"Impersonality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divinest force of life, was making its way into Kendal's nature. But it was making its way against antagonistic forces of habit, tradition, self-restraint,—it found a hundred other interests in possession;—it had a strange impersonality and timidity of nature to fight with. Kendal had been accustomed to live in other men's lives. Was he only just ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has had time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its work, and it has shrived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into its niche, that I might obviate for my poor old comrade the tragic impersonality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as it were—to see it lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and solemnity that are its due. I am afraid that if I dissevered myself too quickly, I should yield ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... be necessary to explain this system with a little detail. It has been already stated that Averroes was a noted commentator on Aristotle in the twelfth century. The two ground principles of his philosophy were, the eternity of matter and the impersonality of mind. On this high subject there can be only two theories; the one theistic, which declares that God is free, a personal first Cause, and the Creator of matter, and that other minds are free and personal; the other pantheistic, which asserts that matter ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... God, is inwardly untrue. This principle is also unchristian. Christianity does not teach us to fear our senses, but to watch over them, use them and honor them; for "the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." Christianity admits no death, not even that of the body—no impersonality. Only a rude, broken covering of earth remains behind. "Destroy this temple," said Christ, "and in three days I will build it up again." Hence let us take care not to lay unnatural restraint upon our bodies, lest at the same time we destroy ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... see if she was to say more, and when he found she had really finished, he arose, took his hat, said faintly, 'I thank you.' and left the room. He afterwards said to Mr. ——, 'I never shall speak ill of her. She has done me good.' And this was the greater triumph, for this man had no theories of impersonality, and was the most egotistical and irritable of self-lovers, and was so unveracious, that one had to hope in charity that his organ ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... his name was written into the history of his generation. Through a burning sea of trouble, of intellectual disquiet and mental agony, he had emerged strengthened at every point. Love had fulfilled upon him its great office. He was humanized. The impersonality, which is the student's bane, which deepens into misanthropy, cynicism, and pessimism, yielded before it. The voices of his own children became dearer to him than the written thoughts of dead men. It was the reassertion of nature, and it was well for him. So was he saved, so was ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... impersonality conceit—we have produced also mock-modesty; and because, as a people, we have little appreciation of the arts, hence little knowledge, hence no standard by which to judge, we continually mistake the one form of modesty for the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... of a person who, in stating obvious facts, provides no approach to enlightening comment upon them. And there was in her manner the merest gracious impersonality. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... With Wyatt and Surrey English poetry became at a bound the most personal (and in a rather bad but unavoidable word) the most "introspective" in Europe. There had of course been love poetry before, but its convention had been a convention of impersonality. It now became exactly the reverse. The lover sang less his joys than his sorrows, and he tried to express those sorrows and their effect on him in the most personal way he could. Although allegory still retained ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... buddhistic pessimism that is vexed and wearied with the vain motions of this human world, and longs for the rest of Nirvana; and this vexation and weariness frequently rise to a poignant intensity. However far he may then be thought to be from the impassive impersonality of his doctrine, there is but one opinion as to his rare command of form and the exquisite perfection of his art, which have won for him the ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... views of the "inspired state." Its essential characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.—Its relations to unconscious activity.—Resemblances to hypermnesia, the initial state of alcoholic intoxication and somnambulism on waking.—Disagreements concerning the ultimate nature of unconsciousness: two hypotheses.—The "inspired ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... that it may be feared, needs to be embodied in the personality of a god. Most of their gods inspire no fear at all in the souls of the Brahmans; but there is one of whom they have a dread, which is all the greater for being illogical. Prajapati is a vast impersonality, too remote and abstract to inspire the soul with either fear or love. The other gods—Indra, Agni, Soma, Varuna, Vishnu, and the rest—are his offspring, and are moved like puppets by the machinery of the ritual of sacrifice created by him. However much they may seem to differ one from ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... the Hindus was founded on the simple worship of Nature. But the Pantheism of this age was gradually superseded by the worship of the one Brahm, from which, according to this belief, the soul emanated, and to which it seeks to return. Brahm is an impersonality, the sum of all nature, the germ of all that is. Existence has no purpose, the world is wholly evil, and all good persons should desire to be taken out of it and to return to Brahm. This end is to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... he would strive, defensively, to divest himself of himself and be but as one of millions of the ant-like creatures that scurry over the earth's face, of no more significance to himself than were the myriad others. He could just achieve this state of impersonality while he lay in bed. But when he got up, stood on the floor, looked at the world no longer from beyond its rim but from within its coils, he became again enmeshed, a creature crying "I, I, I," a child wanting Pears' soap and never getting ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... to be presumed that the editor and Mr. Hamlin mutually kept to their tacit agreement to respect the impersonality of the poetess, for during the next three months the subject was seldom alluded to by either. Yet in that period White Violet had sent two other contributions, and on each occasion Mr. Hamlin had insisted upon increasing the honorarium to the amount of his former gift. In vain ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... overpersuaded. In truth, he was bursting with music and thinking much more of his music than of the text. The text was a new bed into which to let loose the flood of his passions. He was as far as possible from the state of abnegation and intelligent impersonality proper to musical translation of a poetic work. He was thinking only of himself and not at all of the work. He never thought of adapting himself to it. He was under an illusion: he saw in the poem something absolutely different from what was actually in it—just as when he was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Jane Austen be reproached with having been too much influenced by the prejudices of the somewhat narrow and somewhat vulgarly aristocratic, or rather plutocratic, society in which she lived. Her irony and her complete dramatic impersonality render it difficult to see how far this goes; but certainly it goes further than we could wish. Decidedly she believes in gentility, and in its intimate connection with affluence and good family; in its incompatibility with any but ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... more faded to impersonality, as he rejoined, just a shade on the defensive: "If it's merely our Americanism you enjoyed—I've no doubt we can give you all ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... impersonal verbs must ever be used in preference to active or passive. So I am told, lays him open to the dangerous questions, Who told you? or, By whom were you informed? Then he is forced into the imprudence of giving up his authorities; whereas he is safe in the impersonality of So it is said, or So it ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... says that the object of this verse is to inculcate the Impersonality of God. God is at the Root of all things, i.e., (as the commentator supposes according to the teaching of the Vedanta philosophy). He exists in His own unmodified nature, even as pure Chit. Both Vidya (Knowledge) and Avidya (Ignorance or illusion) exist in Him. In consequence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the appeal which this impersonality of the scientific attitude makes to a certain magnanimity of temper, I believe it to be shallow, and I can now state my reason in comparatively few words. That reason is that, so long as we deal with the cosmic ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... argues that no one else has cared much about her salvation) we should not be disqualified for guardianship on the sole ground that we are not related? In such a case the relatives are the last people with whom she would be safe. An order may go forth from that nebulous and distant Impersonality, the British Government, to the effect that a certain child is not to be dedicated to gods during her minority. But far away in their villages the people smile at a simplicity which can imagine that commands can eventually affect ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... that one, that he was absent through illness during that last scene of his Teacher's life. I do not know; it has been thought that may have been merely a pretense, an artistic convention, to give a heightened value of impersonality to his marvelous prose:—for it was he who wrote down the account of the death of Socrates for us: that tragedy so transcendent in its beauty and lofty calm. But this much is certain: that day he was born again: became, from a gilded youth of Athens, an eternal luminary in the heavens, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... best described, perhaps, by saying that the tale seems to have impersonality. Any charm of the story-tellers of the ages has entered into the body of the tale, which has become an objective presentment of a reality that concentrates on itself and keeps personality out of sight. The character of the tellers is shown ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready |
