"Impassive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wagon wearily, and looked ahead. The end of the two loaded corn-rows which he was robbing was in sight, and he returned doggedly to his task. The ardor of the morning had succumbed to the steady grind of physical toil, and he worked with the impassive ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... His lips were flecked with a soapy froth, and sometimes he choked and gurgled and became inarticulate. And through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the dominion of Sparta, Pausanias. Increase of dominion is waste of life and treasure. We have few men, little gold; Sparta is content to hold her own." "Good," said Gelon, with impassive countenance. "What care we who leads the Greeks into blows? the fewer blows the better. Brave men fight if they must, wise men never fight if they ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... hosses, stranger," said Allen slowly, as the ruffian suddenly collided with his impassive figure. "I'm a sick man comin' in yer for medicine. I've got somethin' wrong with my heart, and goin's on like this yer kinder ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... spare me a few minutes in my study?" he said. His face was perfectly impassive; only the peculiar brilliancy of his eyes spoke of the white-hot anger he ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... going to succeed in the Navy, sir," Cantor continued, then, seeing the young ensign's face still impassive, he added, ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... you approaching the house, sir,' said Martin with impassive courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. 'My instructions are to assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the lot I had last year. "The War'll be over soon." "What 'opes?" "No bloody fear!" Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct." They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect. Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white; Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night: And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79), Who always must be firing at the Boche ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... bowed his head silently. Then, turning his face to the door, he beckoned Tufnell to approach. The old servant advanced tremblingly into the room, vainly endeavouring to compose his horror-stricken face into a semblance of the impassive mask of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... silence. He peered contemplatively at the dark silhouette of the Arab, motionless, impassive in the dusk. Then he frowned a very little, which was as near to anger as he ever verged. Thoughtfully he ate a couple of the little temmin wafers and a few dates. Rrisa ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... gentleman scarcely turned his head, but continued to watch the heating of the irons. At length, satisfied that all was ready, he turned and walked in front of the line, examining each prisoner attentively with an absolutely impassive face. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at by a curious and prejudiced public, was more torturing than the pangs of Marsyas; and she wondered whether a courageous Roman captive who was shorn of his eyelids, and set under the blistering sun of Africa, suffered any more keenly; but motionless, apparently impassive as a stone mask, on whose features pitiless storms beat in vain, she bore without wincing the agony of her humiliation. Very white and still, she sat hour by hour with downcast eyes, and folded hands; and those who watched most closely could detect only one change of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was absorbed in watching Mrs. Duncombe's restless hands; and the look was intercepted by Lady Tyrrell's eyes, which flashed back sympathetic amusement, with just such a glance as used to pass between them in old times; but the effect was to make the Member's face grave and impassive, and his eyes fix on ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... way, holding the knob firmly in his right hand. Mrs. Martin stood well out of sight behind the door, from an undefined fear of getting in range of Miss Bowyer, whose calm bullying had put Mrs. Martin into some impassive state not laid down ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... the Chief stood by him, his usually impassive face quite lit up with animated interest. After a while he played to us on his cornet, his favourite tune being 'God save the Queen.' Mr. Needham told us a few deeply interesting details of his work among ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... as he crouched in a corner of 'his burning home, fifty daggers were to rasp against each other in his body. He sunk his face in his hands, and a shudder passed over his gaunt frame. Then he rose, and folding his arms, he resumed his impassive attitude. Louis took up the pen from the table, and drew the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his cheek flushed a little as I spoke, with more of earnestness or passion than any incident, however exciting, is wont to provoke among his impassive race. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... by our winter fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was never known to answer a question or to ask one. She never smiled; the cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face, frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... And this impassive, stolid, hard-shell pilgrim, knowing his business like the bully scout he was, had come stumbling, sliding, rolling and waddling down out of those fastnesses, because there was something right here which he wanted. And he had ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to give him a lesson in blandness. She wore a veil, and carried a muff—outworks of her self-protective, impassive demeanour. She was pale, and as calm as pale. She would not take the easy chair which he offered her. Useless to insist—she would not take it. He brushed away letters and documents from the small chair to his right, and she took that chair... Having taken it, she insisted that he should resume ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... another. The grandeur of gold and heavy glass make you feel as if you were swimming under water in some great untroubled lake. And as you tread softly and silently over the thick carpets it is something like swimming. There is an intense stillness about each roulette table. Even the winners are impassive. And the groups are gloomier still at the stables where they are playing "Trente ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... stillness of the night. Once, twice, thrice! once, twice, thrice! once, twice, thrice! It was an alarm that did not need to be interpreted to the sensitive ear of Hog Mountain. The faces of the old women became curiously impassive. The firelight carried their shadows from the floor to the rafters, where they seemed to engage in a wild dance,—whirling, bowing, jumping, quivering; but the women themselves sat as still as statues. They were evidently waiting for something. They did not wait long. In ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... never came to her aunt's assistance. At the first fright she seemed slightly agitated, but she now sat impassive on her pony, and even ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and a face impassive as a mask she met the footman's look. By her side her aunt was smiling recognition, but Anthony never saw that. Gazing upon the beauty of that face which he had once transfigured, he found it frozen. That proud red bow of a mouth, that had been his for the taking, might have ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... hopeless in its intensity, swept over Mr. Oakhurst's usually impassive face, that the surgeon started. "You are hit," he said, glancing ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... shiver, and as she looked up in his dark impassive face, and saw the deep-seated melancholy in his eyes, a sort of ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... soon covered by an ocean of soft hats, and the crowd of demonstrators, continually increased by sight-seers, having crossed the bridge, struck its dark wave against the walls of the legislative enclosure. Cries, murmurs, and songs went up to the impassive sky. "It is Chatillon we want!" "Down with the Deputies!" "Down with the Republicans!" "Death to the Republicans!" The devoted band of Dracophils, led by Prince des Boscenos, struck up ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... passionate and sensitive as a woman, she presents the most striking contrast to Andre, who, after a stay of ten years at our court, is wilder, more gloomy, more intractable than ever. His cold, regular features, impassive countenance, and indifference to every pleasure that his wife appears to love, all this has raised between him and Joan a barrier of indifference, even of antipathy. To the tenderest effusion his reply is no more than a scornful smile or a frown, and he never seems happier ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... impassive in the presence of this warm admiration. He wanted to return it, to show her how fond he was of her, and while in this mood he confided to her that he, too, had applied for the subsidy. What did she think of that? He had really applied, briefly ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... or cast in bronze or carve in stone or tint with encaustic pigments or colour with paint, in a word, every attempt at artistic representation by the hand of man after a brief lapse of time loses its truth and becomes motionless and impassive like the face of a corpse. So far superior to all pictorial art in respect of truthful representation is the craftsmanship of the smooth mirror and the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want to do before; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come and go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, to a great extent, impassive (as shallow people think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches the feeling, as it ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... farewell, left her. He was a simple man, as illiterate as a drummer, and, like everybody else in Rodez, completely under the sway of the blood-curdling reports. When the performance was at an end, he approached Clarissa, who, with an impassive air, was making her way to the exit, and asked whether she had been trying to jest with him, and she, her lips dry, and something like a prying hatred in her eyes, answered, laughing again: "No, no, Captain." After that her face resumed its earnest, almost sad, expression ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the streets to their depots, motley as a circus—foresters, moujiks in fetid sheepskins, cattlemen, and rivermen, Siberians, tow-haired Finns, the wide gamut of the races of Russia, all big or biggish, with those impassive, blunt-featured faces that mask the Russian soul, and all sober. No need now to make men of them before making soldiers; no inferno at the way side-stations and troop trains turning up days late. It is as if, at the cost of those annual 780,000,000 rubles, Russia had ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... and he looked round at the mummy-case. Her long-dead Majesty was still reclining in it, silent and impassive. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... prate there met us, as it fell, Aristius, my good friend, who knew him well. We stop: inquiries and replies go round: "Where do you hail from?" "Whither are you bound?" There as he stood, impassive as a clod, I pull at his limp arms, frown, wink, and nod, To urge him to release me. With a smile He feigns stupidity: I burn with bile. "Something there was you said you wished to tell To me in private." "Ay, I mind ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... turned round, and our eyes met for a moment; they were large, melancholy eyes, and the face, beautiful as it was, was very worn and thin, and absolutely without colour. I could see her profile plainly all through the service, but the dull impassive expression of the countenance that she had turned upon me gave me a sensation of pain; she looked like a person who had experienced some great trouble or undergone some terrible illness. I could not make up my mind ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... at Johnson, whose face was impassive. He had his hand on the knob of the door and he opened it before ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hand, he possesses, above many others, a power of creating, hidden and inborn, which he exercises almost unconsciously. Living, spontaneous and yet impassive he is the glorious agent of a mysterious function, through which he dominated literature and will continue to dominate it until the day when he desires ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Tr'en over seven feet tall and correspondingly broad, sat in the great chair, his four fingers tapping gently on the table near him, staring at Korvin and his guards. The guards stood on either side of their captive, looking as impassive as jade statues, six and a ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... sat there, perfectly mute, for about half an hour, I suppose. The chief was almost as impassive as an Englishman. I have seen the Almehs in Cairo, but I have never seen real poetry of motion—mind more completely expressed by matter—than that woman's body translating the anguish she endured; languor turning to deep weariness, weariness to agony, agony to despair. There ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... happens now and then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant waifs, impassive and mysterious—a quarter-column of tidings tucked away on the second page of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... grey, hard face was impassive and sphinx-like, yet to the narrative of how Richard Harborne was discovered he listened with a rapt attention it was ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... The tone was perfectly impassive, but the words expressed a world. For a moment the Seraph's eyes flashed on him with a look that made him feel nearer his death than he had been near to it in all his days; but Rockingham restrained ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... party. While the minister (Was it the Reverend Richard Buck or the good Alexander Whittaker?) read the marriage service of the Church of England, the eyes of haughty cavalier and of impassive savage met above the kneeling pair and sought to read each other. And a strange fate hung over the pale-face groom and the dusky bride—that in her land and by her people he should be slain; that in his land and among his people ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, scurrilous, self-assertive experts. His impassive periods were always associated with whimsical sensitiveness of being censured if his adventures should miscarry. No one knew better than he that a man in his position could only be popular if he continued to succeed. He had many critics, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... stock. Chickens clucked in coops at wagon side. Uncounted children thrust out tousled heads from the openings of the canvas covers. Dogs beneath, jostling the tar buckets, barked in hostile salutation. Women in slatted sunbonnets turned impassive gaze from the high front seats, back of which, swung to the bows by leather loops, hung the inevitable family rifle in each wagon. And now, at the tail gate of every wagon, lashed fast for its last long journey, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... stared up at her with the impassive curiosity of a man just coming back from The Unknown. Then he shook ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... defiantly at Gower as she says this. Gower could have laughed too. There could, indeed, be hardly anything stranger than the scene as it stands—comedy and tragedy combined. The husband cold, impassive, stern, and over his shoulder the charming face of his little wife peeping—all mirth and fun ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... shoot a covert look at Mr. Pless. He was gazing at the half-hidden box with a perfectly impassive face, and yet I knew that there was a smile about ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... a notably handsome man, tall and broad, with regular, impassive features and blue eyes exactly the colour of Arthur's. Save that his back was slightly rounded and that his closely-cropped hair was iron-gray, he showed little mark of his sixty years. He seemed to me the very type of an English yeoman, not markedly intelligent outside his own ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... his way homeward from Cavendish Square he abandoned the direct route to pass by the door of Anna's flat. Impassive by nature and training, he was conscious to-night of a strange sense of excitement, of exhilaration tempered by a dull background of disappointment. Her sister had told him that it was true. Anna was married. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this bravely, and at the moment he meant it; but as his father's big, impassive face and cold, keen eyes came back to him his courage sank, and in spite of his firm resolution some part of his secret anxiety communicated itself to the girl, who asked many questions, with intent to find out more particularly ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... and calesas, the Europeans, the Chinese, the natives, each in his own peculiar costume, the fruit-venders, the money-changers, the naked porters, the grocery stores, the lunch stands and restaurants, the shops, and even the carts drawn by the impassive and indifferent carabao, who seems to amuse himself in carrying burdens while he patiently ruminates, all this noise and confusion, the very sun itself, the distinctive odors and the motley colors, awoke in the youth's mind a ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... on the scene of hostilities, the young man had just possessed himself of the walking-stick, and was deep in a complex argument with the head-waiter on the ethics of the matter. The head-waiter, a stout impassive German, had taken his stand on a point of etiquette. "Id is," he said, "to bring gats into der grill-room vorbidden. No gendleman would gats into ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... nerve," retorted the stranger. The keen eyes, flattening almost to slits, fixed on the impassive ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... shoulders from the wall a couple of inches to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my side of the table, and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present anchored in Rushcutters' Bay. He had "remarked" her,—a pretty little craft. He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy he went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated, breathing visibly the while, "Ah, yes. A little craft painted black—very pretty—very pretty (tres coquet)." After a time he twisted ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... we could not get one single romantic association to cluster about him, we very soon got to like the old gentleman. It is true that at our first meeting, after saying "How d'ye do" to me and receiving in impassive placidity the kiss which my wife gave him, he relapsed into dead silence, and continued to smoke a clay pipe with a long stem and a short bowl. This instrument he filled and re-filled every few minutes, and it seemed to be his only employment. We plied him with questions, of course, but to these ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... And raising the cold impassive hand covered with great gems, that rested idly on the rich velvets so near to her touch, she gently kissed it,—then rose up to her ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... impassive face showed astonishment, not unmixed with dismay, and he looked doubtfully toward his master, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... predecessors and contemporaries, find the determining grounds of volition in ideas, but in the feelings. After curtailing the rights of the reason in the theoretical field in favor of custom and instinct, he dispossesses her also in the sphere of practice. Impassive reason, judging only of truth and falsehood, is an inactive faculty, which of itself can never inspire us with inclination and desire toward an object, can never itself become a motive. It is only capable of influencing the will indirectly, through the aid of some affection. Abstract ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the old man admiringly and in silence. What a strong, sturdy spirit, as hard and cold and clear as ice! That veteran had doubtless had his passions like other men. At moments, through his calm impassive exterior, a romantic vehemence would seem to burn, a poetic ardor, that politics had smothered, but which smouldered on as volcanic fires lie dormant rumbling from time to time under the mantle of snow on a mountain peak. But he had known how to adjust his life ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension, of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry, such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... I said. "I shall not dance with you once," and I took my former place by Mrs. Sandford. Preston fumed; declared that I was just like a piece of marble; and went away. I did not feel quite so impassive as he said ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... moments, broke down in a violent fit of sobbing; and this so affected her offspring that he emitted a noise like the hoot of a dog. As he started it without warning, so abruptly he ended it, and looked around with an impassive face. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... possessed his impulsive soul in patience. For two months he watched Monck go his impassive and inscrutable way, asking no further question. The gaieties of the station were in full swing. Christmas ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... telling of the most prominent names in the southwest cattle industry Tom Thorne took a step into the room and lighted a match. The little flame, held high above his head, burned down to his fingers while he stared at the impassive faces surrounding him. Probably he had thought to interfere dutifully in a local affair of considerable seriousness; and there is no doubt that Tom Thorne was never afraid of his duty. But here was Arizona itself gathered for purposes of its own. He hardly noticed when ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... look had sent him away down the stairs to the ground floor studio. Arabian had not missed her message, but he was apparently quite impassive, and did not show that he had noticed the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... gentleman en mufti, but wearing a military cap with an oil-skin cover, was revealed. Until now he had seemed an impassive supernumerary. But he was biding his time, and—with due respect be it said—saving his wind, and now in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... awaited the two boys. The captain was stumping back and forth near the fire, his usually good-natured face nearly purple with suppressed anger, while, squatting on his heels before the fire, sat Indian Charley, his face impassive but his keen beady eyes watching ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... were spoken in a low tone and almost as if in soliloquy, and her face seemed to grow colder and more impassive if possible. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... tumbled stillness on the mud. Just now the flood was coming in. From all along the outer fringes of the flats came a hoarse, desolate roar; and in the steady light the edges of the ice-field began to turn and flash, the strange motion creeping gradually inland toward that impassive bulwark of the dyke. Had it been daylight, the chaotic ice-field would have shown small beauty, every wave-beaten floe being soiled and streaked with rust-coloured Tantramar mud. But under the transfiguring touch of the moon the unsightly levels changed to plains of infinite mystery—expanses ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for a moment, motionless as stone, his dark face immutable and impassive. Then he stretched wide his right arm in the direction of No Name Mountains, now losing their last faint traces of the afterglow, and he shook his head. He made the same impressive gesture toward the Sonoyta Oasis with ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... perpetual faint questioning look in his eyes denied, Hill looked an ideal man servant, who knew his station in life, and was able to uphold it with meek dignity. From the top of his trimly-cut grey crown to his neatly-shod silent feet he exuded deference and respectability. His impassive mask of a face was incapable—apart from the faint query note in the eyes—of betraying any of the feelings or emotions which ruffle ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... clowns." They did not budge. He hesitated a moment. The landlady saw, calmly put down her work, and coming up, pulled a hircine man or two hither, and pushed a hircine man or two thither, with the impassive countenance of a housewife moving her furniture. "Turn about is fair play," she said; "ye have been dry ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... jovial comments on his mate's tranquil life and philosophic sagacity, Toni again ejaculated mentally, without the captain's suspecting anything from his impassive countenance: "Now he has quarreled with the woman. He has tired of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Harold it seemed as though he and all the people of the room were dead—that only his brain was alive. Then Mrs. Excell burst into sobbing. The judge looked away into space, his dim eyes seeing nothing that was near, his face an impassive mask of colorless flesh. The old lawyer's words had stirred his blood, sluggish and cold with age, but his brain absorbed the larger part of his roused vitality, and when he spoke his voice had an unwontedly flat ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... safe?" panted Rob, whose nerves were throbbing with excitement; and he was wondering that his new friend could be so impassive and cool. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep— in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending—the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of Death. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... scaffolding all was a tumult of uproar and confusion, shouting and gesticulation; only the King sat calm, sullen, impassive. The Earl wheeled his horse and sat for a moment or two as though to make quite sure that he knew the King's mind. The blow that had been given was foul, unknightly, but the King gave no sign either of acquiescence or rebuke; he had willed that ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... sister sat there on the chair, her hand hanging idly by her side, her white face set and impassive as that of an Egyptian Sphinx, and the large eyes gazing far away through the window, against which the rain was beating—far away out into the night and the storm. She heard the surging of the storm, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... branches of the forest. Close under the protecting river-bank sped our light canoes, cutting their way through the gray waters. The dark-skinned crews bent to the paddle silently, with corded muscles tightening in their lean brown arms, and still, impassive faces fixed upon the seething current or the ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... day, we depart all at once, for no definite reason, depart empty-handed, with an impassive face and without looking round. We perform the most energetic action almost without knowing it, for even our will shirks the too-heavy task. It dreads the preparations, it would like to be able to tell us feebly that ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... of Montague sat Somers, lord keeper; older, of more steady demeanor, of fuller figure, of bold face and full light eye, a politician, not a ponderer. At the right of Montague, grave, silent, impassive, now and again turning a contemplative eye about him, sat that great man. Sir Isaac Newton, known then to every nobleman, and now to every schoolboy, of the world. A gem-like mind, keen, clear, hard and brilliant, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... slight surprise when Mr. Apthorp and the others laughed as though they thought it humor. He saw no humor in it. He supposed that, except musicians, every one thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore. Sitting thus at his beer-table, mentally impassive, he was one day surprised to notice that his mind followed the movement of a Sinfonie. He could not have been more astonished had he suddenly read a new language. Among the marvels of education, this was the most marvellous. A prison-wall that barred his senses on one great side of life, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... for the Indians still showed an impassive face, but his voice was scornful. "Is Man-with-loud-tongue a yellow coyote? Does he carry the heart of a squaw? Will he cry like ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... impassive on the teleceiver screen, Commander Walters listened to Strong's report, and when the Solar Guard officer finished, he grunted ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... since he was not demonstrative in his affections and friendships. From his judicial temper, and the ascendency of his intellectual faculties over passion and interest, he was apparently cold in his nature, and impassive in view of all passing events, to such a degree that his humanity seemed to be based on a philosophy very much akin to that of Marcus Aurelius. His sympathies were keen, however, and many a distressed woman had cause for gratitude to him for interference with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... he was first in the repeated charges which he made at every favourable opportunity, to arrest the progress of the pursuers, and to cover the retreat of his regiment. The object of aim to every one, he seemed as if he were impassive to their shot. The superstitious fanatics, who looked upon him as a man gifted by the Evil Spirit with supernatural means of defence, averred that they saw the bullets recoil from his jack-boots and buff-coat ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... matter," said the impassive Mr. Juniper, "only I have been down among the 'orses at the yard till my throat is full of dust. So your lady has ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... snow, an abrupt command to halt, and they found themselves surrounded by a dozen troopers. Prescott recognized the faded blue uniform and knew at once that he was in the midst of Yankee horsemen. The girl beside him gave one start at the sudden apparition and then became calm and impassive. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... their roomy spring wagon. The old man—he was not more than fifty-five—had two pretty daughters and a handsome son. Mrs. Dumble, a comely woman, always wore grey clothes and grey thread gloves. She had a pale, too impassive face, and her dark hair, tightly drawn back from her brows, had curious white streaks in it. Ajax said a thousand times that he should not sleep soundly until he had determined whether or not Mrs. Dumble was a party to her husband's misdemeanours. My brother's imagination, as I have ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... raucous, shouting voice, his phrases, his anecdotes, his "my men," "my friends," "fellows"; his "I'm saved, I hope, and you can be!" Oh, the phariseeism of that "I hope!" At the end of his uproar, he called upon those of his hearers (we had all sat quite silent and impassive during the performance) who were willing to be saved, to stand up in their places. All the stool pigeons arose (poor devils), and a few other bewildered persons who fancied it expedient to be on ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... was so matter-of-fact that Rainey felt his horror gather slowly as he stared at the impassive Oriental. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... appreciation of character. The old man unconsciously possessed the spirit of a soldier, and it had been evoked by the honest, uncompromising attitude of the Southerner. His emotion passed away. His manner became as courteous as it was cold and impassive. "You are right, sir," he said, "we are hostile and will probably ever remain so, but you have put things in a light which enables me to comply with your wishes. I take you at your word, and will buy your labor as I would ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... perceived that in argument he would accomplish nothing against this impassive, resolute young man. The menace of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... her, and I knew it was impossible. My eyes swept over the form beside me, as she sat cold, impassive; her attitude one of quiet ease, her whole mien the essence of calm self-possession. That excess of pride and dignity and supercilious arrogance that in Lucia replaced, at times, her seductive plasticity at others, had always exercised a violent ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation, which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... precipitately, and Mrs. Duncan found her an hour afterward, basting the fowls with a skewer, while the iron ladle lay at her feet, and with a stony, impassive expression on her face which always meant strong ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... busybodies in other women's matters; or they are comically odd, self-ridiculing, and unrestful; or, worst of all, they have become morally attenuated by a thwarted love or a long course of dismal and absurd self-sacrifice and are so resigned, colorless, and impassive, that, like Naaman, we are tempted to go away in a rage. But where shall we find another Clara,—beautiful, attractive, radiant, serenely living her happy life, "aimless," but not "anxious," doing every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... the pyramid itself is standing. What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of a grain of corn? or how can either idea suffer laceration? As is the effect, such is the cause: as thought, such is the power that thinks; a power impassive ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... and scentless; his writings have always the full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he recognized in himself the possibility of a like exuberance. He could never take the rigorously impassive attitude which Flaubert taught Maupassant to assume. Daudet not only feels for his characters, but he is quite willing that we should be aware ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in. The trunks of near trees stood like the bars of a stupendous cage, through which she looked at the raging demons beyond. Burning limbs fell, shooting through the air with trails of flame. Every tree was a pillar of fire. Here a bough, still untouched, hung, dark and impassive, against the lurid, surging chaos. Then the whirlwind of heated air struck it, and you could see it writhe and twist, until its darkness burst into flame. There stood what was late a lordly maple, but now,—trunk, and limb, and branch,—a tree of living ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... this moment, is to overwhelm the celibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high social rank," says a young English ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Anchor. Very important indeed! At once. Wait till he comes," repeated the old man, with a face of the most impassive solemnity, and emphasizing every sentence with ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... woman with a razor was shearing her eyebrows into a delicate line, and all round her forehead trimming disorderly hairs. Four women, seated on their heels in front of her, were fidgeting over her face; she, impassive as a log in their hands. A vast deal of singing and drumming went on all the time, a row of musicians keeping it up all round the room. The girl was washed; then her hair, magnificent black hair down to her heels, knotted in two great bows on either side ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Lisle could no longer satisfy him. The antiquity so marvelously restored by Flaubert remained cold and immobile in his hands. Nothing palpitated in his verses, which lacked depth and which, most often, contained no idea. Nothing moved in those gloomy, waste poems whose impassive mythologies ended by finally leaving him cold. Too, after having long delighted in Gautier, Des Esseintes reached the point where he no longer cared for him. The admiration he felt for this man's incomparable painting had gradually dissolved; now he was more astonished than ravished ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been—and Bessie dimly hinted that they were severe to agony at times—they were resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess—as cold, as unyielding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... after staring at her impassive face for a full minute. "Now I'm sure you've been making fun of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was patient of the denouement, which began to postpone itself with delicate delays. After repeated agitations at the door among portiers, proprietors, and waiters, whose fluttered spirits imparted their thrill to the spectators, while the coachman and footman remained sculpturesquely impassive in their places, the carriage moved aside and let an energetic American lady and her family drive up to the steps. The hotel people paid her a tempered devotion, but she marred the effect by rushing out and sitting on a balcony to wait for the delaying royalties. There began to be more ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... be shunted out of Gregory's," supplemented MacNab, who, with impassive face, was lolling in a long chair, a silent ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... clean-shaven face, the heavy-lidded eyes of an almost Asian deadness, the upper lip projecting beyond the lower, a drift of careless hair sticking boyishly forward from the forehead, the nose thin, the mouth mobile but decisive, the whole set and colour of the face stonelike and impassive. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... his impassive face, he received the Baron's instructions; then he left the room; and five minutes later a large military wagon, covered with miller's tarpaulin stretched in the shape of a dome, was being rapidly driven away under the heavy rain at the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... such duties before and none had occasion to complain of the manner in which he did it. In these days of unbridled excesses and merciless outbursts of rage, he remained throughout—on these occasions—temperate and even impassive. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... still young enough to be piqued by Ogden Van Lennop's utter indifference to herself. He was now established in the hotel, apparently for an indefinite stay, and they met frequently in the corridors and on the stairs. His attitude of impassive politeness nettled her far more than the alert hostility of the Dago ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Turnbull. "I don't take no observations. Ye see," he added, looking hard at Leslie's impassive face to discover whether the latter had noticed anything peculiar in such an extraordinary admission, "my sight's a little bit peculiar; I can see ordinary things plain enough, but when it comes to squintin' through a sextant I ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... cashier, who had been noting the details of her appearance with unqualified interest. Her eyes had an increased brilliancy and there was a faint flush on her cheeks, but otherwise there was nothing in her impassive face to show how fast her heart was beating as she waited in the silence to learn if the blow she meant to strike had been well-timed ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Dead horses were thick on each side of an avenue of trees on the southern side of the city, lying in their blood and bowels. The traffic policeman on "point duty" on the Arras-Cambrai road had an impassive face under his steel helmet, as though in Piccadilly Circus; only turned his head a little at the scream of a shell which plunged through the gable of a corner house above him. There was a Pioneer battalion along the road out to Observatory Ridge, which ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... silence in the Executive Chamber—a silence that continued. The dignitaries at the door deigned to accord to Morrison neither glance nor word; they would not indulge his incredible audacity to that extent. As to Rellihan, they did not feel like stooping so low as to waste words on the impassive giant who personified an ignorant insolence that made no account of personalities. They adventured in no move against that obstacle in their path, either by concerted attack or individual effort to pass. They looked like wakened sleepers who ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... therein manifested the pity of the God who, 'Like as a father pitieth his children, pitieth them that fear Him,' and pities yet more the more miserable men who fear and love Him not. The Christian's God is no impassive Being, indifferent to mankind, but 'One who in all our afflictions is afflicted, and, in His love and in His pity,' redeems ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... with the incessant commerce of banks, laboratories, chancellories, and houses of business, are the strokes which oar the world forward, they say. And they are dealt by men as smoothly sculptured as the impassive policeman at Ludgate Circus. But you will observe that far from being padded to rotundity his face is stiff from force of will, and lean from the efforts of keeping it so. When his right arm rises, all the force in his veins flows straight from shoulder to finger-tips; not an ounce is diverted ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... great war-chariot of Cuchullain into the thick of battle. His swaying form fell softly upon the greensward, and above it floated a luminous figure clad in a crimson mantle, but whose face and bare arms were of the color of burnished bronze. So impassive and commanding was his face that even Liban faltered a little as she stole to his side. Cuchullain watched the two figures as they floated slowly over the dark expanse of the lake, till they suddenly disappeared, seemingly into its quiet surface. ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the calmness of the Egyptian forsook him: though his countenance remained impassive, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... inside borne to the hospital, The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd, The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits, What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, What ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... bridged the long gap of years, of travel and separation. They expressed so much in so few words. Rosas, as if invincibly attracted by the name of Marianne, was the first to pronounce it, while Guy listened with an impassive air to the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... impassive face changed ever so slightly. "India," he said, "is a somewhat vague term, and covers a somewhat large area for a possible meeting-place. Your description, Mrs Jefferson, is tantalising in the extreme to a male mind, ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the glorious victory at Lepanto, his countenance had remained impassive, and he had continued in the chapel at the devotional exercises which the messenger from Don John had interrupted. Only when the news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew first reached him, had he displayed an amount of cheerfulness equal to that which he manifested at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering; he emerged impassive. He had entered in despair; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... louder than anyone. He was evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... search at once. He examined the whole place minutely, foolishly it seemed to Christina, who stood by the door apparently impassive but following all his movements with her eyes. He was particularly careful in overhauling a coat that her father had worn, and having gone through the three rooms he walked out and round the house. There was no place near where a man might hide but in the tank, and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... the border States—of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and possibly New Jersey. These are the States that are to suffer. Gentlemen from New York and the North East, in the bosom of their families, their towns and cities not in the least danger, may be as impassive as the granite rocks that bind their shores. We have a deeper, a more vital interest; therefore we feel and speak. When Pennsylvania received the invitation of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and other States had seceded. Dangers were accumulating. Then ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... cheer and encouragement. Ten cars ahead, at the cab, Big Ben and Toomey, too, were leaning far out and eagerly watching the chase; the sergeant and his men, wondering much at the sight, but professionally impassive, strode to the end of the platform for better view, then all of a sudden began to shout and swing their caps, and before Cullin could recover from his surprise the foremost rider, tall, spare, with long, grizzled mustache ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... return directly she had any news. Then, with hope in her heart, she hurried to the well-remembered academy, where she had sought work so many eventful months ago. As before, she looked into the impassive face of "Turpsichor" while she waited for the door to ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the brief altercation Wimp had come up. Even he could not make his face quite impassive, and there was a suppressed intensity in the eyes and a quiver about the mouth. He went in on Denzil's heels, blocking up the doorway with Grodman. The two men were so full of their coming coups that they struggled for some seconds, side by side, before ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... impassive, while the crowd which yesterday had hailed him as Lord of Misrule now greeted him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... had hurriedly declared that he wanted to speak to a man who was passing, and had disappeared. The doctor walked to the door, mounted his horse, and rode away. I noticed, however, that there was a slight smile on his bronzed, impassive face. This led me to wonder if he was entirely ignorant of the purpose for which he had been questioned, and the effect of his information. I was confirmed in the belief by the remarkable circumstances that nothing more was said of it; the incident ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... molested personally,—a short, sharp tussle with a cook had proved him to be a man of muscle,—behind his back his walk was mimicked, his precise attitudes were openly bantered. But Ambroise stood this torture gantlet equably. He had lived long enough among Germans to copy their impassive manner and, coupled with a natural contempt for his fellow-monkeys in the cage, he knew that perhaps in a day a new man would receive all these unwelcome attentions. Moreover, his work, clear-cut, unobtrusive, and capable, pleased M. Joseph. And when the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was arguing with the impassive individual on the top step outside, and I saw him get out his pocketbook and offer a crisp bundle of bills. But the man from the board of health only smiled and tacked at his offensive sign. After a ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stopped once more and raised his eyes to Don Luis, who remained silent and impassive, though a tear glistened on his lashes. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... at the man guiltily, but Driver was as impassive as ever. "Very good, sir," he said. He could not understand what had happened to Micky; as a rule, he refused even to take his own railway ticket or speak to a porter. This new ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... a contradiction in terms; for "phlegmatic" means "impassive, self-restrained," while "hypochondriac" means "morbidly anxious" (about one's health). Defoe's lack of scholarship was a common jest among his more learned adversaries, such ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... roused by the noise of the dogs, should come in their turn, and seize him as a thief? At all events, that would be comparative safety; at least, they would rescue him from these monsters. But no: nothing stirred in the silent, impassive house. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... There were the cannon, the soldiers, Napoleon on horseback, all toiling up the steep ascent, perfect in miniature. In another was Napoleon, flag in hand, leading the charge across the bridge of Lodi. In still another was Napoleon in Egypt, before the Pyramids, seated, impassive, on his horse, gazing at the Sphinx, as if about to utter his immortal words to his soldiers: "Here, forty centuries look down upon us." These object lessons of the past are all gone now and the land used ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... application, peering over his glasses with the lack-lustre eyes that judges have, eyes that stare dimly out through the mask of wax or parchment that judges wear. My Lord might be the mummy of some high tyrant revitalised after centuries of death and resuming now his sway over men. Impassive he sits, aloof and aloft, ramparted by his desk, ensconced between curtains to keep out the draught—for might not a puff of wind scatter the animated dust that he consists of? No creature of flesh and blood could impress us quite as he does, with a sense of puissance quite so dispassionate, so ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... honest eyes returned the other's gaze unflinchingly. But Strangwise was obviously taken aback, though only for the moment. The flush that mounted to his cheek quickly died down, leaving him as cool and impassive as ever. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... little of its stubborn hostility. Hannibal turned away, and Calavius and Ninius sought to cover by eager talking the young man's ungracious reception of such signal favour. The faces of the Carthaginians remained for the most part impassive; only their dark eyes seemed to sparkle, either with wine or suppressed passion. Marcia still felt that one pair was trying to look through her, and she was conscious that Silenus, the Sicilian Greek, was making eager and indecorous ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... a conviction that if she were elsewhere—in Benham, for instance—her husband could be readily and brilliantly cured. This impassive mode of treatment seemed to her of one piece with the entire Littleton surroundings, the culmination of which was Pauline smiling in the face of death. She yearned to do something active and decided. Yet, how helpless she was! This arbitrary doctor was following his own ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... approval. Stutz bowed, with an impassive face. On Ascher's lips there was the ghost of a mournful little smile. I somehow gathered that he had come across frankness like Gorman's before and had not altogether liked it. Gorman went on. He explained, as he had explained to me, the plan he had made for forcing the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham |
