"Impersonality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of personality is 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 however ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... society, whose movements it governs from on high (a wholly gratuitous and probably illusory opinion); or whether we deem it immanent in society and identical with that impersonal and unconscious reason which, acting instinctively, makes civilization advance (although impersonality and ignorance of self are contrary to the idea of intelligence); or whether, finally, all that is accomplished in society results from the relation of its elements (a system whose whole merit consists in changing an active into a passive, in making intelligence ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... 'human pride personified in a people,' at a time when the characteristic of Germany was 'a profound impersonality.' It may be doubted whether even the arrogant brutality of the modern Prussian is more offensive to foreigners than was the calm and haughty assumption of superiority by our countrymen at this time. Our grandfathers ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Impersonality A Protean Glimpse Power Against Power Life's Priestess Love Now One And One The Violin Gertrude Unity In Space The Shell And The Word The Clock-Tower Bell Ours To Endure Broken Waves Why Sad To-Day? The Ghosts Of Revellers Life's Burying-Ground Beyond Utterance ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... telephones, she will scrupulously ask for the number, not the name, for it says so at the top of every page. "Give me one-one," she will put it, with an impersonality as fine as if she were calling for four figures. And Central ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... 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 ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... in its impersonality. Challis was conscious of the anomaly that he was speaking in the boy's presence, crediting him with a remarkable intelligence, and yet addressing a frankly ignorant woman as though the boy was not ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... two-colored typewriter ribbons are in such general use the name and address and date are printed in red, eliminating the necessity of matching the ink of the body of the letter. This is an effective attention-getter, but unless carefully printed the impersonality is apparent. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... 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 of the latter ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... are absolute, and possessed of absolute authority, is drawn, first, from the impersonality of reason, or, rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... prudent observer with adequate experience will lay down an unalterable rule. Habit no doubt counts for a great deal, but apart from habit there are differences of temperament and peculiar sensibilities. Some men write best when they sign what they write; they find impersonality a mystification and an incumbrance; anonymity makes them stiff, pompous, and over-magisterial. With others, however, the effect is just the reverse. If they sign, they become self-conscious, stilted, and even pretentious; it is only when they are anonymous that they recover simplicity ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... to the stage gay and fascinating in her role of Celimene, and in spite of the monotony of her delivery, the carelessness of her elocution, the impersonality of her acting, she had carried off all the votes because she was the very personification of Celimene, that coquette of twenty years of age ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... of being upon whom men may depend or whom they must fear. Whenever there was need, Karyl had come to know that there would be Von Ritz, but also there went with him an austerity and an impersonality that robbed him of the gratitude and ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Impersonality was in fashion, and as a rule he believed in thinking impersonally. There was a point, however, where the possibility of doing so ceased, without treachery to oneself, one's order, and the country. And to the argument which he was quite shrewd enough to put to himself, sooner than have it put ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... impersonality, objectivity, pure contemplation, the negation of will, calmness, and disinterestedness, an aesthetic study of the world, detachment from life, the renunciation of all desire, solitary meditation, disdain of the crowd, and indifference to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and mute. But the gaze seemed luminous with an unnoting calm, and she wondered if perhaps he could not recognize her; she watched this internal clearness of his vision, scarcely daring to breathe, until presently he began to speak, with the same profound and clear impersonality sounding ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... England. 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... anonymous author is a critic with uncommon discrimination and good sense. Mr. Chesterton possesses one of the best attributes of genius—impersonality."—Baltimore News. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "A government is a big, cold, soulless —impersonality! It never could know the thrill that's in our blood this wonderful minute—or miss the thrill if it were destroyed. Do you mind being called a fool, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... things of the background where the twilight of May is dying. And a window without curtains, open on the grand Pyrenean horizons invaded by night.—But, from this voluntary poverty, from this white simplicity, is exhaled a notion of definitive impersonality, of renunciation forever; and the irremediability of accomplished things begins to manifest itself to the mind of Ramuntcho, while bringing to him a sort of peace, ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Impersonality in art really means mediocrity. If you have nothing to tell about yourself, or if courage be lacking in you to tell the truth, you are not an artist. Are women without souls, or is it that they dare not reveal ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... behind her. He noticed, to his surprise, a number of bright shining points, somewhat like stars, glistening in her hair, and with some hesitation inquired their nature. Haguna laughed, a low musical laugh, yet with an indescribable impersonality in it,—as if a spring brook had just then leaped over a little hill, and were laughing mockingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... institution is along the line of self-sacrifice, in the gifts given, in the work of its administrators and teachers. This unselfishness means a financial loss, for business ability might be invested in more lucrative ways; it means a social sacrifice, for there is a certain kind of impersonality which is demanded in work that deals with a continually changing community; it means risk in the great strain put upon physical and nervous strength; it means forgetting one's self; for the true teacher is willing to be forgotten when she has ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... which make men heroes, and which are symbolized in manners and in worship. Manners are a {122} symbolic representation of rational intercourse; thus courtesy is a ceremony of respect, chivalry of service, and modesty of self-restraint and impersonality. Worship is similarly a symbolic representation of good-will and hope. Upon the cultivation of "those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote an invisible devotion" human life is dependent not only for its graciousness, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... 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 for apprehending ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... it was harder to be among the living. It was good that she didn't let him know how she felt. She had sensed a change in him recently. His friendly impersonality had become merely friendly. It could, with a little encouragement, have developed into something else. But it wouldn't now. She sighed again. His hardness had been a tower of strength. And his bitter gallows ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone
... justice may 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... extra work it would involve; and they cursed a good deal, though there was no denying that it was a big thing for the bank—not unlike winning the Ashburton would be to a school. There is a cold impersonality about a bank. A school is ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse |
