a single sentence of praise or of blame. After all, we are faced by a problem which no objectivity or dispassionate detachment on our parts can solve. Nietzsche endowed both Schopenhauer and Wagner with qualities and aspirations so utterly foreign to them both, that neither of them would have recognised himself in the images he painted of them. ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the Frontenacs occur in these Memoirs of La Grande Mademoiselle. Unfortunately the Duchesse de Montpensier was so self-centred that her witness is not dispassionate. She disliked Frontenac, without concealment. As seen by her, he was vain and boastful, even in matters which concerned his kitchen and his plate. His delight in new clothes was childish. He compelled guests to speak admiringly of his horses, in contradiction of their manifest appearance. Worst ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... imagination is struck with a lively impression, and fastens on petty circumstances, which must be passed over by the classical historian. The writings of Brantome, Comines, Froissart, and others, are dictated by their natural feelings: while the passions of modern writers are temperate with dispassionate philosophy, or inflamed by the virulence of faction. History instructs, but Memoirs delight. These prefatory observations may serve as an apology for Anecdotes which are gathered from obscure corners, on which the dignity of the historian ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... we all—I will not even exclude myself from this category—regarded not only as a casual visitor to the museum, but a stranger to all concerned, is, on the contrary, as I think you will soon see, more closely allied to the seemingly dispassionate director than even Madame Duclos. The shock which laid her low was not that usually ascribed to her, or even the one she so fantastically offered to our acceptance; but the recognition of Carleton Roberts as the author of this tragedy,—Carleton Roberts ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... rebuffed, The perjured Scythian she lacked At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower, She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower; Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon She woke, A nuptial-knotted derelict; Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... she could sigh and say, in the rear of her aunt's retreating figure, 'I certainly never would let myself, down so'; but Mrs. Harrington took her own counsel, and Jacko was of her persuasion, for he quickly released himself from Mrs. Fiske's dispassionate embrace, and was slinging his body up the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up ever new horizons, and its achievements during the past one hundred years give to thought the very freedom it seeks. But if science is dispassionate, mathematics is even more austere and impersonal. It cares not for teeming worlds and hearts insurgent, so long as in the pure clarity of space, relationships exist. Indeed, it requires neither time nor space, number nor ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... account which has come down to us of Abraham's sojourn in Egypt. If it be asked, Why is it inserted into the "story of Egypt" at this point? the reply must be, because, on a dispassionate consideration of all the circumstances, chronological and other, which attach to the narrative, it has been generally agreed that the event belongs to about this time. There is no special reign to which it can be definitely assigned; but the best critics ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... dressed," said Mrs. Miller with that accent of the dispassionate, if not of the philosophic, historian with which she always recorded the current incidents of her daughter's career. "She got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she's got a friend of hers there; that gentleman—the Italian—that she wanted to bring. They've got going at the ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... public," which measures every man's conduct by the strict law of propriety, and accredits him with so much intelligence and refinement as his manners display—no more. And, happily, no less; for this "general public" is a dispassionate critic on the whole, and if it severely condemns our faults, it has no grudge against us to keep it from equally appreciating ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... pace the foreground of the Gardens of Versailles, back and forth like a tethered beast in a park. His voice was dispassionate. The narrative proceeded in a monotone. But if fiends could conceive a tale more dark, they would ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the new schools of amateur journalism. Since Mr. Campbell is preeminently an essayist, it is to his dissertations on "The Pursuit of Happiness" and "The Age of Accuracy" which we turn most eagerly; and which in no way disappoint our high expectations. The first of these essays is a dispassionate survey of mankind in its futile but frantic scramble after that elusive but unreal sunbeam called "happiness". The author views the grimly amusing procession of human life with the genuine objective ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... on the contrary, Rotherby was very much his father's son, and he added to his observations upon human nature the reflection that sinners are oddly blessed with short memories. He was entirely dispassionate ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... incalculable usefulness to the State; but if a union of the friends of literature and science, of all parties and sects, cannot be attained; if the triumph of one party over the other be absolutely indispensable; fearful apprehensions must fill the mind of every considerate man, every dispassionate friend of ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... definite or hopeful could be obtained; but there could be no doubt that this meant a real and calm re-weighing of the evidence, with a consideration of all the circumstances. It was something for the Doctor that a second dispassionate study should be given to the case, but his heart sank as he thought of that cold, hard statement of evidence, without the counter testimony of the honest, tearless eyes and simple good faith of the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon the conditions of those times and view it with dispassionate judgment, can perceive corruption in both political parties. The real welfare of the country was the last thing considered by a professional politician. There was always something that was to benefit the people brought forward as a party issue, ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... himself have proposed. He made Madison's thoughts his own, until he set them forth with even greater force than Madison himself could command. Yet no arguments could possibly be less chargeable with partisanship than the arguments of the "Federalist." The judgment is as dispassionate as could be shown in a philosophical treatise. The tone is one of grave and lofty eloquence, apt to move even to tears the reader who is fully alive to the stupendous issues that were involved in the discussion. Hamilton was supremely endowed with the faculty of imagining, with all the circumstantial ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... parallel passages, apart from Montaigne, there has been no lack; but the deeper problem of the dramatist's mental history can hardly be said to have arisen till our own generation. As regards many of the parallel passages, the ground has been pretty well cleared by the dispassionate scholarship brought to bear on them from Farmer onwards; though the idolatry of the Coleridgean school, as represented by Knight, did much to retard scientific conclusions on this as on ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... non-combatants of either sex was to avoid all controversy or discussion, to state with perfect frankness but courteously my own attitude and sense of duty, and to apply all such stringent rules as a state of war compels with an evenness of temper and tone of dispassionate government which should make as little chafing as possible. Most intelligent people, when they are not excited, are disposed to recognize the obligations imposed upon a military officer in such circumstances, and it was rarely ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... profitable to subject each new moral phase that presents itself to a rigid analysis, and trace every effect, moral, political, governmental, or popular, to the cause or causes that may, after a fair showing, appear to have produced it. A fair and dispassionate application of true and just principles is as essential to a right political judgment as to a correct moral decision, and he who allows himself to be led by passion, selfishness, prejudice, or a blind adoration of party, instead ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... excited such affrays, and that once, when Ninian W. Edwards climbed upon a table and screamed at his opponent the lie direct, Lincoln replied by "so fair a speech" that it quelled the discord. Henceforward he practiced a calm, carefully-weighed, dispassionate style in presenting facts and arguments. Even if he cultivated it from appreciation of its efficiency, at least his skill in it was due to the fact that it was congenial to his nature, and that his mind worked instinctively ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... primary end of the Gospel was spiritual; that it was the object of the Apostles to obtain for it a dispassionate hearing among all nations; and that, however they might hope indirectly to affect the temporal prosperity and political welfare of mankind, all good of this kind was in their view subordinate to that spiritual amelioration, which, if affected, would necessarily involve ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... aim of history should be a dispassionate inquiry into the genius of past civilizations, especially in a moral point of view. Wherein were they weak or strong, vital or mechanical, permanent or transient? We wish to know that we may compare them with our own, and learn lessons of wisdom. The rise and fall of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... department of the Government and every individual in each are responsible, and the more full their information the better they can judge of the wisdom of the policy pursued and of the conduct of each in regard to it. From their dispassionate judgment much aid may always be obtained, while their approbation will form the greatest incentive and most gratifying reward for virtuous actions, and the dread of their censure the best security against the abuse of their confidence. Their interests in all vital questions are the same, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions connected with the Government of Ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... addition to the economic and the fiscal needs, quite serious enough, there was the tireless influence of the lobby of manufacturers, pressing for single rates which should aid this business or that. Few Congressmen were sufficiently detached in interests to be entirely dispassionate as they framed the schedules. Many did not even try to disguise their desire to promote local interests. Neither party had a mandate on the tariff in 1882, but when the act had become a law it was clear that most ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... But why not? the dispassionate internationalist may ask. Why should not the Italian hotels be in the hands of Austrians, Germans, and Swiss; the new electrical developments be installed and run by Germans; the shops for tourists and Italians be owned by foreigners? There we cross ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... these are matters for discussion and dispassionate consideration. That the desired adjustment would be attended with difficulty affords no reason why it should not be attempted. The effective operation of such motives would have prevented the adoption of the Constitution under which we have so long lived and under the benign influence of which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... force. He, however, complained that gentlemen, who possessed such slight practical knowledge, should venture to assail established systems. His remarks chiefly related to the colonial influence of their ideas, and he exaggerated the danger to the public safety. The most dispassionate examination of this report was given by Archdeacon Hutchins. It was far more copious in its admissions in reference to the existing system. Little work was done; the prisoners were very slightly reformed, and the agents often unfit. But ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... passion for present enjoyment; which, though sometimes violent and very difficult to be restrained, is in general only momentary and occasional. But the principle which prompts to save, is the desire of bettering our condition; a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave. In the whole interval which separates those two moments, there is scarce, perhaps, a single instance, in which any man is ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of the prisoner, craved to address a few words to the Court in mitigation of sentence. He thanked Mr. Stephens for the considerate and eminently dispassionate manner in which he had outlined the main facts of the case. He had no desire to minimize the prisoner's guilt. But, on prisoner's behalf, he desired to tell the true story as to how these things came to be. Until as recently as ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... sapphire-coloured finches were feeding, twittering merrily to themselves as they hopped about, and here and there down the long tables lay asprawl a belated reveller, his empty oblivion-phial before him, his curly head upon his arms, dreaming perhaps of last night's feast and a neglected bride dozing dispassionate in some distant chamber. But Heru was not there and little I cared for twittering finches or sighing damsels. With hasty feet I rushed down the hall out into the cool, sweet air of ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... expressive features had raised them, to the dimness and reality of earth. I could scarcely persuade myself that this was my late friend of the woods and fields, and of the evening discourse, so calm and dispassionate, over ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... I fell to, but my thoughts remained with the waiter. What a man! With his dispassionate judgment, his calm sane outlook on men and affairs, shaken a little perhaps in 1914, but since then undisturbed, was he not cut out above all others to settle the vexed frontier lines of Europe? I wondered whether Lord ROBERT CECIL might not possibly make use of him. I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... Misses Blake, side by side, argue (with what they erroneously term dispassionate calmness) the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... assured Spain that 'not all those who have given security for Raleigh can save him from the gallows.' For the particulars of the curious intrigues of these summer months the reader must be referred, once more, to Mr. Gardiner's dispassionate pages. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... inferior to us in skill and enterprise. Still, we have much to show; but the useful prevails over the beautiful. I am quite sure, too, that there are things here which will compel attention, and carry away calm, dispassionate approbation from the jurors. The United States exhibits numerous specimens of tools, cordage, cotton and woolen fabrics, shawls, colors, prints, daguerreo-types, silver and gold plate, pianos, musical instruments, harnesses, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... should ever comprehend that!" he answered. "When I take to glorying in my shame, pluming myself upon my abnormality, then, indeed, I become beyond all example loathsome. The most deplorable moment of my very inglorious career will be precisely that in which I cease to look at myself with dispassionate contempt." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... went steadily on, now reciting, now commenting, now lending argument, a cool dispassionate gravity that forced the ear. Facts were so clearly stated, conclusions so reasonably drawn, points so firmly made—all without a trace of emotion, yet seriously offered in the most conspicuous good faith—that it was almost impossible to realize that the speaker was insensible. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... right hon. gentleman had detailed the extreme severities alleged to have been committed upon certain residents in the city of Oporto. He was confident, however, that no sympathy towards the sufferings of individuals, and no indignation against injustice, would withdraw the House from the calm and dispassionate consideration of those principles on which the public policy of this country had been founded with regard to the kingdom of Portugal. He could not but express his cordial concurrence in the hope that this country, through the forbearance, wisdom, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... picture of conditions brought about by the race question in the United States makes no special plea for the Negro, but shows in a dispassionate, though sympathetic, manner conditions as they actually exist between the whites and blacks to-day. Special pleas have already been made for and against the Negro in hundreds of books, but in these books either his virtues or his vices have been exaggerated. This is because writers, in nearly ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... lay, gazing, not speaking. The sun streamed down, flattening the desert with his fervent beams until the uplifts cringed low and in the horizons the mountain peaks floated languidly upon the waves of heat. And in all this dispassionate land, from horizon to horizon, there were only My Lady and I, and the beleaguering Sioux. It seemed unreal, a fantasy; but the rocks began to smell scorched, a sudden thirst nagged and my wounded arm pained with weariness as if to remind that I was here, in the body. Yes, and here ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... surmise &c 514; conclusion &c (judgment) 480. tenet, dogma, principle, way of thinking; popular belief &c (assent) 488. firm belief, implicit belief, settled belief, fixed rooted deep- rooted belief, staunch belief, unshaken belief, steadfast belief, inveterate belief, calm belief, sober belief, dispassionate belief, impartial belief, well-founded belief, firm opinion, implicit opinion, settled opinion, fixed rooted deep-rooted opinion, staunch opinion, unshaken opinion, steadfast opinion, inveterate opinion, calm opinion, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... large-minded man though he was, to try to put himself in Thorne's place and so gain a larger insight into the affair, and the possibility of arriving at a fairer judgment. Berkeley's interest in the matter was too personal to admit of dispassionate analysis, or any impulse toward mercy, or even justice. His anger burned hotly against Thorne, and when the thought of him rose in his mind it was accompanied by other thoughts which it is best not to put ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... painted on his memory a picture that Howland knew he would never forget. His was a nature, because of the ambition imposed on it, that had never taken more than a casual interest in the form and feature of women. He had looked on beautiful faces and had admired them in a cool, dispassionate way, judging them—when he judged at all—as he might have judged the more material workmanship of his own hands. But this face that was framed for a few brief moments in the door reached out to him and stirred an interest within him which was as new as it was pleasurable. It was ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... strange irony of fate this man, who was by nature one of the most peaceable and peace-loving of men, singularly calm and dispassionate, not prone to disputation or given to wrangling, acquired the reputation of being perhaps the most cantankerous ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... Roman Catholics," p. 375. The atrocity of such a plot seems incredible. We should have classed it at once with the Maria Monk story, and other fabulous horrors of Dr. Brownlee's Protestant Society, but that we find it in the sober and dispassionate pages of Bishop O'Gorman's History, which is derived from original sources of information. If anything could have justified the animosity of the "native Americans" (who, by the way, were widely suspected to be, in large proportion, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... thoughts and orders were translated into action by them; and, moreover, each of them, as he grew specially fit for his job, used to suggest to me the right thought to have, and the right order to give, concerning that job. It is of course hard for me to speak with cold and dispassionate partiality of these men, who were as close to me as were the men of my regiment. But the outside observers best fitted to pass judgment about them felt as I did. At the end of my Administration Mr. Bryce, the British Ambassador, told me that in a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... that health and a large measure of muscular strength may be maintained upon a minimum supply of protein, yet I think that a dispassionate survey of mankind will show that races which adopt such a diet are lacking in what, for want of a better word, one can ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... said that, having resolved upon a risk which cannot be justified at the bar of dispassionate professional judgment, Captain Lawrence did not commit the further unpardonable error of not maturely weighing and judiciously choosing his course. That the crew was not organized and exercised at the guns, as far as his time and opportunity permitted, is disproved by ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... year later, before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, cannot be commended as dispassionate, and contains serious errors. Gen. Howe states that the order to advance towards Chancellorsville was received "just after dark, say eight o'clock," whereas it was not sent until nine P.M. from Chancellorsville, and ten P.M. from Falmouth; nor did Sedgwick receive it until eleven P.M. Howe evidently ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... savagely, and Webster died, a broken man, in the autumn of the Presidential year. "I have given my life to law and politics," he wrote to Professor Silliman. "Law is uncertain and politics are utterly vain." The dispassionate judgment of the present hour frees him from the charge of conscious treachery to principle. He was rather a martyr to his own conception of the obligations imposed by nationality. When these obligations ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... accorded with that of her niece. John certainly had said to her at breakfast that he saw no reason for foregoing the musical feature of the evening simply because an audience was to be present to hear it. Paula's only comment had been a dispassionate prediction that it wouldn't work. It wouldn't be fair to say she sulked; her rather elaborate detachment had been too good-humored for that. Her statement, at lunch, that she was to be turned on like a Victrola at half past nine, was ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... highly specialized qualifications which Mr. Belloc possessed before the war, should be reckoned perhaps two other qualifications of a more general character. The first of these is the very long and thorough training which his scholarship has necessitated in the dispassionate examination of evidence. Through years of historical study he has learnt carefully to sort out strong from weak evidence and to base his judgements only on such evidence as may be regarded as thoroughly ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... the Duchess lifted stately head and looked on him: but now, behold! her glance was high and proud, her scarlet mouth firm-set like the white and dimpled chin below and her eyes swept him with look calm and most dispassionate. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... too late for her to rise now, as his hands held both hers, and his handsome mouth was smiling level with her own. So it really seemed to a dispassionate spectator that it WAS possible, and before she had left the room, it even appeared to be the most probable ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... prevailing laxity in the administration of justice. Had it not been for words of 'venturesome edge' spoken from the pulpits on necessary occasions, we cannot estimate how the liberties of Scotland would have suffered. We are told by some dispassionate and carefully balanced readers of Scottish History that the Presbyterian Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cared no more for liberty than did their opponents, and that the controversy was between Presbyterian tyranny on the one hand and Episcopal tyranny on the other; ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... and "limited monarchies" gave his suggestions power and penetration; and even Bridges, besotted in his provincial selfishness, had advised his selection as Supervisor. Of his own fitness for the work, Redfield himself took a dispassionate view. "I am only filling the place till the right man comes along," he said to his friends. "The man before me was a half-hearted and shifty advocate. I am an enthusiast without special training; by-and-by the real forester will come to take ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the honour to command, regardless of the tongue of slander, or the powers of detraction. The fatal tendency of disunion is so obvious, that I have, in earnest terms, exhorted such officers as have expressed their dissatisfaction at General Conway's promotion, to be cool and dispassionate in their decision about the matter; and I have hopes that they will not suffer any hasty determination to injure the service. At the same time, it must be acknowledged, that officers' feelings upon these occasions are not ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... addition to a full corps of dealers, croupiers, watchers, and waiters. The almost incessant whine of racing ivory balls with their clattering over the metal compartments of the roulette wheels, clicking of chips, dispassionate voices of croupiers, and an occasional low-pitched comment on the part of one or another of the patrons, seemed only to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... of this life, a dispassionate regard to truth, and an inviolable candour shall be observed. Milton was not without a share of those failings which are inseparable from human nature; those errors sometimes exposed him to censure, and they ought not to pass unnoticed; on the other hand, the apparent sincerity ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... have vested in the nation. The line has not been so distinctly drawn as to avoid doubts in some cases of the exercise of power. Men of the best intentions and soundest views may differ in their construction of some parts of the Constitution; but there are others on which dispassionate reflection can leave no doubt. Of this nature appears to be the assumed right of secession. It rests, as we have seen, on the alleged and undivided sovereignty of the States, and of their having formed in this sovereign capacity a compact which is called the ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... although they were not people to approve of crackling thorns under a pot, or any form of folly, they were, in their way, appreciative of the culture, humor, and insight he showed. Mr. Aglonby begged to be favored with his "observations" on America, and added that "the dispassionate reflections of an intelligent foreigner should be esteemed of the utmost value by all judicious patriots and enlightened political economists, calling attention, as they often did, to evils and dangers whose existence had not been previously suspected." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Fay reiterated, "and more fully objective. Pooh-Bah's set for full precis. Stop worrying about it. He's a dispassionate machine, not a fallible, emotionally disturbed human misled by the will-o'-the-wisp of consciousness. Second matter: Micro Systems is impressed by your contributions to Tickler and will recruit you ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... avoided being alone with Mr. Falconer, in order not to give him an opportunity of speaking on the forbidden subject. She was confident that she had taken the only course which promised to relieve her from a life of intolerable suspense; but she wished to subject her conduct to dispassionate opinion, and she thought she could not submit it to a more calmly-judging person than her old spinster friend, Miss Ilex, who had, moreover, the great advantage of being a woman of the world. She therefore took an ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... laid her arms upon his shoulders. Her hands touched him with dispassionate, deliberate, ineffectual caresses, a pitiful return to a discarded manner, an outrageous imitation of the old professional cajoleries. It was so poor a thing that it had no power to move him. What moved him was the look in her eyes, the look which his brain told him was the desperate, ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... the girl in perplexity. During the past month he had completely lost his head and heart over her, and he was trying to view her with the dispassionate ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... us many curious particulars relating to the life of that unfortunate Prince, which are no where else to be found. In delineating the character of Charles, he seems dispassionate and impartial, and indeed it agrees perfectly with the general portraiture of him, as it is drawn ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... acclimatised in an incredibly short space of time. The first judges were not by any means profound jurists, and were too often deficient in that dispassionate calmness which we are accustomed to associate with the Bench; but they were at least honest, educated men, and generally possessed a fair knowledge of the law. Their defects were due to the fact that the demand for trained jurists far exceeded the supply, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... means exhausted his resources, for it was possible so to inflame the public mind that dispassionate juries ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... be answered of why a large body of men, like the educated apostles of socialism, who exhibit as a class no typical inferiority of intellect, unite in accepting, as though drawn to it by some chemical affinity, one particular error which dispassionate common-sense disdains, and which the actual history of the whole human race refutes? In the case of some preachers of socialism the answer lies on the surface. Socialism is of all creeds that which it is easiest to present to the ignorant; ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... hadn't you better retire. You're not interested in my talk to these boys.—Well, if ever any of you want to get married you have my consent. But you'd better get my opinion on her dimples when you do. Now, with my sixty odd years, I'm worth listening to. I can take a cool, dispassionate view of a woman now, and pick every good point about her, just as if she was a cow horse that I was ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... sentimental yielding to these painful emotions. It is therefore entirely a matter of "Gemuet." Pessimism, on the other hand, purports to be a theory of existence, the result of deliberate philosophic argument and investigation, by which its votaries have reached the dispassionate conclusion that there is no real good or pleasure in the world that is not clearly outweighed by evil or pain, and that therefore self-destruction, or at least final annihilation is the consummation devoutly to ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... should give joy, but I see a universe, I suppose, eternally different from yours; a solemn, a terrible, but a very joyous and noble universe, where suffering is not at least wantonly inflicted, though it falls with dispassionate partiality, but where it may be and generally is nobly borne; where, above all (this I believe; probably you don't: I think he may, with cancer), ANY BRAVE MAN MAY MAKE out a life which shall be happy for himself, and, by so being, beneficent to those about him. And if he ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (except in neglecting to do what, if I had done, must have endangered the lives of those who were so fortunate as to quit the ship) I showed myself faithful to the last moment of the captain's stay, what is there to leave a doubt in the minds of impartial and dispassionate men of my being perfectly innocent? Happy indeed should I have been if the master had stayed on board, which he probably would have done, if his reasons for wishing to do so had not been overheard by the man ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... his game well at the beginning, but betraying the lie at the end. He did not love Marie-Anne as he, Dave Carrigan, loved her. He had spoken of her as a child, and he had treated her as a child, and was serenely dispassionate in the face of a situation which would have roused the spirit in most men. And suddenly, recalling that thrilling hour in the white strip of sand and all that had happened since, it flashed upon David that St. Pierre was using his wife as the vital moving force in ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... life," I bantered, "you ought to make a rattling good policeman. I can see where a calm, dispassionate front would save a man a heap of trouble, at this ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... patriotic spirit was more alive than at the centre. There was a general sense that our affairs were being strangely mismanaged.' The men who think and talk like this are not struggling for place and power amid the demoralizing surroundings of modern Parliamentary life. They are able to take a cool and dispassionate view of us and our affairs, and they begin to think that public life has degenerated into a mere scramble for the spoils of office. Their indignation, when Gordon was deserted by the Government which he had tried to serve, was far greater than we seem to have had any experience ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... sketch a national character, but merely to note the present state of morals and manners as I trace the progress of the world's improvement. Because, during my residence in different countries, my principal object has been to take such a dispassionate view of men as will lead me to form a just idea of the nature of man. And, to deal ingenuously with you, I believe I should have been less severe in the remarks I have made on the vanity and depravity of the French, had I travelled towards ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... their advocates, most of whom refuse to see merit in any plan but their own. It is only fair, however, before reaching a definite conclusion to accord to all a fair and dispassionate consideration. ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... remains to be done to effect the manumission of the African, and preserve the important branches of commerce, which necessity has allied with the slave trade; and I entreat my readers to give this subject that dispassionate consideration which its merits require, and beg to assure them, that I obtrude my suggestions upon their notice with great submission and diffidence, trusting that what may appear in my system deficient, others more competent will embrace the subject, and excite the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... A dispassionate view of the situation would have pronounced Jethro as useful to the pioneers in one place as in another. Possibly, it might have been decided that it was better that he should remain away so long as the peril remained imminent, despite the fact that he had already ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... without reserve the result of my own reflections. The subject is of great importance, and one on which we can scarcely expect to be as united in sentiment as we are in interest. It deserves a full and free discussion, and can not fail to be benefited by a dispassionate comparison of opinions. Well aware myself of the duty of reciprocal concession among the coordinate branches of the Government, I can promise a reasonable spirit of cooperation, so far as it can be indulged ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... aware of it. A theory was taking form in his mind. It was radical and startling—yet it seemed to be the only one that fitted the facts. He pushed at it from all sides, but if there were any holes he couldn't find them. What it needed was dispassionate proving or disproving. There was only one person on Dis who was qualified ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... my readers to give a dispassionate judgment, and to say whether they have any doubt as to the poisoning of Ganganelli when they hear that his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to say. The eyes were dark, very keen, and yet reminiscently grave. From under their black brows they had the habit of appearing to be reluctantly withdrawn from some great distance to come to rest, steady and calm, upon the man with whom he chanced to be speaking. Such are the serene, dispassionate eyes of one who for many months of the year goes companionless, save for what communion he may find in the silent passes of the mountains, in the wide sweep of the meadow-lands or in the soul of ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... gently and hurriedly, "may it not be that you overrate the obligations of honor? I know that many a noble-hearted man has inexorably condemned himself to a severity of rule that a dispassionate judge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. It is so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should do a dishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, that he may very well overestimate the sacrifice required ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles that its origin is not dispassionate, such a nature ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... would!" Martie said in cold incredulity. Teddy, deceived by his mother's dispassionate tone, gave Wallace a warm little smile, embellished ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the other. "Do as I tell you." His voice was calm, dispassionate; there was nothing of anger in it, but there was that which said he must ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly: the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things, then no chimera, are rather to be envied. The ages called by the name of Louis XIV. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer protection and a favourable climate to real talent. We know only to well how in our untrammelled times, through the instability and storminess of the age, talents are lost and dissipated. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... other. Yet this passage, both in language and in metre, is perhaps amongst the best parts of the play. The lady's love companion and most esteemed attendant, Clotilda, now enters and explains this love and esteem by proving herself a most passive and dispassionate listener, as well as a brief and lucky querist, who asks by chance, questions that we should have thought made for the very sake of the answers. In short, she very much reminds us of those puppet-heroines, for whom the showman contrives to dialogue without ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more than ever. A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride made the acknowledgment of possible professional ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accounts they have given of these trials? It must, however, be confessed, that many distinguished persons, both in the direction and command of our fleets, have exerted themselves on these occasions with a judicious and dispassionate examination, becoming the interesting nature of the enquiry: But the wonder is, that any one should have been found so irrational as to act a contrary part, in despite of the strongest dictates of prudence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... in Ryder Street—Eric tried to settle in his mind how much she had seen and how much she had imagined. There was assuredly this much change in him, that to-night Agnes was not even waking him to dispassionate interest; he had no attention to spare her. And yet it was not that Barbara had captured his mind; she was nothing but an elf of mischief, dancing in the sunshine backwards and forwards across his path, pelting him with flowers, vanishing and ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the subject of these volumes makes a remark to her publisher which is at least as relevant now as it was then. Can nothing be done, she asks, by dispassionate criticism towards the reform of our national habits in the matter of literary biography? 'Is it anything short of odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk should be raked, and every insignificant memorandum which he never meant for the public be printed for the gossiping amusement ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley |
