"Impersonal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little of one another; you will be shooting most of the time," she said—with the very faintest hint of challenge—too delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry. But the germ of it ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... proportionately disappointed. An emotional friendship she had not desired; her scheme had been to pass with her visitor as a placid creature with a good deal of leisure which she was disposed to devote to profitable conversation of an impersonal sort. She liked him extremely, she felt in him the living force of something to which, when she made up her girlish mind that a needy nobleman was the ripest fruit of time, she had done too scant justice. They went through the little gate in the garden-wall and approached ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... through the air? Indistinguishable the particle was in the cloud whence it came; indistinguishable it will become again in the ocean whither it is bound. Its personality is but its passing phase from a vast impersonal on the one hand to an equally vast impersonal on the other. Thus seers preached in the past; so modern science is hinting to-day. With us the idea seems the bitter fruit of material philosophy; by them it was looked upon as ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... means of doubtful understanding, could ever do. She heard him talked about in a fashion that she found revolting. Her old-time comrade was as much a man as ever, despite his injuries, as sane in all his outlook, as whimsical and impersonal in his fun. She therefore resented the universal attitude of regarding him as a crushed archangel, a candidate for repeated and unlimited doses of mental gruel. If ever a man needed solid social nutriment, it was this ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy in his voice. If only Claude would be ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Arian limitation of it to the sphere of time. Nor had Marcellus escaped the difficulties of Arius. If, for example, the idea of an eternal Son is polytheistic, nothing is gained by transferring the eternity to an impersonal Word. If the generation of the Son is materializing, so also is the coming forth of the Word. If the work of creation is unworthy of God, it may as well be delegated to a created Son as to a transitory Word. So far Athanasius. Indeed, to ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... trying to abolish slavery in America or to throw off Hapsburg oppression in Italy. At any rate, I was heartily ashamed of my meager notion of patriotism, and I came out of the room exhilarated with the consciousness that impersonal and international relations are actual facts and not mere phrases. I was filled with pride that I knew a man who held converse with great minds and who really sorrowed and rejoiced over happenings across the sea. I never recall those early conversations ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... It is imprudent to predict a permanent place for even the best of Alice Carey's gentle songs; but Phoebe's utterance may very possibly be quoted, from her unpretending station as adviser and alleviator of every-day life, after her name shall be forgotten and her religion shall have become impersonal. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... seemed invincibly ignorant of any of the little artifices whereby women contrive to palliate their defects and even to turn them into graces. Her dress never seemed a part of her; all her clothes had an impersonal air, as though they had belonged to someone else and been borrowed in an emergency that had somehow become chronic. She was conscious enough of her deficiencies to try to amend them by rash imitations of the most ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... lust of battle, but I don't for my part experience anything like it, though gunners tell me they do, which is natural. One feels one is taking part in a game of skill at a dignified distance, and any feeling of hostility is very impersonal and detached, even when concrete signs of an enemy's ill-will are paying us noisy visits. The fact is—and I fancy this applies to all sorts and conditions of private soldiers—in our life in the field, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work and love, religion and emotion, it would be a fascinating document. My only sorrow is that amateurs of whom I have spoken above will not do this; they rather turn to external and impersonal impressions, relate definite things, what they see on their travels, for instance, describing just the things which anyone can see. They tend to indulge in the melancholy labour of translation, or employ customary, familiar forms, such as the novel or the play. If only they would ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... own private, personal property, and the thing dearest to him in the world, after his daughter Lucille. He prided himself on the fact that his hotel was not like other New York hotels, which were run by impersonal companies and shareholders and boards of directors, and consequently lacked the paternal touch which made the Cosmopolis what it was. At other hotels things went wrong, and clients complained. At the Cosmopolis things never went wrong, because ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... or mode of operation. The Orthodox attribute to God a strictly moral, which is a specific method of action, addressed to purely personal or subjective issues; their opponents, a strictly physical, which is a universal method, addressed to purely impersonal and objective issues. The one party assigns to God a finite personality, or one limited by Nature; the other, an indefinite personality, as identified with natural law. The Orthodox, of course, maintain that God's creative action was universal, inasmuch as it contemplated only cosmical issues; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to overestimate the value of these benefactions to men of talent and genius. Where would Wordsworth have been, what could he have done, without the gift bestowed upon him by Raisley Calvert! In America such assistance is oftener given in the more impersonal way of endowment of chairs or creating of scholarships. No method less personal or more elevating for the development of the scholar and man of genius ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... extremely plain and tidy. It was impersonal, neutral, like the room in a hotel. And yet he had spent in it twelve years of his life. Most people collect no end of trifles during such a period; presents, little superfluous nothings, ornaments. Not a single engraving, not a supplement to an illustrated ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... killing the aged and infirm, had died out, but the symbol of them remained. To explain the symbol a myth was created, which kept sufficiently near to the original idea as to retain evidence of its close connection with the descent of property; and thus was launched the dateless, impersonal, unlocalised story which Mr. Campbell has given as a specimen of vagrant traditions, which "must have been invented after agriculture and fixed habitations, after laws of property and inheritance; but it may ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... said Mr. Philip, which was a sure sign that he was upset, for in business he reckoned to say "Yes, yes." The two men began by exchange of politenesses about Mr. Frank Gibson, to whom they referred in the impersonal way of business conversations as though he were some well-known brand of integrity, and then proceeded to divest the property in Rio de Janeiro of all interest in a like manner. It was a house, it appeared, and was at present let to an American named Capel on a five years' lease, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... turned from their course by persuasion and entreaty as by threats and intimidation. The distinction between the two conflicting views of the universe turns on their answer to the crucial question, Are the forces which govern the world conscious and personal, or unconscious and impersonal? Religion, as a conciliation of the superhuman powers, assumes the former member of the alternative. For all conciliation implies that the being conciliated is a conscious or personal agent, that his conduct is in some measure uncertain, and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... jeune fille is, but I do know——" He sprang up. He did not look at her. He paraded back and forth, three steps to the right, three to the left, his hands in his pockets, his voice impersonal. "I know you're the finest person I ever met. You're the kind—I knew there must be people like you, because I knew the Joneses. They're the only friends I've got that have, oh, I suppose it's what they ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... had returned from their deliberate excursion about the gymnasium just in time to meet halfway that utterly impersonal scrutiny. For a long moment or two that mutual inspection endured; then the boy's lips moved—open with a smile that was far graver than his gravity had been—and he started slowly across the floor toward the table. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Supernatural, so the gift of Religion to Science is the demonstration of the supernaturalness of the Natural. Thus, as the Supernatural becomes slowly Natural, will also the Natural become slowly Supernatural, until in the impersonal authority of Law men everywhere ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... lives to himself, and that his acts evidently affect the whole of society. Finally, training in the social sciences will insure the development of true moral freedom in our social life, for these sciences involve a searching but impersonal criticism of social institutions and public policies. Now the very breath of life of a free society is intelligent public criticism of its institutions and policies. Without this, there can be no change, no progress. But intelligent criticism implies scientific ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... forms of matter—are neither deities themselves, nor their embodiments and expressions, nor the work of conflicting deities. From it we learn that the universe is not self-existent, nor even (as the pantheist thinks of it) the expression of one vague, impersonal and unconscious, but all-pervading influence. It was not self-made; it did not exist from all eternity. It is not God, for ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... one impersonal glance, saw that she had destroyed him utterly, relented, and graciously acquiesced. When they left the office Matt Peasley was stepping high, like a ten-time winner, for he had suddenly made the discovery that life ashore was a wonderful, wonderful thing. There ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... copying,—there remains as his most individual quality a longing.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} And this is what the dissatisfied of all kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little of a personality, too little of a central figure.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} The "impersonal," those who are not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the musician of a species of dissatisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we find the female Wagnerite—just as we find Wagner himself fifty paces ahead of Brahms.—The female Wagnerite is a more definite, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... through everything, the retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Aisne, the great rush north, and the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on the 17th of March. I listened, fascinated, to his tale, which he told with a true soldier's impersonal modesty. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... others, we see Him still fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain that His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to pierce His heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is not a general, impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a person. He no doubt felt a special love for this thief who appealed to Him from the cross by His side. In the whole course of His life our Lord had shown His oneness with us in that He loved special people in a special way. He ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... it with an impersonal tone as if there were complete detachment between herself as an observer and as a guest ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... far as your eyes are concerned, between you and me. Make the best instead of the worst of your strange position here. It offers you a new sensation to amuse you while you are ill. You have a nurse who is an impersonal creature—a shadow among shadows; a voice to speak to you, and a hand to help you, and nothing more. Enough of myself!" she exclaimed, rising and changing her tone. "What can I do to amuse you?" She considered a little. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... insinuating reptile. One speaks, the other rejoins, and the third fills up the chasm of interest. The plot thickens, the passions are displayed, and the tragedy hastens to its end. Then is heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the cool (the wind) of the garden, the impersonal presence of Jehovah is, as it were, felt in the passing breeze, and a shadow falls upon the earth,—but such a shadow as their own patient toil may dissipate, and beyond the confines of which their hope, which has now taken the place of enjoyment, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the cause for which he was fighting. That must suffice; it must take the place of wife and love. Cold, impersonal, inadequate as it seemed now, he knew that in the end it would suffice to fill great part of that inner heart which she had occupied. He turned to it with the kindling affection which a man ever has for the resource that is ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... been welcome enough. But this impersonal method of knocking the ground from under his feet goaded him to exasperation. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing that he had wrought jealousy or friction between husband and wife. Desmond had practically ignored his existence. There lay the sting that roused all the devil in Kresney; ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Unnefer ("Hare God"). These are the lines upon which investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry: the Lingam and the Yoni are now described as "mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity" (Prof. Monier Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. iii. part ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... suspicion of policy has surrounded the tract must be ascribed to the well-intentioned letter of the Earl of Berkeley above quoted; and the Earl would not have written thus had he felt Swift's motive to be any other than a purely impersonal one. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... a smile of apprehension which plainly amused him. Beatrice was frankly impersonal in her attitude; he represented a new species of the genus man, and she, too, evidently regarded him in the light of a strange animal, viewed ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and very poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic. Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go with anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house vigilantly guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits over her lovely face, in her half-closed eyes, always smiling with some heady, blissful, meek, bashful and unseemly smile, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... which the traveller in distress may transmit his appeal. I fill it with incoherent sounds, and sounds more incoherent yet come back to me. I gather at last their meaning; they appear to constitute a somewhat stern inquiry. A hollow impersonal voice wishes to know what I want, and the very question paralyses me. I want everything—yet I want nothing—nothing this hard impersonality can give! I want my little corner of Paris; I want the rich, the deep, the dark Old World; I want to be out of this horrible place. Yet I can't confide ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... thoroughly honest craftsman, he felt that he ought to keep his thoughts to himself, until he knew how to express them. After proving it on an impersonal romance, he was then ready to speak his mind. No poet has spoken ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... one another, each other, to one another, to each other; equivalent to the passive in English, or to the impersonal construction 'there ...'. ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... ones; the result is the same. Take the mythic cosmogonies of ancient Greece, Scandinavia, and India, and the geologies and astronomies of the present day, and compare their pages, changing things personal into things impersonal. The expulsion and banishment of the old shapeless mundane deities by a new and more beautiful race of gods, the cosmical divinities, the powers and rulers of an ordered world, are intelligible enough when translated into our modern geological nomenclature. The leaves of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... meeting. The dinner, prefaced inauspiciously, failed to remove the awkwardness, since the reticence under which Drake and Mallinson laboured, gradually spread and enveloped Conway. A forced conversation of a curiously impersonal sort dragged from course to course. Absolute strangers would have exhibited less restraint; for the ghost of an old comradeship made the fourth at the feast and prated to them in exiguous voice of paths that had diverged. Drake noticed, besides, an undercurrent of ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... thing goes on, but whether their outlook be wide or narrow, personal or impersonal, they work in their way and something is ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... supplies its own answer. It will be obvious to every one who considers that the drafting of statutes and the formulating of legal decisions is almost as impersonal a procedure as that of drawing up the rules to govern a game; and it offers hardly more opportunity for discriminating between man ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... depredation and riot should be as far as possible checked. Murder and pillage are comparatively infrequent, massacre is seldom heard of, and torture is almost or quite as extinct as cannibalism. The mass of citizens escape physical suffering, the angry emotions are so directed upon impersonal objects as to acquire a strong ethical value, and the intervals of strife may find individual soldiers of hostile armies exchanging kindly services. Members of a complex industrial society, without direct experience ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... a steady mechanical creep which had in it an impersonal quality—the movement of the wave, or of the breeze, or of the cloud. He followed his directions literally, without an inquiring gaze at anything. It could have been seen that the boy's ideas of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... different result, even through any deep feeling in the matter; but while she owned, with her half-sad, half-comical consciousness, that she had been tacitly claiming and expecting too much, she softly pitied herself, with a kind of impersonal compassion, as if it wore some other girl whose pretty dream had been broken. Its ruin involved the loss of another ideal; for she was aware that there had been gradually rising in her mind an image of Boston, different alike from the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... of melancholy, like all those of her type whose emotional natures are an enchanted mirror, reflecting visions that have no place in reality. We talked about blondes and brunettes, tall men and short men, our favourite man's name; and gradually the impersonal became personal, the ideal took form. Her voice, like a broken lute that might have given sweet sounds, related the story. It was inevitable that she should love a dreamer like herself. Nature had imbued her with a hopeless yearning. She slipped a gold locket from a chain ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... laughing protests of their parents. Flood Rawley called her the Pied Piper of Jansen, and indeed she had a voice that fluted and piped, and yet had so whimsical a note, that the hardest faces softened at the sound of it; and she did not keep its best notes for the few. She was impartial, almost impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and every man was her friend—and nothing more. She had never had an accepted lover since the day her Playmates left her. Every man except one had given up hope that he might win her; and though he had been gone from Jansen for two years, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... self, tend to make all my personal life a matter of doubt and uncertainty. I am afraid of the subjective life, and recoil from every enterprise, demand, or promise which may oblige me to realize myself; I feel a terror of action, and am only at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective life of thought. The reason seems to be timidity, and the timidity springs from the excessive development of the reflective power which has almost destroyed in me all spontaneity, impulse, and instinct, and therefore all boldness and confidence. Whenever I am forced ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surprised into silence. Old Wetherbee was sometimes given to half-audible and impersonal grumblings, but this was the first time he had ever gone so far as to voice a specific objection to an ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... came into the world with Christmas, perhaps because he, more than any other, has tried to think and to live Christianity. When once you have got this vital truth into your mind, the whole universe is luminously filled with the possibilities of impersonal, unselfish happiness. The joy of living is suddenly expanded to the dimensions of humanity, and you can go on taking your pleasure as long as there is one unfriended soul and body in ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Nowadays young people cannot understand how anyone could ever have taken Meyerbeer's influence seriously. Those who remember how his reputation stood half a century ago, and who realize what a nothoroughfare the path he opened proved to be, even to himself, know how inevitable and how impersonal Wagner's attack was. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... high-pitched but sonorous. It was the voice of little Willy Eddy's German wife, and it came from a pair of strong lungs in a well-developed chest, and was actuated by a strong and indignant spirit. Arthur Carroll, listening to her, was conscious of an absurdly impersonal sentiment of something like admiration. The young woman was really in a manner superb. The occasion was trivial, even ignoble. Carroll felt contemptuous both for her and for himself, and yet she dignified it to a degree. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... impossible to sustain such a serious view of the very special service to which I was foresworn: the more I thought of it, in one sense, the less in another, until my only chance was to go forward with grim humour in the spirit of impersonal curiosity which that attitude induces. In a word, and the cant one which yet happens to express my state of mind to a nicety, I had already "weakened" on the whole business which I had been in such ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... the comfort she dispenses is with men from the earliest hour of day, and never leaves them. Wherever he turns, the individual realises only too clearly his own shortcomings, his insufficiency and his incompetence; what courage would he have left were he not previously rendered impersonal by this consecration! The greatest of all torments harassing him, the conflicting beliefs and opinions among men, the unreliability of these beliefs and opinions, and the unequal character of men's abilities—all these things make him hanker after art. We cannot be happy so long as everything ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... hands behind her, glancing at him, unable to see anything else. And he was scarcely conscious but of her. His eyes were still strained and staring, and as they followed the girl, when, long-limbed and languid, she moved away, it was as if he saw in her something impersonal, the female, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... this breath which she had felt pass, this broad current of sympathy, that he had introduced naturally into his exact scientific lesson. He did not seem to be moved; he preserved the impersonal and correct attitude of the demonstrator, but within him what tender suffering, what a fever of devotion, what a giving up of his whole being to the happiness of others? His entire work, constructed with such mathematical precision, was steeped in this fraternal suffering, even in its most cruel ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... replied unhesitatingly. "But why am I going to live with you? Sieur Hugh isn't dead, too, is he?"—with impersonal interest. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... but by means of the bold, broad touches necessary for their effective presentation on a canvas so large and so crowded. Such figures are, indeed, but the component features of one great form, and their actions only so many modes of one collective impersonal character,—that of the Parisian Society of Imperial and Democratic France; a character everywhere present and busy throughout the story, of which it is the real hero or heroine. This society was doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as being ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a polite recognition of the newest arrival. A bit flustered by the calmly impersonal scrutiny with which her greeting was received, she addressed Miss ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... suppose," asked his companion in an impersonal tone, "that it was really a hard thing for Dickie to do—to give it ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... evidently not trust himself to discuss the matter further. He rose precipitately with an outraged, impersonal bow, and left the table, abandoning his biscuit and cheese, his half finished bottle of Rudesheimer and the figs that were to follow, with the indifference of ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a condition of that old, secure society which we have not yet lived long enough to have known, and which we very probably never shall know. Such civilization as we have will continue to be public and impersonal, like our politics, and our society in its specific events will remain within walls. It could not manifest itself outside without being questioned, challenged, denied; and upon reflection there might appear reasons why it is ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... mysteries; if he is lightly said to be Early Victorian, it is not because he was typical of his age, but because he contributed so much to make it what it was. While Browning lived an eager personal life, full of observation, zest, and passion, Tennyson abode in more impersonal thoughts. In the dawn of science, when there was a danger of life becoming over-materialised, contented with the first steps of swiftly apprehended knowledge, and with solutions which were no solutions at all, but only the perception of laws, Tennyson was the man of all others who saw ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gave a few lucid directions in the quiet impersonal voice of a man in a trance. Razumov made ready without a word of answer. As he was leaving the room the voice on the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... isn't a brute," Lindsay went on with most impersonal solicitude, "and can support her. I suppose there isn't any way one could do anything for her. I heard a story only yesterday about a girl changing her mind on the way out. By Jove, I didn't suppose ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... night. I grew so absorbed in Eleanore and in all that was waiting just ahead, that it was hard not to shut out everything else, most of all impersonal things. It was hard to write, and for days I wrote nothing. I remember only intimate talks. Everyone I talked to seemed to ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... oecumenical^; transcendental; prevalent, prevailing, rife, epidemic, besetting; all over, covered with. Pan-American, Anglican^, Pan-Hellenic, Pan-Germanic, slavic; panharmonic^. every, all; unspecified, impersonal. customary &c (habitual) 613. Adv. whatever, whatsoever; to a man, one and all. generally &c adj.; always, for better for worse; in general, generally speaking; speaking generally; for the most part; in the long run &c (on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... we represented. This arrangement secured us against personal rivalry, kept up a tremendous interest in first-class cricket and enabled matches to continue, if necessary, for weeks at a time. It encouraged, too, a fair, impersonal and unprejudiced view of ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of handkerchiefs he bought—silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me the real thing or nothing, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Pantheism!" we ought to recollect that for Eckhart the being of God is quite different from His personality. Eckhart never taught that the Persons of the Holy Trinity become, after the mystical Union, the "Form" of the human soul. It is the impersonal light of the divine nature which transforms our nature; human personality is neither lost nor converted into divine personality. Moreover, the divine spark at the centre of the soul is not the soul nor the personality. "The soul," he says in one place, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... individual personality is not called out. With the exhaustion of the means in the attainment of perfection a new stage is reached, in which individual expression is prominent, and seems to take the place of the scientific impersonal interest which aimed at nothing but beauty: so that the chief distinction between early and late art is that the former is impersonal, the ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... away from Pearce still more amazed. Some strange, deep undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her situation? What was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the bandit leader? Was there no honor among evil men banded together for evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate and faithlessness ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when placed in the left armhole of one's vest. He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... that I never could remember whether it was George II. or James II. who was so fond of that particular story, and now he regards me with politely-draped dislike. I'll do my best for you, if the opportunity arises, but it will have to be in a roundabout, impersonal manner." ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... No premisses, no arguments therefore, can so accommodate this truth to us as not to leave the belief in it an act of mental ascent and trust, of faith as distinguished from sight. Divest reason of its trust, and the universe stops at the impersonal stage—there is no God; and yet, if the first step in religion is the greatest, how is it that the freest and boldest speculator rarely declines it? How is it that the most mysterious of all truths is a universally accepted one? What is it which guards this ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... is little worthy to be countenanced, though often used by Dryden, Pope, Addison, and other good writers. Our lexicographers call it an impersonal verb, because, being compounded with an objective, it cannot have a nominative expressed. It is nearly equivalent to the adverb apparently; and if impersonal, it is also defective; for it has no participles, no "methinking," and no participial construction of "methought;" though Webster's American Dictionary, whether quarto or octavo, absurdly suggests that the latter word may be used as a participle. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... task in the little study in as impersonal a manner as a true father confessor. "You are twenty-six and growing set in your ways," she would mentally accuse—"always wanting a certain table at the cafe and a certain waitress. Old Maid! Must have your little French book to read away at as you munch your ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... real pang of compunction. He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost its heaviness. A dull flush coloured his cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as if she had been convicted of treachery. It was his silence, the curious look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him something much deeper than mere disapproval—something which echoed within herself. She walked quickly past him and escaped. She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed. He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... impress on you, from the beginning, that odd sort of optimism which has ruled all the people about me, even under the most trying episodes of the war. Up to now, the hatred of the Germans has been, in a certain sense, impersonal. It has been a racial hatred of a natural foe, an accepted evil, just as the uncalled-for war was. It had wrought a strange, unexpected, altogether remarkable change in the French people. Their faces had become more serious, their bearing more heroic, their laughter ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... with his reserve, lent him the false attitude of a rather cold, self-centered man, discouraging suggestions at first only to adopt them later in the most inexplicable fashion, and conferring favors in a ready-made impersonal manner which destroyed utterly their quality as favors. In reality his heart hungered for the affection which this false attitude generally repelled. He threw the wet blanket of doubt over warm young enthusiasms because his mind worked with a certain deliberateness ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... is so," said Tarling quietly. "But my interest in the property is more or less impersonal at the moment. The manager of the ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... few passionate words came back to his memory, linked with a hundred other recollections, the desire of her eyes, of her lips raised for his, the caressing touch of her fingers. He found himself wondering, in an impersonal sort of way, that these things should so little affect him. His blood ran no less coldly, nor did his pulses beat the faster, for this ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a woman, she was beautiful, and he loved her! Do what he would, all ideal and impersonal considerations fell utterly away from him. Day by day he knew more of his own heart; day by day the philosopher grew weaker in him, and the man's claim fiercer. Before him perpetually were two figures of a most ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... keep always to impersonal subjects. He behaved just as if they were good friends out for an evening of enjoyment. When they left the theatre Christine looked brighter than he had seen her for weeks. Jimmy was profoundly grateful. He was delighted that Sangster should see her with that little flush in her ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... own comments or those of Miss ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING, the author. Because for my part, reading these, I formed the idea (entirely wrong) that the book would be in some way pretentious and affected; whereas it is the simple truth to call it the most mercilessly impersonal piece of fiction that I think I ever read. There is far too much plot for me to give you any but a suggestion of it. The story is of the lives of two sisters, Frances and Minnie; mostly (as the title implies) of Minnie. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... enough to know that such proceedings were not seemly in a man bearing the commission of an officer. But Sancho little knew how many a congressman along at the close of the war, finding himself compelled to provide some kind of living for political "heelers," or some impersonal reward for services rendered, had foisted his henchmen into the army, then being enlarged and reorganized, and Nevins was one of the results ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... placed man in nature: man is perfectly at liberty to do as he pleases; only, he must adapt himself to the law of gravitation, to the resistance of matter, to hot and cold, wet and dry, and to the other impersonal necessities by which the material universe is conditioned. The control of these natural laws, as they are called, could not advantageously be given in charge to man; even had he the brains to manage them, he could not spare the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... there were anything golden about the mountain, except its name. If we were doomed to disappointment I could then give the tale a humorous turn, easier to do in retrospect than anticipation. Now, when in blinding light of noon we pointed out, in an impersonal manner, to all who cared to see, the pyramid-field of Meroee, it seemed strange to think that no heart but Anthony's and mine beat the faster. The sun was so hot that most people, blinking dazedly, retired behind their screens ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... before he slept, the hour of his youth when he was in Mayence before, and was so care free that he had heard with impersonal joy two young American voices speaking English in the street under his window. One of them broke from the common talk with a gay burlesque ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... psychologists contemptible, they were too single-minded, too full of themselves and their passions, even when they were the most enamored of truth. Italian idealism cannot forget itself: it is not interested in the impersonal dreams of the North; it leads everything back to itself, its desires, its pride of race, and transfigures them. Consciously or unconsciously, it is always toiling for the terza Roma. It must be said that for many centuries it has not taken ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... long and tense to Mary, the wheel revolved, the ivory ball dashing wildly around until the croupier proclaimed in his calm, impersonal voice: "Rien ne va plus!" Some people reluctantly ceased their feverish staking of louis, notes, and five-franc pieces, but others dashed on money up to the last instant. The wheel slackened speed; the ball lost momentum, and, rolling down the slope, struck one ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... long before 1863, when its announcement opened the memorable year for freedom, not only had its demonstration been implored by his friends, but some of his subordinates had tried to launch its lightning with not so impersonal a sentiment. To a religious body, pressing him to verify his title of Abolitionist, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... The impersonal character of Nephthys, her artificial origin, and her derivation from Isis, have been pointed out by Maspero (Etudes de Mythologie et d'Archeologie Egyptiennes, vol. ii. pp. 362-364). The very name of the goddess, which means the lady (nibit) of the mansion ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... plainly-furnished little room, with the inevitable gilt ikon in one corner, and the samovar hissing and gurgling on the table, and the thrumming music of a balalaika orchestra coming up from the restaurant below; the next coherent thing I can remember was weeks and weeks later, discussing in an impersonal detached manner whether I was strong enough to stand the fatigue of the long ...
— When William Came • Saki
... separation. The informing Principle is One, and is marked by unity. By overcoming the senses and the selfishness within, which is the overcoming of nature, man emerges from the chrysalis of the personal and illusory, and wings himself into the glorious light of the impersonal, the region of universal Truth, out of which all ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... disconcerted by this sudden turn. The situation had become almost impersonal. "I'm sorry," she said. She wished that she could have thought of a better remark—a better one came in the night, when she was going over the whole affair—but he seemed grateful even ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... ears were as quick of hearing as they were well shaped; and if so whether he would guess what was up, and take enough impersonal interest in a pretty girl far removed from his sphere ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Augustine, Ruysbroeck, and the Sf poet Jallu'ddn Rm are perhaps the chief—who have achieved that which we might call the synthetic vision of God. These have resolved the perpetual opposition between the personal and impersonal, the transcendent and immanent, static and dynamic aspects of the Divine Nature; between the Absolute of philosophy and the "sure true Friend" of devotional religion. They have done this, not by taking these apparently incompatible concepts one after the other; but by ascending to a height ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... of ruthlessness. The selfless man, by dealing with others in the same extraordinary way in which he deals with himself, may easily under the pressure of extreme conditions become impersonal in his thinking upon duty. The morality of such a state of mind is a question for the philosopher. The historian must content himself with pointing out the only condition that redeems it—if anything redeems it The ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... shall have rather poor pickings for supper, my dear," he said apologetically. He called her "my dear" from the first; it seemed more non-committal and impersonal than the use of her name. He had not called a young lady by her first name ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... had converted it to the purposes of a dark-room, for he had been a skilful and enthusiastic amateur of photography; but that it had at some period of its history served other ends, Paul's uncanny instinct told him. A sense of chill, not physical, indeed almost impersonal, attacked him as he entered, hurricane-lantern aloft. For the poet that informed his lightest action dictated that the ray of a lantern and not the glare of a modern electric appliance should illuminate ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... thing," she laughed back. "Don't use 'you' when you are impersonal. 'You' is very personal, and your use of it just now was ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... charm of the romance is over, then they are ready for another, perhaps more fantastic than the last. But the plot is always the same: our beloved ones—shall we meet them, and how? Isn't it pitiful? Why cannot we be more impersonal? These puny, petty minds of ours! When will ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... when men not only gambled and rode and drank, but found leisure to cultivate poetry, and Greek, and music, all the fine things of life. He talked to her about such matters as had interested them, large impersonal matters, taking for granted her intelligent understanding. This flattered the girl, though she had no ambition ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... mental phrase was not so much his own as an echo from Father Leadham. In Helbeck's mind it was spoken very much as the priest had spoken it—with that strange tenderness, at once so intimate and so impersonal, which belongs to the spiritual relations of Catholicism. The girl's soul—lonely, hostile, uncared for—appealed to the charity of the believer. At the same time there was something in her defiance, her crude disapproval of his house and his faith, that stimulated ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day of frost and sun to sleep before evening" is the one intolerable misuse of life.[5] Sometimes the feeling is expressed with the vivid passion of a lyric:—"To what profit? for thou wilt not find a lover among the dead, O girl";[6] sometimes with the curiously impersonal and incomparably direct touch that is peculiar to Greek, as in the verses by Antipater of Sidon,[7] that by some delicate magic crowd into a few words the fugitive splendour of the waning year, the warm lingering days and sharp nights of autumn, and the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... catholical[obs3]; common, worldwide; , ecumenical, oecumenical[obs3]; transcendental; prevalent, prevailing, rife, epidemic, besetting; all over, covered with. Pan-American, Anglican[obs3], Pan-Hellenic, Pan-Germanic, slavic; panharmonic[obs3]. every, all; unspecified, impersonal. customary &c. (habitual) 613. Adv. whatever, whatsoever; to a man, one and all. generally &c. adj.; always, for better for worse; in general, generally speaking; speaking generally; for the most part; in the long run &c. (on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as always happens when two persons find themselves much together, became more and more personal. It is only in books that dialogues are abstract and impersonal. The Englishman told her about his family, about the set in which he moved—and he had the English frankness in setting it out unreservedly—about the life he led at Oxford, about his travels, and so on to what he meant to do in the world. Margaret in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Jack Swing was. Most likely he really was more than one person, or rather an impersonal being, worked up as a sort of shadowy puppet to act in the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fire an' het me up some coffee," he said, still in that impersonal way which was so disturbing only because it was not his way. "I've harnessed up. I'm goin' to the street. You remember where that Brahma stole her nest? I've got to have two eggs for ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... and hesitated. In the thraldom of his selfish passion for Mrs. Dall he dared not contemplate a collision with her countrymen. He would have again sought refuge in his passive, non-committal attitude, but he knew the impersonal character of Indian retribution and compensation—a sacrifice of equal value, without reference to the culpability of the victim—and he dreaded some spontaneous outbreak. To prevent the enforced expiation of the crime by some innocent ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... enhanced life; a life which, immersed in the stream of history, is yet poised on the eternal world. This life involves a complete re-direction of our desires and impulses, a transfiguration of character; and often, too, a sense of subjugation to superior guidance, of an access of impersonal strength, so overwhelming as to give many of its activities an inspirational or automatic character. We found that this life was marked by a rhythmic alternation between receptivity and activity, more complete and purposeful than the rhythm of work and rest which conditions, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... The sun was shining, the road white and dusty, the mountains of Elvira purple to the tops and there splashed with silver. When he spoke, his voice was changed. Neither now nor hereafter did he discourse of money-gold and nobility flowing from earthly kings with that impersonal exaltation with which he talked of his errand from God to link together east and west. But he drew them somehow in train from the last, hiding here I thought, an earthly weakness from himself, and the weakness so intertwined with strength ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... affairs. The soldiers loved him and they idealized him. He was to them the personification of the union cause. The day for the discussion of abstract principles had long gone by. Their ideal had ceased to be an impersonal one. All the hope, the faith, the patriotism of the soldiers centered around the personality of the president. In their eyes and thoughts, he stood for the idea of nationality, as Luther stood for religious liberty, Cromwell for parliamentary privilege, or Washington for colonial independence. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... paid scant heed to my appearance, I had been content (in a certain impersonal sort of way), had dressed in the fashion, and taken advantage of such adornments as were in favor, as much from habit as from any set design; but now, lying beside the brook with my chin propped in my hands, I began to study myself critically, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... photography capture that light? There had been a new look in her face—something different; yes, Selden agreed there had been something different. The coffee was so exquisite that he asked for a second cup: such a contrast to the watery stuff at the club! Ah, your poor bachelor with his impersonal club fare, alternating with the equally impersonal CUISINE of the dinner-party! A man who lived in lodgings missed the best part of life—he pictured the flavourless solitude of Trenor's repast, and felt a moment's compassion for the man ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... surveying life from afar, are apt to interpret historical events as the outcome of impersonal forces which shape the course of nations unknown to themselves. This is an impressive theory, but it will not bear close scrutiny. Human nature everywhere responds to the influence of personality. In Greece this response is more marked than anywhere else. No people ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... then danced, at first a little stiffly. But her mind gradually concentrated on her movements; she began to catch the impersonal working ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... space he seemed incapable of movement. At length, conscious of a warm, moist trickle on his chin, he raised one hand mechanically to his face and brought it away, dabbled with bright crimson. For a moment or two he regarded the stiff, crooked fingers and bruised knuckles in a dazed, impersonal fashion as if the hand belonged to some one else. Then he became ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... appeared, in the wake of the impersonal and exclamatory young married woman who served as a background to her vivid outline, seemed competent to impart at short notice any information required of her. She had never struck Mrs. Peyton as ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... impersonal in his tone, and he looked eery there in the moonlight, I can tell you, leaning on one arm and bleeding. Awfully good-looking chap. Built like a giant. He reminded me of a statue called the ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... rainbow on the summer hills, Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line, Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills, Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine; ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... may at one time have been the totem of savage tribes.[2] In mythology as well as in art the lion remained the riding or driving animal of the Great Mother. Their conception of the divinity was indistinct and impersonal. A goddess of the earth, called Ma or Cybele, was revered as the fecund mother of all things, the "mistress of the wild beasts"[3] that inhabit the woods. A god Attis, or Papas, was regarded as her husband, but the first place in this divine household ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... nothing could happen between her and him. He liked to have Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind—but that was all. And she had no real feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated him, as ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... developed into as perfect a means for the expression of human thought as any of the European types of speech; they are astonishingly rich in verbs which make it easy to express motion and action clearly and vividly; the impersonal, or abstract article "it" is used exactly as in European languages, and the particular prefix provided in some of the Bantu types for the class of nouns which represent abstract conceptions makes it possible to increase the vocabularies in that direction ad infinitum. The Bantu ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... and pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic alternative between comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow. Now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull, when religion for the most part is so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of honour. It has become the one eloquent, public, intrepid illusion. Illusion, I mean, when it is taken for an ultimate good or a mystical ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... particular men and groups of men, partly true but passing by exaggeration into the mythical, came the wholly mythical, or fiction; which then and always preserved the biographico-historical character. Add to which that out of the criticisms and reflections scattered through this personal literature an impersonal literature slowly emerged; the whole group of these products having as their deepest root the eulogies of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... immortality. They never quite got rid of a haunting dread that perhaps, after all, they might be nothing better than insignificant and unheeded atoms, swept hither and thither in the mighty eddies of an unseen, impersonal, mysterious agency, and destined hereafter "to be sealed ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... far-off part of Coffin, you showed enough to put me at ease by getting me to lecture you with safe impersonal figures. But he didn't mind. The fact was that now he could free-sit, face to face, alone, and talk to her like ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... experience for the lady of the lacy filaments and regal poise; yet it was far from unpleasant to meet such calm masculinity. She switched on the light once more, to feel a surprising satisfaction in the impersonal, unabashed honesty of those ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... to lie the decisive difference between those peoples whose patriotic affections center about the fortunes of an impersonal commonwealth and those in whom is superadded a fervent aspiration for dynastic ascendency. The latter may be counted on to break the peace when a ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... last in a pause by the roulette table at the rear of the room. Curious to watch the game in being, he lingered there, head cocked shrewdly on one shoulder, a speculative pensiveness informing his eyes, his interest plainly aloof and impersonal. This despite the fact that his emotions of intestinal felicity were momentarily becoming more intense: the torchlight procession was in full swing, leaving an ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... or burnt in a passion, or tortured by strivings for style, or left as it is? Intellect is a problem to itself. Something of the problem seems (it would be wrong to be more certain) to have made this play not quite impersonal, as ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... hands slowly together, and when he spoke his voice was sharp and quick and wholly impersonal. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... of his words, they stood stock-still, in a huddled group, staring out over the plain. Their nerves were numbed by the sudden shock, and to all of them it was like a scene in a dream, vague, impersonal, and un-real. The men upon the camels had streamed out from a gorge which lay a mile or so distant on the side of the path along which they had travelled. Their retreat, therefore, was entirely cut off. ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... concern the highest problem of the poem and of human life. It is a wrong theology, at least a wrong Homeric theology, to hold that the Gods are the cause of human ills; these are the consequences of man's own actions. Furthermore, the cause is not a blind impersonal power outside of the individual, it is not Fate but man himself. What a lofty utterance! We hear from the supreme tribunal the final decision in regard to individual free-will and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... responsible for drafting the regulations that governed the changes in the wartime Navy. Rather, the Navy began integrating its general service because segregation proved painfully inefficient. The decision was largely the result of the impersonal operation of the 1940 draft law. Although imperfectly applied during the war, the anti-discrimination provision of that law produced a massive infusion of black inductees. The Army, with its larger (p. 615) manpower base and expandable black units, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... of Landover, however, was impersonal. The banker merely represented a class. On the other hand, he hated Percival as an individual; he hated him with every drop of blood in his black, venomous heart. He had a certain grudging regard,—it might even be called respect,—for the class to which Landover belonged; ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... his name was), understood that, for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... blind and dead does the clamor of our own practical interests make us to all other things, that it seems almost as if it were necessary to become worthless as a practical being, if one is to hope to attain to any breadth of insight into the impersonal world of worths as such, to have any perception of life's meaning on a large objective scale. Only your mystic, your dreamer, or your insolvent tramp or loafer, can afford so sympathetic an occupation, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... he did not quite know why. Before the thought of traveling a month in her society his mind fell back reeling, baffled by the sudden entrance of such a dazzling intruder. A month beside this glowing figure, a month under the impersonal interrogation of those cool, demanding eyes! It was as if the President or General Zachary Taylor ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... specially interested in this woman beside him. He had seen her fairly, with his first appreciative glance, when he had climbed into the stage on the preceding day. He had realized there fully the charm of her face, the dark roguish eyes, the clear skin, the wealth of dark hair. Yet all this was impersonal; however pretty she might be, the fact was nothing to him and never could be. Knowing who she was, he comprehended instantly the social gulf stretching unbridged between them. An educated man himself, with family connections ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... she sent for me and I was confronted with a human situation which I must in this narrative of Secret Service operations treat as impersonal though it is full of pathetic implications. I found ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... to prepare the young soul for the great battle of life, to put upon it the armor of a knight which shall be borne untarnished, the first instruction concerning the facts of the reproductive life may well be impersonal, poetical, beautiful, filling the mind with sentiment,—not sentimentality,—so that the mental vision of this side of life shall be one worthy of the glorious mind of man. To keep the mind of the child wisely impressed ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... must be used with caution. "It is raining" is correct, although it has no antecedent. We desire that the antecedent shall be vague, impersonal. But unnecessary use of the indefinite it, you, ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... out to Colorado, where he found Hernshaw a stout, silent, impersonal man, whose notion of the paternal office seemed to be a ready acquiescence in a daughter's choice of a husband; he appeared to think this could be best expressed to Hewson in a good cigar He perceptibly enjoyed the business details of the affair, but he ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... undifferentiated into individuality. As pure intelligence it is infinite responsiveness and susceptibility. As devoid of relation to time and space it is devoid of individual personality. It is, therefore, in this aspect a purely impersonal element upon which, by reason of its inherent intelligence and susceptibility, we can impress any recognition of personality that we will. These are the great facts that the mental scientist works with, and the student will do well to ponder deeply ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... are humiliations that we should mind them so? They come to everybody in turn, and they are as relentless and impersonal as the sun marching around the sky. Kedzie had hers, and Charity hers, and the streetcar conductor Kedzie had rebuffed had his, and the Czar with his driven army had his, with more to come, and the Kaiser with his victorious army had his, with more to come. Even Peter Cheever had his in plenty, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... before the critic was satisfied. It would never do to spoil an effect which had been achieved with so much trouble; so the unselfish creature gulped down her tears, and tried to talk cheerfully on impersonal topics, keeping her eyes fixed on the landscape the while, lest the sight of her child might prove too ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
