"Impassibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to speak of some business in which his interest is involved, he redoubles his gestures in proportion as he knows the necessity of convincing those who hear him, and fears their impassibility. If any rancorous idea agitate him in the course of his narrative; if he endeavour to infuse into his auditors sentiments of jealousy, vengeance, or any violent passion, his features become exaggerated, and the vivacity of his glances, and the contraction of his lips, show ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... complete indifference during the reading of the sonnet; he was unfamiliar as yet with the disconcerting impassibility of the professional critic, wearied by much reading of poetry, prose, and plays. Lucien was accustomed to applause. He choked down his disappointment and read another, a favorite with Mme. de Bargeton and with some of his friends in the Rue ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... palpitation, chattering of the teeth; anger a violent clenching of the fists. Baudouin advises that particular suggestions in these cases should be directed rather against the motor expression than against the psychic cause, that our aim should be to cultivate a state of physical impassibility. But since a positive suggestion possesses greater force than a negative, it would seem better to attack simultaneously both the cause and the effect. Instead of anger, suggest that you will feel sympathy, patience, good-humour, and consequently that your ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... an opera-singer's life, Hilda walked serenely. She knew there were disagreeable things in the world but refused herself even the thought of them. It was not the barrier of innocence but rather a selection of certain aspects of life that she fancied, and an absolute impassibility in the presence of evil. Then her ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... with increasing terror that pale face, framed with black hair and whiskers, the only expression of which was icy impassibility. Then she suddenly cried, "Oh, no, no!" rising and retreating to the very wall. "No, no! it is an infernal apparition! It is not he! Help, help!" screamed she, turning towards the wall, as if she would tear an opening with ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... looked narrowly at the Count, who, feeling himself under inquisition as to his politics, entrenched himself in Italian impassibility. ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... a foreigner, a German to the very bones. His grave taciturnity, his slow and penetrating mind, were not Spanish, they were Flemish. The impassibility with which he received the reverses which ruined the nation was that of a foreigner who was bound by no ties of affection to the country. 'It is better to reign over corpses than over heretics,' he said, and corpses the Spaniards really were, condemned not ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... urged on her horse till his rapid trotting brake up the aves and oras into fragments that man might scarce hear and keep him sober. I warrant I was well pleased, for all my weariness, when we rade in at Micklebar of York; and so, I warrant, was Dame Elizabeth, for all her impassibility. We tarried not long at York, for, hearing that the Scots came on, the Queen removed to Nottingham for safer keeping. And ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... without, it was nothing compared with what I felt as I looked at him upon whom our destiny was then hanging. I had ample time to scan his features and canvass their every lineament. Never before did I look upon such perfect impassibility; the cold, determined expression was crossed by no show of passion or impatience. All was rigid and motionless, and whatever might have been the workings of the spirit within, certainly no external sign betrayed them; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever |
