"Impassivity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wickersham had trouble with his tongue. And while she waited, puzzled and frowning, the man gave up an attempt at his usual nicety of phrase and blurted out all that which had been many days hidden behind his impassivity. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... admirably with the theory of impassivity in literature, so much in vogue when Maupassant became known. But despite that theory he is, if one understands him, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... stir. He was a match for any Indian in impassivity, and every nerve rested while he thus retained complete command over his body. He could see from his position the bushes beyond the opening, and, above them, a broad belt of black sky. He rejoiced again that they had found ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Empire,' he said hotly, 'to a lot of ignorant women just because a few of 'em have odious manners and violent tongues!' The sight of Stonor's cool impassivity calmed him somewhat. He went on more temperately. 'Every sane person sees that the only trouble with England to-day is that too many ignorant people have ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... in the evening Diana, more nettled with Carew's impassivity than she would have cared to own, contrived to get a little apart from the others with her uncle, and in her frank, engaging way explained to him the rapaciousness of certain mining companies and her own promise on behalf of the donkeys. Mr. Pym regretted that he could not immediately grant her ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... and sallow, was scattered over with white moles, or rather, warts, one of which, on her eyelid, caused it to droop over her eye and to blink sometimes, suddenly. She had a short, indefinite nose and long, large lips firmly folded. With its updrawn hair and impassivity her face recalled that of a Chinese image; but more than of anything else she gave Gregory the impression, vaguely and incongruously tragic, of an old shipwrecked piece of oaken timber, washed up, finally, out of reach of the waves, on some high, lonely beach; battered, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in the car, a model of patient impassivity, but he turned a hungry eye on his master as he came ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... of the AMBASSADOR and the impassivity of the NUBIAN grow ominous. The two priests hang over the tripod. They cast herbs upon it. They pass their hands over it. The herbs begin to smoulder. A smoke goes up. The priests bend over the smoke. Presently they step ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... child George—aged nine and seeming more like seven—offered an enigma surpassing in solemnity that of death. This was Hilda's. This was hers, who had left him a virgin. With a singular thrilled impassivity he imagined, not bitterly, the history of Hilda. She who was his by word and by kiss, had given her mortal frame to the unknown Cannon—yielded it. She had conceived. At some moment when he, Edwin, was alive and suffering, she had conceived. She had ceased to be a virgin. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... In one word, there was no light behind these faces, no indication of an incomprehensible Power greater than themselves, no ideal higher than that generated by the common sense of the multitude. In short, they seemed to him to have all the impassivity of the Christian atmosphere, with none ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... piece of criticism was, according to trustworthy history, the meanest, most useless, and most despicable man of his set; yet he could venture to assume haughty airs towards a man whose shoes he was not fit to black, and he could assume those airs on the strength of his slangy impassivity—his "good form." When we remember that this same fictitious indifference characterized the typical grand seigneur of old France, and when we also remember that indifference may be rapidly transformed into insolence, and insolence ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... way for Onawata to repay the white man's kindness to his son," said Cameron. The contemptuous voice pierced the Indian's armor of impassivity. Cameron caught the swift quiver in the face that told that his stab had reached the quick. There is nothing in the Indian's catalogue of crimes so base as the sin ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... young. She had thrust her bare feet into white slippers without heels, and now she drew up her legs lightly and easily and crossed them under her, assuming an Eastern attitude and the expression of supreme impassivity which suits it. A long mirror was just opposite to her. She swayed to ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... one who heard it. It fairly took Mr. Ricardo's breath away. Wethermill stepped forward with a cry of revolt. The Commissaire exclaimed, admiringly, "But here is an idea!" Even Hanaud sat back in his chair, though his expression lost nothing of its impassivity, and his eyes never moved from ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... tall man like both his parents, with a face and slow gait extraordinarily like his mother's, and dressed in the same kind of rich splendour, with a short silver-clasped travelling cloak, crimson hose, and plumed felt cap; and his face with its pointed black beard had something of the same steady impassivity in it; he was flicking the dust from his shoulder as he came up the steps on to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... their features free. All such instances may be ranged under the grotesque; and the Hellenic ideal has nothing in common with the grotesque. It allows passion to play lightly over the surface of the individual form, losing thereby nothing of its central impassivity, its depth and repose. To all but the highest culture, the reserved faces of the gods will ever have something of insipidity. Again, in the best Greek sculpture, the archaic immobility has been thawed, its forms are in motion; but it is a motion ever kept in reserve, which ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... old Lawrence, the head Verger, in his opinion a silly old fool, should die and permit his own legitimate succession. Another ambition was that he should save enough money to buy another three cottages down in Seatown. He owned already six there. But no one observing his magnificent impassivity (he was famous for this throughout ecclesiastical Glebeshire) would have supposed that he had any thought other than those connected with ceremony. As he appeared the organ began its voluntary, the music stealing through the thick grey walls, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... before her. The words in Maggie's mind were: "You don't look at me. I'm not a human being to you at all. But I won't live with you. I'll go my own way. You can't keep me if you never speak to me nor think of me." But in some dark fashion that strange impassivity held her. Aunt Anne had ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... attitude that were beyond a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk a trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when I returned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was half surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merry days of Weimar, the repulsive vulgarity of his drunken mistress and wife, the degradation of his son, and has agreed only to contemplate the Olympian majesty of Weimar. Whether the repose and sanity of Goethe were unmixed virtues, or whether they were partly the result of indifference, of impassivity or selfishness, is another question. Certain it is that there is no other trait in Goethe's personality which has done more to raise him in the esteem of posterity. He has proved to the world that internal discord and distraction ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... as bared steel came the answer. Monck's impassivity was gone. His face was darkly passionate, his whole bearing that of a man relentlessly set upon obtaining the mastery. "But if you imagine her safety can be secured without a sacrifice, you are wrong. Do ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell |
