"Impersonally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is 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 its sphere of ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the language 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 all. He is like a child, hearing and feeling without understanding. It is the sensuous gratification ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... with it. But he seemed to himself 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 ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and stooped from her tall height to look at me; knelt upon the moss, and touched me impersonally, like the spirit ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... you wait here for your sailings?" she asked impersonally after another pause. "It's so much ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... bears 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 through ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... be beautiful, and the furnishing should be dignified and in perfect scale with the rest of the house. Marble stairs and tapestry and old carved furniture and beautiful rugs, or the simplest possible furniture, may be used, but the hall should have an impersonally hospitable air, one which gives the keynote of the house, but reserves its full expression until the privacy of the ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... argued Salome, who wished to thresh the matter out impersonally. "You'd hardly like it just the same if folks were to insult ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... impersonally, "that to a person in your position—a person beginning to reap what he has sown, lying is always the next course. But you must act as your conscience dictates. You may be sure that if you decide to tell the truth, I'll certainly stand by you ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... he met Lorraine riding along the trail. She would have passed him with no sign of recognition, but Lone lifted his hat and stopped. Lorraine looked at him, rode on a few steps and turned. "Did you wish to speak about something?" she asked impersonally. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... not underestimate the 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 of the principles ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... seemed to follow this woman out upon the snow and the train kept impersonally on across the meadows, I could not but see that her bags were many and looked heavy, and twice she set them down to rearrange. I think a ghost of the road could have done no less than ask to help her. And I did this with an abruptness of which I am unwilling master, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... 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 ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... 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 Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... 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 Artois, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for the most part agree that the men whose business it is to "hold up" returning citizens perform their ungracious task ungraciously. Theirs is rather the attitude of the detective dealing with suspected criminals than the attitude of the public servant impersonally obeying orders. It is true that even on the New York docks one may encounter civility and kindness. There are people who assure us that they have never encountered anything else; but then there are people who would have us believe that always and under ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... wrong, she never 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 ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... raconteur usually does pause before the climax. His glance went impersonally over the faces of his audience. Most of them were leaning forward, a few were breathing hard. They were listening, straining unconsciously to get the meaning he withheld from them. Lance's right hand sagged another ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... surely, or even earlier if questions arise. Many children become acquainted with them through older children at school and receive not too pleasant impressions. In pre-adolescence the whole matter can be presented so that it is accepted objectively and impersonally. With both boys and girls there is often a feeling of prideful expectancy, and some day you may expect to hear a joyful ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... 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 ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... 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 ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... miss it. 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
... have expected that his dream should come half-true only to be 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 take separate trails. His only comfort, ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... 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 ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... 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, decadents, tout ce que vous ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... 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 next ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... impersonally, "if you believe it was because of you, you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a mess, and I hate you. Go away ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... only a part of the business of the historian. To catch some dim 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 flesh ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... has come to see that the present owners—judging from current events, and taking them as a whole, and speaking impersonally and historically—have proved themselves, on the whole, incompetent to control industries with skill and efficiency, because they have treated labour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... child beats all. Never mind, Tennie, ye'll meet up with a wild varmint some day when ye air follerin' Birt off from the house, an' I ain't surprised none ef it eats ye! But shucks!" Mrs. Dicey continued impersonally, "I mought ez well save my breath; Tennie ain't feared o' ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... 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
... controversial hatreds, political hatreds, international hatreds. Jael is the supreme instance of this hatred in action, and it is only fair to assume that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had this kind of hatred in his mind when he wrote the sentence which I quoted above. But hatred, which begins impersonally, has a dangerous habit of becoming personal as it warms to its work; and an emotion which started by merely wishing to check a wrong deed may develop before long into a strong desire to torture the wrong-doer. Whatever be the source from which it springs, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 religious matters, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... 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 recognized ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 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
... Harry Ashley occupying a prominent place near the judge's stand, and his conviction that Ashley was responsible for his imprisonment and for the sentence that was so soon to be pronounced strengthened his determination to hide his anguish from the world. For the rest, his eyes traveled impersonally over the crowded room. He would greet no one of the intimate friends who crowded as close as they dared to the place where ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... did. They did not always need words for understanding. And so they did not talk now for the sake of talking, pour out words lest silence bring embarrassment. Dolly sat resting her chin in one hand, looking at him impersonally, yet critically, he felt. He smoked a cigarette and held his peace until the labored breathing of the sick man changed to disjointed, muttering, incoherent fragments ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... curiosity seized her 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
... Puente. All rose instinctively as there entered an erect white-haired woman simply dressed in a black gown along which hung a notable crimson scarf. Murmuring the indispensable banalities I bowed distantly, meaning to observe her impersonally before an encounter. But she disarmed me by throwing herself on my mercy. She knew me already through dear Mr. Hanson Brooks. It was her first visit here; I, she saw, was of the household. Would I not show her the curiosities and protect her from the bores? Sullenly I followed her while ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... 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 comfort, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Viewed impersonally, the world is a rattling good show, but instead of smiling at it from the front row in the dress circle, I get to be one ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... 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 ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... dying, little son." She spoke calmly and impersonally, without even a quickening of the breath. The thin hand, lying on the tattered ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... and after standing a moment more, in silence, he added, impersonally, "I don't see as you ever did anything much for me, anyhow either ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... discovered that this was the only virile and amusing manner in which boys could function; that boys who were not compounded of the gutter and the mining-camp were mollycoddles and unhappy. She had taken this for granted. She had studied the boys pityingly, but impersonally. It had not occurred to her ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 about anybody and everything 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... let my dear friends in the Press Club build upon me, or weaken their force by re-electing me. Elect a young, strong, press woman. Anna, do this without any reference to personal feeling or likes or dislikes. You are capable of acting impersonally. Beg the club to do this in my name, and to pick out their best for the chairmen ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... 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 be offended, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... his saddle. "It's a right lovely mornin'," he remarked impersonally, tugging at his ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... looked her in the eyes and Mary Fortune realized that she was being addressed not as a woman, impersonally, but ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... her surprise—for even her thoughts were generally well under the control of her unbending will—she could not help thinking of Stephen—thinking of him not tenderly or remorsefully, but impersonally, as of a man who counted for nothing in her life. It was so strange to think of Stephen being ill. She had never known him to have a day's sickness in his life before. She looked back over her life much as if she were ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... own generation, and 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, and he ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... He could not imagine her, no matter how 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 charm, is beset by perils, and it was ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... 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 by a dispassionate ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... they are?" impersonally reiterated the younger man, as his gaze still followed the passing group to where it drifted and scattered through the lamp-strewn garden, like ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... ten minutes listening impersonally to Bridger, who talked loudly and enthusiastically of his plans. At the time they did not seem to concern him at all, though they involved taking Flora and Mama Joy away to Seattle to spend the winter, and ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... certainly true. A motive is a queer thing—an elusive, uncertain thing. They say—I have this from the detectives themselves-that Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Elliott both had the motive of deep affection for Mrs, Embury. Please don't be offended, I am speaking quite impersonally, now. Mr. Hendricks, I am advised, also had a strong motive in a desire to remove a rival candidate for an important election. But—neither of these gentlemen had opportunity, as each has proven a perfect and indubitable ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... her even greater cause for anxiety. It would have been difficult to put into words exactly where the change lay, but she was sure that there was a difference. Up to a short time ago she had regarded him impersonally as merely an efficient foreman whom she had inherited from her father along with the ranch. She did so still, but she could not remain blind to the fact that the man himself was deliberately striving to inject a more intimate note ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... actors, with nothing except perhaps a greater particularity in description to show that the author is there himself in the thick of it. To let the story take care of itself is the first rule of the Icelandic authors. If they have any emotion or sentiment of their own, it must go into the story impersonally; it must inform or enliven the characters and their speeches; it must quicken the style unobtrusively, or else it must be suppressed. The parts of the Sagas that are most touching, such as the death of Njal, and the parting ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... they chatted of the coming assembly and then wandered to the discussion of a book which denied love to be the greatest thing in the world. By that instinct which prompts men and women to talk of this one subject they enlarged on the topic, impersonally at first, as if it were a matter of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... married, just got 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
... speak the truth," she said, searching him for proof of this apparently, with eyes now almost impersonally direct. It would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far removed, and yet of so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to her, without thought of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and the letter, scanned them briefly, and slipped them into one of the message tubes beside her desk. "It will only be a moment, Doctor," she said impersonally. "Would you care to sit ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... favourable criticisms of countless important American newspapers,—by a singular coincidence only unimportant newspapers had ever mingled blame with their praise of her achievements. She regarded herself with detachment as a remarkable phenomenon, and therefore she could impersonally describe her career without any of the ordinary restraints—just as a shopman might clothe or unclothe a model in his window. Thus she could display her heart and its history quite unreservedly,—did they not ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... back to me 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 by personal desire. My objection to being ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... talkative. Gestures, hysterical smiles marked their 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 a hymn ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... 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
... another turn with the rock, sending the buckskin thongs deeper into the flesh, and held the burning pipe against the skin above the wound until Good Indian sickened and turned away his head. When he looked again, Peppajee was sucking hard at the pipe, and gazing impersonally at the place. He bent again, and hid the glow of his pipe against his ankle. His thin lips tightened while he held it there, but the lean, brown fingers were firm as splinters of the rock behind him. When the fire cooled, he fanned it to life again with his ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... it 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 ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... give liberally 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 their ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... coat and hat smiled as pleasantly and impersonally upon the dummy-chucker as she did upon the whiskered, fine-looking old gentleman who handed her his coat at the same time. She called the dummy-chucker's attention to the fact that his tie was a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... softer and put wise. Man, it's a bigger job than you think, and you've got to have the know-how and the nerve before you can put it over. But there—I'll keep it dark, seeing you want me to." He stretched out his hands, regarding them speculatively. "They are classy mitts," he remarked impersonally. "Yep, seemed like they were just naturally made to—do what they did. They were built for fine work." At that his jaw snapped; a spasm twitched his face; ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... wrapped her purple dressing-gown round her and went into Rose's room. She found her sitting in a low chair by the fire leaning forward, her elbows pressed on her knees, her face buried in her hands. Then, very quietly and impersonally, they discussed the situation. With a rare self-command the mother never used one expression of reprobation; if she had done so, Rose could not have spoken again. It seemed more and more, as they spoke in the two gentle voices, so much alike in tone and ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... sexual congruence of any man with any woman was supposed to be so much a matter of course that all questions of love and of the art of love could be left out of consideration. The propagative act might, it was thought, be performed as impersonally, as perfunctorily, as the early Christian Fathers imagined it had been performed in Paradise. That view is no longer acceptable. It fails to commend itself to men, and still less to women. We know that in civilization at all events—and it is often ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... manner 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 ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... so; but we have never cared to. We prefer to accept the music as it comes to us—impersonally—for what it is—not for whoever makes it." He spoke coldly, as though the subject was distasteful to him, under the circumstances ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... 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 ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the man and all that his actions implied. At Magdalena, on the stage-ride, and last night, she had trusted this stranger, a hunter of the White Mountains, who appeared ready to befriend her. And she had felt an exceeding gratitude. Still, she had looked at him impersonally. But it began to dawn upon her that chance had thrown her in the company of a remarkable man. That impression baffled her. It did not spring from the fact that he was brave and kind to help a young woman in peril, or that he appeared deft and quick ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... risen before him. He wanted, once more, 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
... his face was cool and unscrupulous as he looked at Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended in a point in space, strangely ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the thickest of the throng etc.. "He" in this passage refers impersonally to any ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... 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 that ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... said, "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
... bit uneasily. He had come to care a great deal for the girl—to find her occupying the place in his heart left empty by the death of the niece who lived in Boston. He was able less and less to consider her impersonally even in the furtherance of this project. He would have given one half the fortune he expected, really to be able to help the girl to her father. He had lied—lied, taking advantage of this passionate devotion to entice her to the shores ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... 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 the ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... intently at nothing through the store window. When no one answered Captain Morton, Van Dorn addressed the house rather impersonally: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... consolatory in that vision?" I asked, deciding that I might as well convince him he wasn't confronting an untutored she-coolie of the prairie. Whereupon he studied me more pointedly and more impersonally ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... 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 ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... If Mr. Ward and Frank Munro were there, of course there can be no doubt." Somehow Keith could not resent the implication; it was too impersonally delivered. Carter went on with cold formality and emphasis; "Mr. Keith had a very narrow escape. It was lucky for him that your hired men had 'sucked' your waterbox. In view of that we can, of course, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... stout and sturdy smell that came near to sickening Mr. Thompson. He was extraordinarily glad when he got outside. That closeness—to speak mildly—coupled with the heavy, copper-red faces, impassive as masks, impersonally listening with scarcely a flicker of the eye-lids, made Thompson forswear another attempt to preach until he could speak to them in their own tongue and speak to them in a goodly place of worship where a man's thoughts would not be imperiously ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... world, and the bodies of the lovers are things natural and unashamed, and Venus is the tyrannous instinct that controls the blood in spring. Only a Roman poet could have conceived of passion so mightily and so impersonally, expanding its sensuality to suit the scale of Titanic existences, and purging from it both sentiment and spirituality as well as all that makes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 volcanoes ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... easy, Countess," I 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 have surrounded me ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... relaxed. "Chuck it," he said without emotion. "A sensible and eddicated man," he added impersonally, "never lies when a lie couldn't do him no good. If I was you, Stanhope, I wouldn't lose a minute in cuttin' loose from ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... rather indifferent about it," Hazel replied impersonally. "But he succeeded rather easily. Even you, who should have known me better, were ready to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... left me. My chief regret now was, not that I had to die, but that my 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 this ceased ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... further argument, Captain Scraggs sought solace in a stream of adjectival opprobrium, plainly meant for Mr. Gibney but delivered, nevertheless, impersonally. He closed the pilot house door furiously behind him ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... and crude by nature. Unquestionably, such people frequently hurt you cruelly when they have no intention of doing so. It would be well if you would learn to accept other people for what they are worth, rather than being so critical of them and so easily hurt. Praise and blame are usually meant impersonally and should be so received. In other words, people praise or blame the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... yards from their house. He passed within forty feet of the door. Bland was chopping wood; Myra sat on a log, her tawny hair gleaming in the sun. Bland bestowed upon Hollister only a casual glance, as he strode past, and went on swinging his axe; and Hollister looking impersonally at the woman, observed that she stared with frank curiosity. He remembered that trait of hers. He had often teased her about it in those days when it had been an impossible conception that she could ever regard ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... object before me, while visions of my beloved one, now so close to death, passed rapidly through my fevered brain. As if Death had thus planned to torture me, before tearing my loved one from my very arms, I seemed to stand impersonally apart and watch two lovers—Zarlah and myself. Bending over her, I tried to console her with a false hope—a story of impossible fulfillment. I succeeded; and now I saw that I had laid the trap which ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... and Sheldon, coming to the team that spring, had fallen desperately in love with her. She liked Sheldon pretty well, but Carroll fascinated her. She began to wonder if there were bad feelings between the rivals—to compare them—to get away from herself and judge them impersonally. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... the cowpuncher, dryly. "An' you're welcome. I'll take the team across to the livery barn." He spoke impersonally, with scarcely a glance in her direction, and as the screen door banged behind him the girl flushed, remembering her ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... music must have felt, for one base and shameful moment, that the noise of so much of a free press as opposed his own opinions might be advantageously exchanged for it. The poem of "St. Ambrose", written in 1846, when the Germans seemed so firmly fixed in Milan, is impersonally addressed to some Italian, holding office under the Austrian government, and, therefore, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the spring again. He questioned Dorothy in regard to ranch life, social conditions, local ambitions, and the like. Quite impersonally she answered him, explaining that the folk in the valley were quite content, so long as they were moderately successful. Of course, the advent of that funny little machine, the automobile, would revolutionize ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs |
