"Impersonally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consideration. A speculation about Uncle Jim died for want of material, and gave place to a reckoning of the years and months that had passed since his coming to Potwell, and that to a philosophical review of his life. He began to think about Miriam, remotely and impersonally. He remembered many things that had been neglected by his conscience during the busier times, as, for example, that he had committed arson and deserted a wife. For the first time he looked these long neglected facts ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... people at home would never know how I died or where. I put my head down on the table and actually dozed off. But there was a clock in the room and whenever it struck I would rouse up and say to myself, almost impersonally, that I now had four hours to live, or three, or two, as the case might be. Then I would go to sleep again. Once or twice a queer sinking sensation in my stomach, such as I never felt before, would come to me, but toward daylight ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... shattered like the bubble it was. Because he had no delusions. He knew that he was only an employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the great regard those that serve them—kindly but impersonally—but for now he asked for nothing more. To him she was a creature past belief, a being from another world, and he was content to serve her humbly. He knew that he was of the forest and she of the cities of men, and soon they would ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... a sudden change of mind. He no longer wanted to go on deck with the girl. They were not to be intimates. She was to marry Carlsen. He was an outsider. Carlsen had told him that. So she seemed to regard him, impersonally, ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... myself against all the Governments of Europe, because the anarchist who has given himself to anarchy has forgotten modesty as much as he has forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... to know him: although for months she had heard of him and had accepted his anonymity, as everyone else in society had done; but now she longed to know—quite impersonally, quite apart from Armand, and oh! quite apart from Chauvelin—only for her own sake, for the sake of the enthusiastic admiration she had always bestowed on his bravery ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... home the third evening to find that Sheila had managed to find space for her bunk in his room, cut off by a heavy screen, and had closed the other room to save the rent. It led to some relaxation between them, and they began talking impersonally. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... even the pronoun "she" was not uttered in the house. Zina was spoken of impersonally: "this has come," "Gone away," and so on. . . . The mother recognised her daughter's handwriting, and her face grew ugly and unpleasant, and her grey hair escaped again ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... offered hand, and clasped it for a brief instant in a warm strong pressure, but dropped it again and there was a quick cold withdrawing of his eyes that she did not understand. The old Mark Carter would never have looked at her coolly, impersonally like that. What was it, was he shy of her after the long separation? Four years was a long time, of course, but there had been occasional letters. He had always been away when she was at home, and she had been home very little between her school years. There had been summer sessions ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... now rather oddly that I weighed these probabilities quite impersonally, as though I were a mere spectator. And such was virtually the case. The fact is that, although I had long since abandoned the idea of suicide, I remained alive as a matter of principle and not ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... place by the window, watched him come. In the distance he assumed a new aspect in her eyes. She thought of him impersonally—as a thrilling picture. She rejoiced in the sight of him as one may in the spectacle of an army ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... intuitive exactness, and could quite impersonally see herself as Prouty saw her. She had no hallucinations on that score and knew that she was a long way yet from the fulfillment of her ambition. When she had reached a point where to decry her success was to proclaim her disparager ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... costs too much," returned Quentina. "You know ministers don't have money for such things." Her voice was still impersonally cheerful. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... are, Blenham." He wondered dully if he had killed Woods. He considered the matter almost impersonally just now; the game wasn't yet played, cards were out, the mind must be cool, the eye quick. "You two boys on the end come over here and help ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... eldest son Iophon only. The tale is full of improbabilities. — REM: rem familiarem as in 1. — PATRIBUS BONIS INTERDICI SOLET: 'fathers are often prevented from managing their property'. For the construction cf. the expression interdicere alicui aqua et igni: interdici is here used impersonally with patribus in the dat.; A. 230; H. 384, 5; bonis is abl. of separation (deprivation). The fragment of the XII tables here referred to is thus given in Dirksen's edition: sei fouriosos aut prodicos (prodigus) ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... made up her mind that she would hesitate for a month and no longer, and she also had determined that she would decide the question for herself and throw none of the responsibility on Senator North; she felt the impulse to write to him impersonally more than once. (Perhaps her sense of humour also restrained her.) She wondered if it were one year or twenty years since she had gone to him for advice; and she knew that whichever way she decided, the desire for his good ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... expenditures as waste or not waste in the technical meaning of the word. The test to which all expenditure must be brought in an attempt to decide that point is the question whether it serves directly to enhance human life on the whole-whether it furthers the life process taken impersonally. For this is the basis of award of the instinct of workmanship, and that instinct is the court of final appeal in any question of economic truth or adequacy. It is a question as to the award rendered ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.' Kim breathed the proverb impersonally to the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... islanders would have none of her. I am glad to remember that—my brain keeping clear, albeit my pulse, already fast enough, leapt hotly and quickened its speed—I had presence of mind to admire the suggestion coolly, impersonally, and quite as though ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis to torment and provoke and flirt with—a little—a very little—I'm quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... nouns; (3) When denoting possession; (2) When used impersonally; (4) Before Feliz, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... 'Revisers' of the second century did not perceive that [Greek: apechei] is here used impersonally[398]. They understood the word to mean 'is fully come'; and supplied the supposed nominative, viz. [Greek: to telos][399]. Other critics who rightly understood [Greek: apechei] to signify 'sufficit,' still subjoined 'finis.' The Old Latin and the Syriac versions must ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... don't know much about anything, but, thinking as clearly and as impersonally as it is in me to think, I begin to believe that divorce, far from deserving the stigma attached to it, is a ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... was what had struck her from the moment she entered the police station—the cool, business-like fashion in which these men had dealt with the situation. There were no histrionics. They might have been clerks engaged in some monotonous work for all the emotion they evinced. They treated her as impersonally as though she was a bale of goods about which there was ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... which did it. It was the Italian passion for rhetoric, for the speech which appeals to the senses and makes no demand on the mind. When an Englishman listens to a speech he wants at least to imagine that he understands thoroughly and impersonally what is meant. But an Italian only cares about the emotion. It is the movement, the physical effect of the language upon the blood which gives him supreme satisfaction. His mind is scarcely engaged at ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... her? It was incredible that harm could come to one of her condition at the hands of the servants of a great and Christian nation like Germany. She glanced at Captain Goritz. He was still examining her gravely, impersonally. There seemed little doubt as to the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... of the highball when there occurred a low-voiced murmur at his side, and he arose to confront the pale, worn face of Romola. She gave him her hand limply, and settled down across from him, her eyes darting from table to table, and occasionally nodding rather stiffly and impersonally as she ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... see such misbehaved children?" she asked casually and impersonally as she calmly ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... his eyes, his face was cool and unscrupulous as he looked at Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended in a point in space, strangely keen-eyed and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and looked her in the eyes and Mary Fortune realized that she was being addressed not as a woman, impersonally, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... to confine this analysis to subjects in which we have no personal interest; thus we shall accustom ourselves to judge of people and things dispassionately and impersonally. This is the quality of mind necessary to the perfect development ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... So much was instantly proved. As I passed her, on the mere chance that she might elect to acknowledge our encounter, I let my gaze impersonally meet hers. She started slightly. Evidently she remembered. But she turned toward the nearest door ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... said Miss Wingate in an impersonally judicial tone of voice, "that Doctor Mayberry is the very handsomest man I ever saw. One would almost call him beautiful. It isn't entirely that he is so tall and grand and has such eyes, but—do you know I think it is because he is so like you that he is so ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... any thought of such a thing. He was profoundly serious. "It is really a great idea," he said. "A human agency whose benefits could be received as we receive those of Nature or Providence—as impersonally." ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... possessed a trouser-press; and his "bags" were perfectly creased and quite spotless. From tip to toe, at all seasons and in all weathers, he looked conspicuously spick and span. Chaff provoked the solemn retort: "One should be well groomed." He spoke impersonally, considering it bad form to use for first person singular. Amongst the small boys he ranked as the Petronius of ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... margin adding "someone" to stand as a nominative to the verb. (97) But the correction is not apparently warranted, for it is a common practice, well known to grammarians in the Hebrew language, to use the third person singular of the active verb impersonally. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... carpenter, working on a plank laid on deck, heard him coming, glanced up, and seeing who it was, continued at his labor without moving so much as a hair's breadth to let him by; the steward looked him in the eye brazenly and impersonally; and others of the crew, among them the strange Blodgett, treated him with a certain subtle rudeness, even contempt. Yet here and there a man was glad to see him coming and gave him a cordial nod, or a cheerful ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a servant having, for his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward. All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and impersonally waited, summed up in his last word. "I don't think, you know, Chad ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... porch, the soft swelling green of the lawn. The flash of fire-blue lake among the trees below. Then he deigned to look at the group of humans at one side of him. Gravely, impersonally, he surveyed them; not at all cowed or strange in his new surroundings; courteously inquisitive as to the twist of luck that had set him down here and as to the people who, presumably, were to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... work of another. I used to feel that when Hugh mentioned, as I have heard him do, some course of sermons that he was giving, and described the queue which formed in the street, and the aisles and gangways crowded with people standing to hear him, that he did so more impersonally than anyone I had ever heard, as though it were a delightful adventure, and more a piece of good luck than a ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... impersonally, "I think I appreciate your point of view. It's a little cheerless to ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... writes of Bolvar's life, actions and sorrows, can hardly retain the serenity of the historian, but surrenders to that deep emotion composed of profound awe and human love, and, though his work may have been begun impersonally, it ends with the creation in his heart of those deep feelings which at times have no better ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... interest whatever in aspects as such, but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied; whether actions future and personally profitable, like building tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and quite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Thurston glanced up impersonally, hesitated between annoyance and a natural desire to, be courteous, and replied that he had no memory of any ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... appealed to the best of him. He was thrown into companionship with men who perforce lived cleanly and naturally, and with Ches Mason, who was his friend. At meals he sometimes gave thought to Mrs. Kate, and frequently to Josephine. The first he admired impersonally for her housewifely skill, and smiled at secretly for her purely feminine outlook upon life and her positive views upon subjects of which she knew not half the alphabet. He had discovered that Mason did indeed refrain from smoking in the house because she discountenanced tobacco; ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... body were released from the cycle of existence and reabsorbed into the divine centre or focus of life. In the case of the Buddhists and Jains the divine centre of life seems to have been conceived of impersonally. The leading authorities on Buddhism state that its founder's doctrine was pure atheism, but one may suggest that the view seems somewhat improbable in the case of a religion promulgated at so early a period. And on such a hypothesis it ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... regard the situation impersonally," said Trenholme, sinking his eyes humbly to the ground and keeping them there. "I had either to reveal my presence and startle you greatly, or remain where I was and wait until you went ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... "Perhaps you think it strange that one in the very shadow of the death chair"—the word stuck in his throat- -"can talk so impersonally of his own case. Sometimes I think it is not my case, but some one else's. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... did not know how near to the truth the woodsman's shrewdness had hit; for to himself, as to most strong characters, his peculiarities were the normal, and therefore the unnoticed. His habit of thought in respect to other people was rather objective than subjective. He inquired so impersonally the significance of whatever was before him, that it lost the human quality both as to itself and himself. To him men were things. This attitude relieved him of self-consciousness. He never bothered his head as to what the other man thought ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... from Captain Strong aboard the Solar Guard cruiser Orion requesting landing data here on Roald," the voice crackled impersonally over ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... we Democrats can open our arms wide enough to include every class in life. Therefore, I go to many places I should otherwise avoid. I have studied the attitude of the younger women whom I have approached, purely impersonally and without the slightest hypersensitiveness. They have all been perfectly pleasant, perfectly disposed for conversation or any of the usual social amenities. But they know that I have in the background a wife. To flirt ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... suppose Mr. Cowles is engaged?" asked Kitty of her husband impersonally, and apropos of nothing that ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... formed by putting such particles as ba la, haba la, da kaba la before the verb. Verbal nouns of agency are formed by prefixing nong to the root, e.g. u nong knia (the sacrificer). The Passive Voice is formed by using the verb impersonally, and putting the subject into the Accusative ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... approval. Now Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would have guessed that he observed that—least of all Sister Anne. He stood in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt—as though his heart was not beating so fast that it ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... also necessary, after learning to view life objectively and impersonally, to attend to it leisurely and responsively, as we should to a work of art, allowing full scope to the disinterested feelings of curiosity, pity, sympathy, and wonder ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... anybody impersonally. They were christened instantly and became such individual realities that you could almost swear that you knew them, for Tam would carefully equip them with features and color, height and build, and frequently invented ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... cannot, I suppose have understood that the motive which impelled me in my previous letter was that the enlightenment of the public having the interest of art might follow; next to whom, as derivees of fresher, newer light, the spectators of the painting "Ecce Homo," impersonally and politely apostrophised as "his academic audience," may now be mentioned. Neither fault nor question was found with any of such for so being; your correspondent introduced this side view, I believe, irrelevantly—but ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... saving his dignity. He was a brave soldier. We must never forget that," he said, lifting his hat impersonally to courage as he made his way out of the ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... is to write historically. We know how books have affected, and do affect ourselves, our bundle of prejudices and tastes, of old impressions and revived sensations. To judge books dispassionately and impersonally, is much more difficult—indeed, it is practically impossible, for our own tastes and experiences must, more or less, modify our verdicts, do what we will. However, the effort must be made, for to say that, at a certain age, in certain circumstances, an individual ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... annoy that man I can't imagine," he went on impersonally. "Mind, he practises on me—I'm convinced ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passional; the attributes of Satva are light, peace, happiness, wisdom. No one while in the body can escape from the action of the three qualities, for they are brought about by nature which is compounded of them. We have to recognize this, and to continue action, aspiration and thought, impersonally or with some universal motive, in the manner nature accomplishes these things. Not one of these methods can be laid aside or ignored, for the Spirit moveth within all, these are its works, and we have to learn to identify ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... these spasms usually last?" Jean's head tilted toward Robert Grant Burns as impersonally as if she were indicating a ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... found it pleasanter to be admired and petted than ignored or kicked. He was impersonally friendly with the soldiers, when he was off duty; and he relished the dainties they ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... to charity, but they give impersonally, not generously; they are in reality utterly selfish, engrossed in the enthralling game of becoming successful or more successful men, sacrificing their homes, their families and their health—for what? To get on; to better ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... at this news there was no repining that he could observe. She did not protest. Her words were impersonally pleasant as ever, but vague; and he perceived that she only half heeded his going; and that her eyes brightened when once more she turned to her visitor. This was the final stab. With hatred in his heart and a wicked glitter in his eyes, Charlie Menocal went down ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... any trouble—I'm even willing to take a good deal in the way of bluster, rather than have trouble. But I'm going to stay. See?" He waved his pipe in a gesture of finality and continued to smoke and to watch them impersonally, leaning against the door in that lounging negligence which is so irritating ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... knew quite what. The trouble was that she had no job whatever now, and no social distraction to take the place of work. She was the victim of ideas that were utterly beyond her knowledge, ideas that must impersonally carry the Milly Ridges along in their momentum, to ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... head to one side with his old look of the friendly puppy. "You always did like to talk that noveletty way, 'Gene, didn't you?" he said, impersonally. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... He shoved her out of the way as impersonally as he had the chair. Then, "What do you mean by 'What'll do'?" he demanded. And to Clare, pulling at his arm, "Let me alone, I tell you. I'm going to know ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... not that," he assured her pleasantly; "but I'm tired of knocking around the world alone. I need an anchor. I think you"—he looked at her impersonally, but politely—"would make a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... instead," replied Seaton, "for the service we have been able to do you is slight indeed compared to what you are giving us in return. But it seems that you speak quite impersonally of the force upon the food supply. Did you yourself direct the preparation of ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... seemed to become aware that, whereas Hermione and Artois had been considering a subject impersonally, he was introducing the personal element into the conversation. He stopped short, looked quickly from Hermione to ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history—noble, brilliant, heroic women; but woman collectively, impersonally, today asks recognition in the commonwealth—not in virtue of hereditary noblesse—not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the one ground of her possessing the same rights, interests and responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... we turn to the poems in which ecstasy is shot through with that strain of melancholy which we have already noticed. He invokes the wild West Wind, not so much to exult impersonally in the force that chariots the decaying leaves, spreads the seeds abroad, wakes the Mediterranean from its slumber, and cleaves the Atlantic, as to cry out in the pain of his ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... conduct. Their faces showed no spell of horror. Men had looked at the long row of dead on the platform at the station. "That is my father," said one; and another, "This is my sister," but they spoke impersonally, and only to satisfy the curiosity of others. There was no room for an individual terror. A woman with both arms broken and her head heavily bound sat laughing, and again raised her voice in ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... hostess, half shocked, though wholly amused. But as Dalton again broke out she joined him, Dodo quite impersonally ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... "there is" and "there are," because "there to be" is not used impersonally, the meaning being, e.g., "a man is there"; "two men are there." In Spanish, however, haber is used impersonally and both "there is a man" and "there are two men" are translated "Hay un ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... those qualities of deliberate singularity which make his work, sincere expression as it is of his own personality, so artificial and recherche in itself. With his pronounced, exceptional characteristics, it would have been impossible for him to write fiction impersonally, or to range himself, for long, in any school, under any master. Interrogated one day as to his opinion of Naturalism, he had but to say in reply: Au fond, il y a des ecrivains qui ont du talent et d'autres qui n'en ont pas, qu'ils soient naturalistes, romantiques, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with too many in this. I maintain that in each case he promptly gave the guarantee which the honour of his time required, and which is perhaps the only possible guarantee, that of being ready to answer in person for what he had written impersonally. This was all he could do, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... little streaks, this mass of men of one intention. The recruits carried themselves heedlessly. At the rear was an idle battery, and three artillery men in a foolish row on a caisson nudged each other and grinned at the recruits. "You'll catch it pretty soon," they called out. They were impersonally gleeful, as if they themselves were not also likely to catch it pretty soon. But with this picture of an army in their hearts, the new men perhaps felt the devotion which the drops may feel for the wave; they were of its power and glory; they smiled jauntily at the foolish row ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Rowdy watched them impersonally; a glance proved that the man was not Wooden Shoes, and so he was not particularly interested in him or his doings. It did occur to him, however, that if the fellow wanted to catch that brute, he ought to have sense ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... about opinions," remarked Noah impersonally to the stars. "Somebody is always gettin' your opinion just to see how big a fool you are, and ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... mean that exactly, and I—I really don't mean to apply anything to your father, of course. I only mean—to—to speak quite impersonally—that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along it's going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all—isn't it rather hard ever to get happiness that way? Perhaps we might find that the real way to be happy ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Bunsen and Witherbee, who smiled at his opinions and remained cold to his rhapsodies, always oppressed him with a sense of ineffectuality. He knew them of old—knew them superficially, of course, for, since he was incapable of talking impersonally about religion, he had never had the chance to listen to the cool and yet often strangely mystical opinions which such men hold about it. He knew, in a dim sort of way, that men not clergymen sometimes speculated about ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... limitation differ from ordinary statutes in this, that these rules are made impersonally, abstractly, dispassionately, impartially, as the people's expression of what they believe to be right and necessary for the preservation of their idea of liberty and justice. The process of amendment is so guarded by the constitution itself as to ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... may be is true—but only there where personality is not, where man is not, where freedom is not; the butterfly's wing spoiled appears again and again for a thousand years as the same wing of the same butterfly; there sternly, fairly, impersonally necessity completes her circle... but man is not repeated like the butterfly, and the work of his hands, his art, his spontaneous creation once destroyed is lost for ever.... To him alone is it vouchsafed to create... but strange ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Jan. 24-68. DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,—This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to. I said I must have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right." I said "It's a contract—" and that settled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shall continue to say, that if the doctrines, the sum of which I 'believe' to constitute the truth in Christ, 'be' Christianity, then Unitarianism' is not, and vice versa: and that in speaking theologically and 'impersonally', i.e. of Psilanthropism and Theanthropism, as schemes of belief—and without reference to individuals who profess either the one or the other—it will be absurd to use a different language, as long as it ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... speaking of palmistry, and she took his hand in hers, innocently, impersonally, with large eyes lifted inquiringly. Her breath was on his face; her touch had stirred his senses with a madness he had never felt ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... over day-dark pavements. Warehouses, railroad tracks, factories—a street toiling through a dismantled world. Their hands together, they paused and remained staring as if at a third person. He had reached out rather impersonally and taken her hand. The contact had shocked him into silence. It ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... their eyes meet, and fancied that the woman's smile sat a trifle unnaturally on her lips, while the delicate coloring of her face changed imperceptibly. As the fellow mumbled some acknowledgment, she turned to the younger man, inquiring impersonally: ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... happened, impersonally, as one who is listening to another man's story in his own mouth. "I gave him something like a first aid to stop the bleeding," the young Doctor paused, picked a ravelling from his bandage and went on, still detached from ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... a fringe of suggestions of this character, because current speech is adapted for their reprobation. The point aimed at is not this inflection of approval or disapproval. The facts are to be taken impersonally for what they are worth in their causal bearing on the chance of peace or war; not at their sentimental value as traits of conduct to be appraised in point ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... from her the fur covering, flung it across the room, and with the same gesture turned away impersonally. Trembling, she rose from the couch and donned the garments he had indicated, while he stood brooding by the window, gazing through its transparent pane at the glistening frozen city which was all ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... silence for a few minutes, and then, seeing where Mrs. Falchion was, we advanced to her. The next dance on her programme was mine. In my previous dance with her we had talked as we now did at table—as we did the first hour I met her—impersonally, sometimes (I am bold to say) amusingly. Now I approached her with apologies for being late. The man beside her took his leave. She had only just glanced at me at first, but now she looked at my companion, and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pursued Madame Carter, majestically, "that my unfortunate daughter-in-law, Mr. Carter's wife, Isabelle, has yielded to the passion of her lover! No, let me talk, Richard," she interrupted herself, as the man raised haggard eyes to watch her impersonally, "far better to face the facts, my dear! My son tells me, Miss Field the—the well-nigh incredible statement that—forgetting the honour of womanhood, and ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... I can't tell what to make of the girl. Anyhow, she knows, which is the principal thing, and no matter how remarkable an actress she may be for her age, she must care. It wouldn't be human not to care for such a story about her own mother and father. Yet she took it so impersonally! I can't get over that. And she actually ate a good luncheon! I wonder she could swallow. But, of course, I'd put everything as politely as I could put such things, because I didn't want her to scream or faint. Well, I needn't ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... discuss them impersonally with me; I'm engaged to Miss Graham. Ever since you first found me here after I told you I was going away I have wished to tell you this, and this seems as good a time as any—or as bad." The defiance faded from his voice, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... the other considerations you mention." If space and time have no bearing on strategy and tactics, then K. is right. If ships sail over the sea as fast as railways run across the land; if Helles is nearer Woolwich than Calais; then he is right. I use the capital K. here impersonally, for I am sure the great man did not indite the message himself even though it may be ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... many difficulties to be encountered, for the field before us is a vast territory of complex human life and of manifold human relations. Without prolonged exercise in scientific methods, it is impossible to view our own kind impersonally, as we do the creatures of lower nature. Furthermore it seems to many that an analysis of human life and biological history, even if it is possible, must alter or degrade mankind in some degree; this is no more true than that a knowledge ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... she said, addressing them both impersonally, "that my engagement to Guy Ranger is unbroken. I have just found out that my step-mother has been suppressing his letters to me. That, of course, alters everything. And—also of course—it makes it impossible for me to stay here any longer. I ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... father discussing the matter abstractly, impersonally, as he seemed? Or, had he with that uncanny shrewdness of his somehow penetrated to her secret—or to a suspicion of it? Jane was so agitated that she sat silent and rigid, trying ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... said, as if impersonally. But Gladys perceived in a moment that she had in mind her own arraignment, as if another were taxing her with a misdeed. "In this bitter black night, in this furious ice-storm, and you did not forbid ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a Winter without seeing him. She returned to Mount Laurels from London at Easter, and went on a visit to Steynham, and back to London, having sight of him nowhere, still firm in the thought that she loved ethereally, to bless, forgive, direct, encourage, pray for him, impersonally. She read certain speeches delivered by Nevil at assemblies of Liberals or Radicals, which were reported in papers in the easy irony of the style of here and there a sentence, here and there a summary: salient quotations interspersed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... make public my life for the sake of notoriety. My only idea in writing these personal details is the hope that they may help some poor devil out of the same hole in which I found myself mired. They are of too sacred a nature to share except impersonally. Even behind the disguise of an assumed name I passed some mighty uncomfortable hours a few months ago when I sketched out for a magazine and saw in cold print what I'm now going to give in full. It made me feel ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... her breast and from under her straight eyebrows the deep blue eyes remained fixed on me, impersonally, as if ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... busy with his weaving. At last he looked at her rather blankly, impersonally. Joan was conscious of a frightened, lonely chill. She put out her hand uncertainly, a wrinkle appearing sharp and ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... I lived without farther difficulty to the day and hour of the dinner Lowell made for me; and I really think, looking at myself impersonally, and remembering the sort of young fellow I was, that it would have been a great pity if I had not. The dinner was at the old-fashioned Boston hour of two, and the table was laid for four people in some little upper room at Parker's, which I was never afterwards able to make sure of. Lowell ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... both impersonally, as of military interest, and also as bearing upon Nelson's correctness of judgment, and professional characteristics, at this time. As regards the amount of wind, it is sufficient to say that the French fleet, having borne away to the westward in the afternoon, was ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... nothing better, sir," he said cheerfully, and quite impersonally as far as June was concerned. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... but I couldn't help being surprised, for it was rather unusual—from a stranger." He smiled, and Hugo had a gift in smiles, as we know: smiles for laughter, smiles for reassurance, and smiles to cure embarrassment. "It was almost as refreshing as a drink of water," he concluded impersonally. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to have shrivelled, his very soul might have been in ashes—incremated in the flames of his passions. He had triumphed over every one of his enemies in turn. Historically he was justified, and had he accomplished the same end impersonally, they would have been the only sufferers, and in the just degree. But he had boiled them in the vitriol of his nature; he had scarred them and warped them and destroyed their self-respect. Had these raging passions been fed with other ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... He thought, too, of the astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally, of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... a way of making others suggest it, after a while," he resolved. "In the meanwhile——" He didn't finish the sentence, even in his own mind. But what he did in that "meanwhile" was to see as much as possible of Barbara, to talk with her impersonally, gently, and interestingly, to win her perfect trust and confidence, and, so far as possible, to make his presence a necessary thing to her. He paid her no public attention of any kind. But he paid no public or private attention ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... so calmly and impersonally that the girl had turned to look at him again as she listened. And now she ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... but if you happened to have a religion, and your religion was what mattered to you most; if you adored Beauty as the supreme form of Life; if you cared for nothing else; if you lived, impersonally, to make Beauty and to keep it alive; and for no other end, how could you consent to take part in this bloody business? That would be the last betrayal, the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... on laws may therefore be an objective science, which experience contains in advance and which we simply make it disgorge; but it is none the less true that a comparison of some kind must be effected here, impersonally if not by any one in particular, and that an experience made of laws, that is, of terms related to other terms, is an experience made of comparisons, which, before we receive it, has already had to pass ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... rather liked his manner, for all he took me so sharply, if impersonally, to task. He seems a clever musician, but his instrument is ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... most keenly felt: it is when we think of the miserable end of affection. How much comfort would it afford anyone bending over the deathbed of his wife to know that forces set free by her dissolution will continue to mingle impersonally and indistinguishably with forces set free by the general mortality? Affection, at all events, requires personality. One cannot love a group of consequences, even supposing that the filiation could be distinctly presented to the mind. Pressed by the hand of sorrow craving for ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... this fellow is travelling when, at a turn of the road, he hears the sound of barking. As yet there is no dog in sight. He pauses. He listens. How shall one know whether the sound comes up a wrathful gullet or whether the dog bays at him impersonally, as at the distant moon? Or maybe he vents himself upon a stubborn cow. Surely it is not an idle tune he practices. He holds a victim in his mind. There is sour venom on his churlish tooth. Is ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... her irony flattered him because it implied that she offered him a chance to cultivate her—he was not at all sure how much or how little that might mean—regardless of his political affiliations. Not many women were logical enough to accept so impersonally his opposition to the candidacy of an uncle and the plans of a father. "I AM busy," he admitted, "but I need a few hours' relaxation. It will help me to work more effectively to-morrow—against your father and your uncle," he came back with a smile ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Periphrastic Conjugation (amandus est, etc.). In this use Intransitive Verbs can be used only impersonally, but admit their ordinary case-construction ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... managed to say, interrupting out of consideration for Hawkes and Blatchford, who, I thought, might feel uncomfortable at hearing themselves discussed so impersonally. "Everything is most satisfactory. I did not realise that I had you to thank for my present mental and gastronomical comfort. You ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... handle two," remarked Frank Merrill. He said this, not boastfully, but as one who states an interesting fact. And he spoke as impersonally as though the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Without a doubt he had seen her waving and smiling, and so he must have observed the instant cooling of her manner. He nodded to Manley and lifted his hat while he looked at her full; and Val, in the arrogant pride of virtuous young womanhood, let her golden-brown eyes dwell impersonally upon his face; let her white, round chin dip half an inch downward, and then looked past him as if he were a post by the roadside. Afterwards she smiled maliciously when she saw, with a swift, sidelong glance, how he scowled ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... evasions. Therefore it should not be thought that we get to know him to the core from his letters. Natures like his, which all contact with men unsettles, give their best and deepest when they speak impersonally and to all. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... rider, not so much as a man may regard a woman but as he must pay tribute to animal perfection. He told himself that as a woman Zoraida Castelmar displeased him; that there was no place in his fancies for the bold eyes of an adventuress. But he deemed a man might look upon her as impersonally as upon the white mare, giving credit where credit was due. It struck him then that all that was wrong with Zoraida Castelmar was that she was an anachronism; that had he lived a thousand years ago and had she then, a barbaric queen, stepped before ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... foolish," said Cromer, in a matter-of-fact way. "You are the perfection of your own type. I never saw such true Romney colouring. Pardon me, Miss Fairfield, I'm really speaking of you quite impersonally. Don't ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... God!" in a strangely colorless voice—"My God!" He looked down at his fingers impersonally, as though they belonged to some one else. Then his hand clutched Jo Haley's arm with the grip of fear. "Jo! Jo! That's the thing that has haunted me day and night, till my nerves are raw. The fear of doing it again. ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... duller reaction and the events of the last few minutes repeated themselves, impersonally, spectacularly,—as though they were the actions of another man; one for whom he felt very sorry. He even went into the future and saw this same man lying down with a tiny bottle in his hand, preparing for the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... wait here for your sailings?" she asked impersonally after another pause. "It's so much ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... through the thickest of the throng etc.. "He" in this passage refers impersonally to any of ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... historic figure, and give it life and color,—this power he had. And it was evidently this which gave him the praise of such men as Prescott and Bancroft and Motley. Washington had begun to loom vaguely and impersonally in the mind, a mere great man, when Irving with a touch turned him from cold bronze into ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... he gets the right care." The surgeon was going about his business with dispatch. "I hate to move him, but there's no sense in remaining here as a target for more of this trash." He glanced at Jas' and Hatch impersonally. "Lucky we brought the wagon. Tell Henderson to bring it up. We'll take him to ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... grievously she might sin, as meekly repenting in sackcloth and ashes. He wondered just what she meant to do now that she had come back; he wondered what her sisters and the rest of Montgomery would do! The situation interested him impersonally. It sufficed for the moment that she was there, handsome, cheerful, amusing, for he had been seriously troubled about her of late. He was aware that a lone woman, with her history, and blessed or cursed with her undeniable ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the sunnier lives of a remote generation on the sufferings of this and earlier generations implies a grave injustice to us, so we must say of the war. No spiritual advantages to those who survive will reconcile us to the suffering and the loss of those who fell in the tragic combat. I speak impersonally. It happens that I have no near relatives of military age, and neither I nor any near relative is likely to suffer by the war. But when I brood over the agony of the less fortunate millions, over the harrowing experience of Belgians, Poles, and Serbs, over the ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... noun (even if an adjective or an article intervenes). ii. When "to be" is used impersonally. iii. When "to be" denotes possession. iv. Before pobre, rico, felis, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... little son." She spoke calmly and impersonally, without even a quickening of the breath. The thin hand, lying on the tattered cover, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history—noble, brilliant, heroic women; but woman collectively, impersonally, never until now. To-day, for the first time, she asks recognition in the commonwealth—not in virtue of hereditary noblesse—not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the simple ground of her presence in the race, with the same rights, interests, responsibilities ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... personally but not impersonally," she cried. "You feel it intellectually but not with your heart. You cannot see that a kindred soul lives in the Russian peasant and the German labourer, the British toiler and the French artificer. They are all pouring out their blood for the sake of their dream, a politician's dream. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their pleasant, lighted cabins on board the Enchantress Isis, waiting for them not far away. They realized that something was the matter out there, that a lot of Arabs were making a row; but it interested and amused them impersonally. If somebody had robbed or murdered somebody else, morally it was a pity, of course: but it added to the picturesqueness of the scene, and would be nice to tell about at home. I felt myself overflowing with ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "but it is irrelevant to discuss my attitude of mind or my past occupations. It will be more agreeable for us, both now and in the future, to treat any matters that arise between us as impersonally as possible. Therefore, I will ask you to tell me, simply and clearly, how much you require to clear you from immediate difficulty; and I will tell you, in return, whether I am in a position to meet your ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... I answered, laughing. 'I used the word impersonally. I will be more cautious. One would think we had been talking about a witch—or a demon-lady—you are so frightened at the notion of her ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... married; he was a good man, Shane. But I didn't love him. I loved nobody. I got married because he was a suitable and every one got married. And just the same way I accepted marriage.... And when he died, I was very sorry, but impersonally sorry ... as if something nice in the world had been gone ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... and the frequenters of Broadway—and the most exotic food obtainable, for a good part of his time Hardy, we knew, lived upon camp fare. Then we would try to make him tell about his experiences. Usually he wouldn't. Impersonally, he was entertaining about South Africa, about the Caucasus, about Alaska, Mexico, anywhere you care to think; but concretely he might have been an illustrated lecture for all he mentioned himself. He was passionately fond of abstract argument. "Y' see," he would explain, "I don't get half as much ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had no doubt that they did that work impersonally and without feeling, not caring, and perhaps not understanding the tortures of a system—of a soulless ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... too good an artist to allow them to lean on his personal experience; they have to stand firmly on their own feet. Ibsen, therefore, worked his conceptions to such a degree of hardness and self-consistency that he could detach them from himself and study them impersonally. That is why his plays are models of form. And if there be an Academy of Letters that takes its duties seriously, Rosmersholm and Ghosts are, we presume, in the hands of every young person within ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell |
