"Frigidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cold. — N. cold, coldness &c. adj.; frigidity, inclemency, fresco. winter; depth of winter, hard winter; Siberia, Nova Zembla; wind-chill factor. [forms of frozen water] ice; snow, snowflake, snow crystal, snow drift; sleet; hail, hailstone; rime, frost; hoar frost, white frost, hard frost, sharp frost; barf; glaze ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... unpardonable crime. Very excellent people hereabouts remember the many dynasties in which the Southern character has been predominant, and contrast the genial courtesy, the warm and graceful freedom of that region, with what they call (though I utterly disagree with them) the frigidity of our Northern manners, and the Western plainness of the President. They have a conscientious, though mistaken belief, that the South was driven out of the Union by intolerable wrong on our part, and that we are responsible for having compelled true patriots to love only half ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... however, might have been wafted down from Greenland's icy mountain, for I was chilled to the bone. In the flickering light of the station the natives shivered in their blankets. The atmosphere was anything but tropical yet I was almost within striking distance of the Equator. The reason for this frigidity was that I had entered the confines of the Katanga, the most healthful and highly developed province of the Congo and a plateau four thousand feet ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... document into the bosom of her dress. "There will be no duplicate." The frigidity of her tones would have congealed the blood of an ordinary rascal. But Steinbock was ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... This lady and her daughter, however, were not at home; and on the next day after, repeating his visit, Winterbourne again had the misfortune not to find them. Mrs. Walker's party took place on the evening of the third day, and, in spite of the frigidity of his last interview with the hostess, Winterbourne was among the guests. Mrs. Walker was one of those American ladies who, while residing abroad, make a point, in their own phrase, of studying European society, and she had on this occasion collected several specimens of her ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... herself together as though she had received an electric shock; the pleased and animated expression of her face changing suddenly to one of utmost frigidity. "I never could understand why people considered that Indian good looking," and her black eyes snapped as she turned to resume her work, plainly betraying the jealousy aroused. Senora Sanchez, knowing her sister's temper only too well, hastened to ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... cold of the water penetrates their bodies and so they generally all die from haemorrhages, oppression of the chest caused by staying such long stretches of time without breathing; and from dysentery caused by the frigidity. 40. Their hair, which is by nature black, changes to an ashen colour like the skin of seals, and nitre comes out from their shoulders so that they resemble human monsters of some species. 41. With this insupportable toil, or rather, infernal trade, the Spaniards ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... to all, laughed with all, and learned something from all. The English aristocrat, especially if he holds high official place, once haunted the imaginations of the Irish of all conditions, like an incarnation of an Indian deity—all fierceness and frigidity; and it must be acknowledged that the general order of viceroys and secretaries had not tended much to remove the conception. They were chiefly men of advanced life, with their habits formed by intercourse with the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... answer, he could only leave her, and her failure to ask him to write hurt as much as the frigidity of the leave-taking. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... there is excess of sentiment, in the other the contrary vice of frigidity, and a premeditated and ostentatious ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the basilisk fascinating Philippa; and with a vow to keep them apart and deprive him of his chance, she relapsed upon the stiff frigidity which was not natural to her. It lasted long enough to put him on his guard under the seductions of a noble dame's condescension to a familiar tone. But, as he was too well bred to show the change in his mind for her change of manner, and as she was the sister of his boyhood's hero, and could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she almost smiled. For this lapse of duty to her church and to herself, however, she atoned at once by a sudden frigidity. Turning away she studied a huge tapestry that hung on their left as they entered. This tapestry extended almost across the room, forming a ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... Kresney's pronounced frigidity was more ludicrous than impressive; and the shadow of a smile lurked beneath Paul's moustache as ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... for the pensioners, in the classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture by West. I never could look at it long enough to make out its design; for this artist (though it pains me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions and quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a life-long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... insignificance by the side of this girl's ride on the ice cream freezer. If the young man had exhibited foresight, and had a side saddle buckled on to the ice cream freezer, the experience would have been robbed of much of its frigidity, or if there had been a thick blanket under the saddle, but he failed to take ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... generally written in heroic or blank verse. These tours de force were supported by minute efforts in miniature-painting, by touch applied to touch, and were often monuments of industry, but they were apt to lack personal interest, and to suffer from a general and deplorable frigidity. They were infected with the faults which accompany an artificial style; they were monotonous, rhetorical and symmetrical, while the uniformity of treatment which was inevitable to their plan rendered them hopelessly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... ringing somewhere in the depths of the building, and the shuffling of feet on the outer steps. The light of his fire had evidently been seen, and like a beacon had attracted some wandering and possibly intoxicated mariner with American papers. The consul walked into the hall with a sudden righteous frigidity of manner. It was one thing to be lounging in one's own office on the Sabbath day, and quite another to be ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... recovered his poise his dignity asserted itself and he sat down and assumed an attitude that suggested the frigidity of a statue on an ice-cake. He checked Governor North with an impatient flap of the hand. "You have had your innings as a ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... well, and in spite of the earthy and mouldy smell, it was conscientiously clean. There was not a speck of dust anywhere; the old yellowish-white paint was spotless; the windows shone. But there was a sort of frigidity in the perfect order and repair which repelled her, and she left her things tossed about, as if to break the ice of this propriety. In several places, within and without, she found marks of the faithful hand of Bolton in economical patches ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the Castle, and was greeted with respectful curiosity by all within the house. Her cold and aristocratic bearing half repelled them, half excited their admiration. She was very beautiful, and her high breeding was evident in her manner; but there was about her such frigidity and such loftiness of demeanor that it repelled those who would have been willing to give her their love. She brought a maid with her who had only been engaged a short time previously; and it was soon ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... only the young man's self-absorption prevented him from noticing. If he had been less jubilant, he must have felt the unnatural aloofness of the other man's bearing; but even had he done so, he would doubtless have attributed it to Cortlandt's well-recognized frigidity. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... Benecke, more eager, animated and interesting than before. But Lucy had no part in it. It was not the early neglect and incivility of the villa; it was something infinitely colder and more wounding; the frigidity of disillusion and resentment, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... morning Louis by a fine frigidity would have tried to show to the obtuse Axon that he resented such demeanour towards himself on the part of an Axon, assuming as it did that the art-director of the works was one of the servile crew that scuttled about in terror if the ferocious ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... imposed by his presence was removed. Mrs. LaGrange and her son were also absent, preferring to take their meals privately in an adjoining room which Hugh Mainwaring had often used as a breakfast-room. The silence and frigidity which had lately reigned at the table seemed to have given place to almost universal sociability, though Ralph Mainwaring's face still wore a ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... done by; for I had two books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim and proper all the rest of the way,—if I don't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... she evinced an icy frigidity. She made no offers to serve Florent, but several times remarked: "It's very strange what an amount of bread ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... in a tone of polite frigidity. "And since you place conditions on his welcome to your house, permit me to remark that I prefer his acquaintance to yours." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... so often from hot to cold that I really felt myself in a fever and an ague. I never even attempted to speak to them, and I looked with all the frigidity I possibly could, in hopes they would tire of bestowing such honours ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Give it 'em." She even made her familiar entry between the curtains at the back of the stage, standing in the favourite attitude of simple, triumphant expectation, and smiling with that rather foolish friendliness that until now had never shaken her audiences from their frigidity. To them she had always been a spectacle, a strange vital thing with a lurid past and a dubious future, shocking and stimulating. They would never have admitted that they liked her. But tonight they ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... awoke the strange, smooth wind-notes of the opening adagio; the fetterless chains of ice seemed to close around my heart. The movement had no blandness in its solemnity; and so still and shiftless was the grouping of the harmonies, that a frigidity, actual as well as ideal, passed over my pores and hushed my pulses. After a hundred such tense yet clinging chords, the sustaining calm was illustrated, not broken, by a serpentine phrase of one lone oboe, pianissimo over the piano-surface, which it crisped not, but on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... which rivals their original splendour; and then they speedily become extinct. Perhaps the dance had given the last flare- up to Christine's love. It seemed to have improvidently consumed for its immediate purpose all her ardour forwards, so that for the future there was nothing left but frigidity. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... impressive and convincing addition to the great argument on the Irish question. Giving himself a certain freedom—departing from the over-severe self-restraint which he so often imposes upon himself—abandoning the frigidity of manner which conceals from so many people his warmth of heart and of temper, he spoke with a go, a fire and a force of attack not very common with him. Above all things the speech gave the impression of one who spoke from the inside—who knew the subjects ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... judicious modern mode, of the care of supplying the plates of his guests, he had eye, ear, and tongue for every one, and leisure to direct the conversation into what channel he pleased. He took care to turn it for some time on indifferent topics; and each man lost his reserve and his frigidity almost before he was aware; so that, by the time dinner was fairly over, every one was ready for animated conversation. If any one began to have queer suspicions of his neighbors, he felt, as on board ship, that he was in for it, and bound, by common ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Irmgard von Disthal, an ample slow lady, the unmarried daughter of a noble house, about fifty at this time, and luckily—or unluckily—for Priscilla, a great lover of much food and its resultant deep slumbers) would bow in her turn in as stately a manner as her bulk permitted, and with a frigidity so pronounced that in any one less skilled in shades of deportment it would have resembled with a singular completeness a sniff of scorn. Her frigidity was perfectly justified. Was she not a hochgeboren, a member of an ancient house, of luminous pedigree as far back as one could ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Dr. Warner's face increased. He took a slip of pink paper from his waistcoat pocket, with his pale blue eyes quietly fixed on Rosamund's face all the time. He spoke with a not inexcusable frigidity. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of the style of "Paradise Regained" is a fertile theme for the critics. It is, indeed, carried to the verge of baldness; frigidity, used by Pattison, is too strong a word. This does not seem to be any token of a decay of poetical power. As writers advance in life their characteristics usually grow upon them, and develop into mannerisms. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... committee. By this time an animus in regard to the election had been created strong enough to bring out the men on both sides, and to produce heat, when otherwise there might only have been a warmth or, possibly, frigidity. The Whig Marquises and the Whig Barons came forward, and with them the liberal professional men, and the tradesmen who had found that party to answer best, and the democratical mechanics. If Melmotte's money did not, at last, utterly demoralise the lower class of voters, there ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the utmost possible latitude of sail, he was occasionally upset by a sudden gust, and was indebted to his skill in the art of swimming for the opportunity of tempering with a copious libation of wine the unnatural frigidity introduced into his stomach by the extraordinary intrusion of water, an element which he had religiously determined should never pass his lips, but of which, on these occasions, he was sometimes ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... one I loaned you yesterday?" demanded Silvia in a tone far below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, while her features assumed a frigidity that would have congealed father's favorite sustenance had it ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... fainting. She got the window open hard by, and a vagrant gust of the cold air stung her face as with a lash. But she was out of the direct course of the blast as it came shrilly fluttering from over the roof, and she could maintain her position, although she could scarcely breathe in the keen frigidity. Snow had fallen, deeper than she had ever seen. With it had come that strange quality of visibility that seems to appertain to a sheeted world like an inherent luminosity; or was it perchance some vague diffusion of light from the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... enlivened its bulging belly; yet the big room was cold with non-detectable drafts, the men shivered in spite of their heavy clothing, and the region outside the immediate radius of the heater was barn-like with frigidity. Midnight came, and the group about the stove slept in their chairs, rather than undergo the discomfort and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... of that ever-praised democratic goodness. A child! nothing more than an item of common trade. It is even so; but let not happy democracy blush, for the child, being merchandise, has no claims to that law of the soul which looks above the frigidity of slave statutes. What generosity is there in this generous land? what impulses of nature not quenched by force of public opinion, when the associations of a child like this (we are picturing a true story), her birth and blood, her clear complexion, the bright carnatic of her cheek, will ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... not leave Madison Hall unless you wish to do so." Mrs. Weatherbee's frigidity had miraculously vanished. A gleam of kindly purpose had ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away in the pocket of his dress-suit, and turn up the next evening with a striking-looking lady with bronze hair. Such goings-on are seen on the stage in South Shields in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... thought. "By some hocus-pocus, Miss Rose has made his acquaintance during those three weeks, and helped the slow time to pass. He did not tell her he was her sister's lover, hence the present frigidity. The long morning rides are accounted for now. I wonder"—he looked at pretty Rose—"I wonder if ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... to exist; prominent examples being Augustus and Livia; Napoleon and Josephine. It is also a well-known fact that frigidity is a cause of barrenness. A short separation of husband and wife is often salutary in its ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... is now to their respectability. It is an advantage for young people of both sexes, which cannot be too highly appreciated, to have judicious, and especially parental advisers. Let them not impute their kind suggestions to the frigidity of age when they do not keep pace with their own warm feelings, but consider that they are likely to know more of the world, and to deserve their attention after amassing a stock of experience. Why should their good advice, or even their urgent importunity, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... combined with scientific accuracy, were always distinctive of Florentines. To such an extent did these qualities determine their treatment of the arts that acute critics have been found to tax them—and in my opinion justly—with hardness and frigidity.[30] Brunelleschi in 1425 designed the basilica of S. Lorenzo after an original but truly classic type, remarkable for its sobriety and correctness. What he had learned from the ruins of Rome he here applied in obedience to his own artistic ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... well, discovered no less a person at the bottom, half buried in sand and water, than Major Roger Potter. "Peace, good man, and thy misfortune shall be remedied soon," said the Orthodox clergyman, who was among the alarmists, and, notwithstanding his accustomed frigidity, could scarce suppress a smile at seeing the major cut so sorry a figure. The clergyman now ordered the bystanders, who were much more inclined to enjoy the joke, to bring ropes, and assist in relieving the distressed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... warm atmosphere of the hothouse city of Kadabra, the sudden change to arctic frigidity was anything but pleasant; but the worst of it was that I knew I could not endure the bitter cold, almost naked as I was, and that I would perish before ever I could overtake ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... recognise in the young forcat with the shaven head and rough, stubbly beard the son whom he had abandoned more than a month before. Besides, he was busy composing in his mind an introductory speech to be let off on M. de la Pailletine, in whose manner of receiving him he anticipated some little frigidity. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... arbitration, rather than battle. It was complained that Europe took little note of or interest in this conference, and among the delegates of some of the Latin American states—representatives of all of which were present—Europe was blamed for frigidity to thoughts of arbitration. But the world grows wiser slowly, and Spanish-America not more rapidly. Important matters which occupied the attention of the Congress were the questions of some standardising of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... of the reiterated examples of poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... memories. Ah, there was the butcher's shop still underneath the old apartment, with the tin labels stuck in the kosher meat, and there was Gideon, the fat, genial butcher, flourishing his great carving-knife as of yore, though without that ancient smile of brotherly recognition. Gideon's frigidity chilled him; it was an inauspicious omen, a symptom of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... out and Steve accepted it. And Ross watched him all the time as he drew the note from its cover and perused it. The moment of shock had passed, and the fierce light in Steve's eyes had died out, leaving in its place a stony frigidity which gave the other a feeling of unutterable regret. He would have been thankful for some passionate outburst, some violent display. He felt it would have been more natural, and he would have known better how to deal with it. But there ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... not present at the time," said Mrs. Saltillo, rebuking my eagerness with a gentle frigidity, "I am unable to do so. Anything else would be mere hearsay, and more or less ex parte. I ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... greatest pleasure to communicate. I have much to say of the climate of the planet; of its wonderful alternations of heat and cold, of unmitigated and burning sunshine for one fortnight, and more than polar frigidity for the next; of a constant transfer of moisture, by distillation like that in vacuo, from the point beneath the sun to the point the farthest from it; of a variable zone of running water, of the people themselves; of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... we had passed beyond the atmosphere—that awful absolute zero which men had measured by anticipation, but never yet experienced—by a simple system of producing within the air-tight suits a temperature sufficiently elevated to counteract the effects of the frigidity without. By means of long, flexible tubes, air could be continually supplied to the wearers of the suits, and by an ingenious contrivance a store of compressed air sufficient to last for several hours was provided for ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it, not that their poems are better understood at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is established; and a critic would accuse him self of frigidity or, inattention, who should profess not to understand them: but a living writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... his head slowly and looked round at Aubrey,—then recovering his composure, sat down and pretended to turn over some documents on the table, but Aubrey went on undeterred by his aspect of frigidity, "How dare you, I say? The God in Man! Do you realize the stupendous meaning of such a phrase? Do you not see that it means A DIVINE LIFE PALPITATING THROUGH EVERY ATOM OF CREATION? A Force so great, so pure and majestic, so absolute ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of Davis's Strait is the wild, extensive, and uncivilized country of Labrador. Its coast was first discovered by the Portuguese navigators; but the frigidity of its climate is such, that no settlements of any importance have ever been fixed upon its shores. Even the extent of the country has been but imperfectly ascertained; for all the knowledge we have hitherto obtained respecting it, relates only to ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... evening's entertainment out of them." This last sentence is the one I allude to; and were it not for fear of appearing too fanciful I should say that these few words were, to the initiated mind, an unconscious expression of the lonely frigidity which characterised most attempts at social recreation in the New England world some forty years ago. There was at that time a great desire for culture, a great interest in knowledge, in art, in aesthetics, together with a very scanty supply of the materials for such pursuits. Small things ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... a tigress, indolently dallying with one of her cubs, exhibits, even in repose, those fiery scintillations in the eye which startle the beholders. The light of that eye, though intense, was cold, calculating, and disagreeable to look upon. The frigidity of her manner and reception of him might, to a certain extent, be accounted for from the fact that she had gone to his uncle's several times for the purpose of seeing him, and watching his interests. Let us not, therefore, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... further cooling. When the quantity of moisture in the air is small, the refrigerating process continues until frost is produced, and many a moonlight night in spring destroys half or even the whole of the fruit of a new season. Moonlight, therefore, frequently involves the idea of frigidity. With us, whose climate is comparatively cold, the change from the burning, blasting, or blighting heat of day, or sun-up, to the cold of a clear night, or sun-down, is not very great, but within the tropics the change is enormous. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... over. And, of course, she was none of these. Then suddenly he almost laughed; almost laughed aloud. For she was worse—far, far worse. The gushing, loud-voiced heiress he might have coped with. His frigidity froze most people if he chose; and avoidance was not difficult. But what could he do with Joan—his love, his dead love Joan—looking at him out of this girl's beautiful eyes, touching him with ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... cold that Charity froze also, and set her maid to packing. Mrs. Noxon's frigidity was a terrifying example of what she was to expect. She returned to New York on the first train. Jim ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... each other. Madame la Proprietaire was the channel through which they sucked each other's history, for though they had both known her in their girlish days at Tonnerre, in the department of Yonne, they had not known each other. Madame Valiere (Madame Depine learnt, and it seemed to explain the frigidity of her neighbour's manner) still trailed clouds of glory from the service of a Princess a quarter of a century before. Her refusal to wink at the Princess's goings-on, her austere, if provincial, regard for the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... towards this man; but frigidity had no effect whatever on the exuberant spirits of the ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... the system in Paris may be described simply as extreme frigidity and extraordinary accuracy. M. Vauthrot, the chorus-master, excelled in both these qualities. He was a man whom I could not help regarding as hostile to me, because I had never been able to win from him a single expression of enthusiasm. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... were concerned, it had none of that warmth and hospitality that travellers have celebrated; but, on the contrary, it struck us both as cold and constrained, strongly reminding me, in particular, of the frigidity of the ordinary American manner.[40] This might be discipline; it might be the consequence of habitual and incessant demands on their attentions and services; it might be accidental; or it might be prejudice against the country from which we came, that was ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... having expected to find that Molly had, acting on her advice, abandoned Mrs. Delaport Green, was quite disappointed in the girl when she met them still together in London, and so she extended her frigidity to both of them. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward |
