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More "Impassive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever been thus cold and impassive towards me, ever turning a deaf ear to my prayer. Why, why can ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that looked momentous. Only the Governor's and Treasurer's were impassive, and they concealed something even graver ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... 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
... did brave battle with his own emotions. He took her little offered hand and gently kissed it. If to touch its soft smooth whiteness sent fire through his veins, there was no sign of feeling in his face. He was grave and strangely impassive. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... was true she could not accuse Lady Caroline of not leaving him to himself, for she was taking no notice of him at all, but that did not help. Exactly like foolish moths did men, in other respects intelligent, flutter round the impassive lighted candle of a pretty face. She had seen them doing it. She had looked on only too often. Almost she laid a mother hand on Briggs's fair head as she passed him. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in the midst of his colleagues. The quiet Baumann still remained his friend, but the others considered him a castaway. The merchant received his resignation with icy coldness; and even in the hour of parting, his hand lay impassive as metal in Anton's grasp. Since then, our hero had undertaken several journeys to the capital and to creditors in the family's behalf, and now he was on his way to set the new estate in order, accompanied by Karl, whom he had induced to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... driving at. Was there, indeed, no test? Had the murderer used the safest of poisons—one that left no clue? I looked covertly at Sato's face. It was impassive. Doctor Bernardo was visibly uneasy as Kennedy proceeded. Cool enough up to the time of the mention of the treasure, I fancied, now, that he was growing more and ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... his 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 his body slowly to face the glass door on our right. "A dull ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... one could have shown greater presence of mind than the young ladies,' said that gentleman; and her father's 'I am glad to hear it!' would have gratified Gillian the more, but for the impish grimace with which Wilfred favoured her behind Kalliope's impassive back. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... a swift, brilliant thought, or an indication of feeling different from, perhaps deeper than, anything which appeared before. When you believed you had learnt it line by line it would startle you by a phase quite new, and beautiful as new. For it was not one of your impassive faces, whose owners count it pride to harden into a mass of stone those lineaments which nature made as the flesh and blood representation of the man's soul. True, it had its reticences, its sacred disguises, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... idling about the parlor, dusting the already dusted furniture as they entered. The face was as impassive as a bronze statue. "Go and ask Miss Phillis, Harriet, if she is ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... in the brigade as "Beauty," and the appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved. His face, with as much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's, was at once handsome, thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant with a certain latent recklessness, under the impassive ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... hears similar comments, and there can be no doubt of the Turkish soldier's bravery, and his unusual ability to endure hardship. No one who has wrangled with a minor Turkish official, and experienced the impassive resistance he is able to interpose to anything he doesn't want to do, will underestimate what this quality might become, translated into the rugged physique and ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... persons. The very idea of the necessity of guards was not ostentatiously brought forward, because, so near the presence of the Emperor, the emanation supposed to flit around that divinity of earthly sovereigns, had credit for rendering it impassive and unassailable. Thus the oldest and most skilful courtiers, among whom our friend Agelastes was not to be forgotten, were of opinion, that, although the Emperor employed the ministry of the Varangians and other guards, it was rather for form's sake, than from any ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... white skin. The lower down one is on the social and moral plane, the more necessary to emphasize the distinction between the races. Kwong used to listen, imperturbable, thinking his own thoughts. When his master beat him, he submitted. His impassive face expressed no emotion, neither assent ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... she looked at him more tenderly on the day after she had been told. Jimmy was slow of speech and rather dirty as to his face. There were warts on his hands, and his sphinx-like countenance was impassive almost to the point of stolidity. Somehow, though, Miss Willis said to herself, in her zeal to characterize him fairly, the little thirteen-year-old product of democracy (Jimmy was the son of a carpenter and a grocer's daughter) suggested power; suggested it as a block of granite ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Secretly she was wondering if the news she brought would have any effect whatever on Theodosia's impassive calm. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an upper floor, where they found a hundred or so guests who claimed Harvard as their alma mater. Although most of his old acquaintances were quite cordial, Selwyn felt oddly self-conscious. He caught sight of Gerard Van Derwater with his impassive courtliness dominating a group of active but less impressive men; and behind them he saw Douglas Watson of Cambridge surrounded by a dozen guests; but he pleaded a headache to Forbes, and sought a secluded corner, where he remained ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... recognize at once its kinship with former experience. Mere physical likeness does not count at all. It may possess a water-front of laths and sawdust, or an outlook over broad, shimmering, heat-baked plains. It may front the impassive fringe of a forest, or it may skirt the calm stretch of a river. But whether of log or mud, stone or unpainted board, its identity becomes at first sight indubitably evident. Were you, by the wave of some beneficent wand, to be transported direct to it from the heart of ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... moment, and without another word entered the river, and, turning his horses' heads up stream for a short distance, drove out on the other side; as he turned into the regular track again, he caught a view of the young man standing impassive on the same spot ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Officer and officiating clergy, taking hasty cover in a truly novel trench; while the central figure of the obsequies, sublimely indifferent to the Hun and all his frightfulness, lay on the grass outside, calm and impassive amid ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... hand remained absolutely impassive, giving no response to my movement of inquiry. Then, looking again into the banian's eyes, I detected there a strange menacing look that greatly perturbed me. As his fingers were still limp over mine, signifying unmistakably that there was no willingness to buy, I hastened ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... he stared up at her with the impassive curiosity of a man just coming back from The Unknown. Then he ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... smashed to pulp by H.E. But the most distressing sight was an enemy sniper on one of the O. Pips already mentioned. Round him were many used cartridges and bandoliers. He sat among the thorns, eight feet above ground, with the impassive mien of a Buddha. His face had been broken by our shrapnel, and his brains were running down it; the flies were busy on a clot of red brain by his temple. He was one mess of blood, and very heavy as well as high up. My efforts to lift him down ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... than that 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 ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... The well-trained servant stood impassive. "What would madame have?" he replied. "The man walked in like a lord, keeping his face hid in a cloak. But ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... do for a fortnight yet." Ma continued to eat her dinner with an impassive face, but a twinkle made itself apparent in her eye. Lest Pa should see it, and feel encouraged thereby, she looked immovably ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this cause that many dependent natures find classic perfection cold, superb scenery unsympathetic, and the spectacle of careless happiness embittering? Others, of imaginative temperament, prefer that their idols should remain impassive, and, granted the inspiration arising from a fair appearance, ask no more, but find their delight in bestowing, from the riches of their own gratitude, adorable attributes and endless worship. Orange, as many other ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... retorted Gillian. "But it's your 'usual' that's so disastrous. You go sailing through life like a beautiful cold star—perfectly impassive and heartless." ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... lingering resentment and the appeals of her flattered vanity. She looked from Penelope's impassive face to the eager eyes of Irene. "Well—just as you say, Silas. I don't know as she WAS so very bad. I guess may be she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette, and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of Victor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on the stone. She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the gate. Faster and faster she turned, and at last ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... 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 which it ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... remainder came much more readily—and finally the entire face of the safe was disclosed. Jimmie Dale stared at it—and pursed his lips. It was an ugly safe, extremely ugly—from a cracksman's point of view! Also, there seemed a hint of irony, a jeer almost, in the impassive wall of steel that confronted him. It was one of his own make—one that had helped, in the old days, to amass the millions that his father had left to him—and it was ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the man whose life is one of routine, who has his business cares to claim his attention upon rising, visits at such an hour, loves at another, can lose his mistress and suffer no evil effects. His occupations and his thoughts are like impassive soldiers ranged in line of battle; a single shot strikes one down, his neighbors fill up the gap ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... reflection, exaggerated in narration, and intensified by the repetition of a number of writers, come to constitute a body of public belief, not strictly rational in its birth or subsequent growth, but as impassive in its resistance to argument as it was innocent of mental ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... is this great hope that forms the germ of the Messianic expectation by which they reach forth to the glories of the latter day. This attitude of Israel, in all the generations, is the one striking feature of this history. No soulless sphinx facing a trackless desert with blind eyes—no impassive Buddha ensphered in placid silence—is the genius of this people, but some strong angel poised on mighty pinion above the highest peak of Pisgah, and scanning with swift glances the beauty of the promised land. Now ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... and the escort of the preceding night could go no further. Don Miguel, with his swarthy face, and great sarape, was stalking about, rather out of humour, while the captain was regretting, in very polite tones, with his calm, Arab-looking, impassive face, that his escort could proceed no further. He seemed to think it extremely probable that we should be robbed, believed, indeed had just heard it asserted, that a party of ladrones were looking out for el Senor Ministro, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... diagram with a stern impassive face, modelled on the Sunday supplement photogravures of ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... a shade of satisfaction crossed the otherwise impassive face of Langhorne. Was it because the Bertillon dynamometer appeared at first sight to exonerate Betty Blackwell, at least so far, from any connection with the crime? It was ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... was in January, and all through February and all through the first days of March, while the cry for American wheat rose, insistent and vehement, from fifty cities and centres of eastern Europe; while the jam of men in the Wheat Pit grew ever more frantic, ever more furious, and while the impassive hand on the great dial over the floor of the Board rose, resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven, he bought steadily, gathering in the wheat, calling for it, welcoming it, receiving full in the face and ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... mornings of the Dumble family in 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 ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... up as before; his garment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original position; but his pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did, only too well, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething under that impassive exterior, for the moment I ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... left 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, exact ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... to the big house on upper Fifth Avenue. Marrineal heard his editorial writer with impassive face. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... scanned it carelessly. Suddenly he saw the heading which had attracted Lady Kelsey's attention. He read the letter, and he read the leading article. No one who watched him could have guessed that what he read concerned him so nearly. His face remained impassive. Then, letting the paper fall to the ground, he began to think. Presently he turned to the amiable stranger who had given him the paper, and asked him if he had seen ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... a chair, but he remained standing with his gaze lowered upon the floor. He was a burly man, with a heavy countenance impassive as an oriental's, out of which, startling in its unexpected rapidity, a glance flashed and stabbed as steely as Loyola's sword. His hands were clasped before him; they were, in that environment, strangely white, and covered with the scars of what, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... indifference with which they die; but this is rather a sign of stupidity than of good courage. From all of the above data, we might deduce that the individual whom we are analyzing is more often found to be cowardly than impassive and fearless; but that he is apt to become desperate, as is very frequently observed. They express that by the idea that he is hot-headed, and at such times they commit the most atrocious crimes and suicide. He is cruel, and sheds blood with but little symptoms ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of the Embassy at Kabul was to all seeming perfectly friendly, and even cordial. Every honour was paid to it, and the assembled crowds, though preserving the impassive mien of Asiatics on such occasions, respectfully saluted the British officers as they passed along. It had been arranged that the members of the Embassy and escort should take up their abode in quarters prepared for them in the Bala Hissar, the celebrated ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... demanded of the impassive Chinese steward who served me liquid refreshment at the Concordia Club. (Every town in the Insulinde has its Concordia Club, just as every Swiss town ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... accomplished and made known to those whom it chiefly concerns within one and the same hour. The mighty Juggernaut of social life, moving onwards with its everlasting thunders, pauses not for a moment to spare—to pity—to look aside, but rushes forward for ever, impassive as the marble in the quarry—caring not for whom it destroys, for the how many, or for the results, direct and indirect, whether many or few. The increasing grandeur and magnitude of the social system, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... education at all. A little while ago I went through a terrific letter from a young man, who took up seventeen enormous double sheets of paper in trying to tell me something about himself. The handwriting was good, the air of educated assurance breathed from the style was quite impassive, and the total amount of six thousand eight hundred words was sufficient to say anything in reason. Yet this voluminous writer managed to say nothing in particular excepting that he thought himself very like Lord Byron, that he was fond of courting, and that his own ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... my things!" cried Marianne to the Chintz Imp, but he remained rigidly against his shiny spotted background and refused to move, though Marianne thought she saw a twinkle in his eye, which showed he was not quite so impassive as he appeared ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... bag, which Said had just placed beside the white-enameled bedstead, turned to his impassive guide. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... 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
... she said, rising up, and gathering her bundle of fagots, for she dreaded being questioned by her grim, impassive cousin. To her surprise, he laid his hand on ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... upon her, and her features were strung up to that tension which I had often before observed in persons who were bracing up their nerves to undergo a dangerous surgical operation. They were certainly not impassive, for, in the fixed eyes that glared upon me, there was a strange ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... portrait, for instance, of Sir Robert Peel as it is drawn in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester,[Z] at the county meeting, and in the Oxford Common Room. It is not so. Faithful and literal history is possible only to an impassive spirit. Man will never write it, until perfect knowledge and perfect faith in God shall enable him to see and endure every fact in its reality; until perfect love shall kindle in him under its touch the one just emotion which is in harmony with the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a moment outside the window with his right hand extended to the sky and the moonlight blazing on his penknife—a truly formidable figure, and one which the princess never forgot; and then he walked slowly away, hiding behind a cold and impassive demeanour a mind that was tortured and a heart that had plumbed most of ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... absence, but she lost it when she went back into the high, white, view-invaded dining-room at Yaverland's End. For Marion stood by the hearth looking down into the fire, and as Richard and Ellen came in she turned an impassive face towards them, and asked indifferently, "Have you had a nice walk?" and fell to polishing her nails with the palm of her hand with that trivial, fribbling gesture that was somehow more desperate than any other ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... that I ever saw who would spontaneously interfere to save his master from drowning or from attack. An enemy might assassinate you at the feet of your favourite elephant, but he would never attempt to interfere in your defence; he would probably run away, or remain impassive, unless guided and instructed by his mahout. This is incontestable; the elephant will do nothing useful unless he is specially ordered to perform a ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and agitation over the girl's usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... while, turned the key and looked in on her husband. Blue-grey light from between the venetian blinds just dusked the room. She stood in a bluish dressing-gown, her hand on her bosom, looking down on the lean impassive face. For the briefest instant her heart had leapt with an indescribable surmise; to fall dull as lead once more. Breathing equably and quietly, the strange figure lay stretched upon the bed. 'How can he sleep? How can he sleep?' she whispered ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... had a friend. To Goutran alone did he ever open his heart, and even when he had been with him for hours, laughing and talking with gayety, he appeared before Monte-Cristo as impassive as ever. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... her to him she seemed to grow less impassive and he felt her resign herself like a tired child. He held his breath, not ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... 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 was ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... was anything more to him than a little cousin to be cared for and protected when need was. The consequence was that she had become tamed, just as a wild animal is tamed; he had remained tranquil and impassive, almost as if he did not perceive her shy advances towards friendliness. These advances were made by her after the lessons had ceased. She was afraid lest he was displeased with her behaviour in rejecting his instructions, and was not easy till she was at peace with him; and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... enquiry, half impatient, half interrogative, faded slowly from her face. She stood quite still; her impassive features seemed like a plaster cast, from which all life and feeling were drawn out. Her eyes began slowly to dilate, and she shivered as though with cold. Then the man who was watching her and wondering, knew that this was ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wide, but he kept an impassive face. "Amada Garcia! What the—whatever is she here for, and how did she ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... in our history took possession of our coolest statesmen, and even the impassive Chesterfield cried in despair, "We are no longer a nation." But the nation of which Chesterfield despaired was really on the eve of its greatest triumphs, and the incapacity of Newcastle only called to the front the genius of William Pitt. Pitt was the grandson of a wealthy governor of Madras, who ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... weary of the hollowness, the insincerity, and the meanness of artificial life, is really a very ignoble creature, when seen in the "open daylight" of truth. He is selfish, sensual, cruel, indolent, and impassive. The highest graces of character, the sweetest emotions, the finest sensibilities,—which make up the novelist's stock in trade,—are not and cannot be the growth of a so-called state of Nature, which is an essentially unnatural state. We no more believe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... She discovered the truth a year ago." Mrs. Gerard's usually impassive face was distorted and she voiced her confession ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... as Standish entered the large room where about a dozen of the men of the colony were assembled in informal council, while in the midst stood Hobomok, his red skin streaming with perspiration and stained with travel, while his usually impassive face bore an expression of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... looking down at her, impassive, almost sombre, but for the hot glow in his eyes. His caution had gone overboard. "Mayn't I ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... thought Prosper, cursing his luck. Galors never moved. "What an impassive rogue it is!" Prosper cried, with all his anger clean gone from him. He dismounted and went to where his man lay, threw his sword on the grass beside him, and proceeded to unlace Galors's hauberk. Galors sprang up and sent Prosper flying; he set his ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... 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
... episode Gunther resumed his impassive manner, nor did any other of their outdoor sports draw from him the strange, exultant look he had given Mary in the sleigh. But his feats on the toboggan slide and with his skis were sufficiently daring to supply the party with liberal thrills. His obvious skill gained him the captaincy ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon some tiny form in a balsam slide mount ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Dr. Clayton's face was impassive as a marble mask when he turned to young Corelli. For a moment, the little group stood there in embarrassed silence in the classroom, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, feigning interest in the paperweights upon Clayton's desk, or in the utterly uninspiring scenes ...
— The Fourth Invasion • Henry Josephs
... she seemed some impassive soulless creature, incapable alike of remorse or of hope, allured by no future, frightened by no past; silently fronting at last the one sunless, joyless, dreary goal, whose attainment had been for years the paramount aim of her stranded life. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle, doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers with skeleton throats and peachy ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... voice had reached the Dutchman's ears from behind the thick curtains, but he knew too much to let any expression betray him, and he smiled grimly to himself at the thought of the change that an indiscreet question would bring to the stern face of his grave and impassive host. He was an elderly man with a tender heart, and he wondered speculatively what the girl in the next room would have to pay for her own indiscretion in allowing her voice to be heard. He left the next morning early without seeing the Sheik again, escorted for some little ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... signalled to the grooms, who came forward. They were well-trained servants, recent imports from England, and Sir Oliver had billeted them where they could hear no gossip of her history. They had kept their distance with faces absolutely impassive while their mistress kissed and chatted with this old man, and they merely touched their hats, with a "Very good, miss," when she gave over the mare, saying she would walk up to the cottage ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... far with impassive faces, or barely listened, for they were as indifferent to the words as to the passion ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and daring, had completely lost his nerve, and his teeth were chattering in his head. His father, on the other hand, was emotionless and impassive as ever. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but 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 ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... subsided, the finding and the sentence were read by Blenkin and duly translated by the interpreter. Pumpenheim was quite impassive, and maintained his composure throughout the small financial transaction which followed. He counted out his notes with an air of fatalism. Having obtained a receipt for the fine he made us a little bow and turned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... figure—identical with the figures in the Mexican National Museum to which Le Plongeon, the discoverer of one of them, at Chichen-Itza, has given the name of Chac-Mool. But what filled us with dread was not this impassive stone image. Our alarm came from a much more natural cause, as we beheld, squatted on their haunches in long semicircular rows, facing the great stone idol, more than a hundred Indians. Truly, considering that our rifles were ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... wondrous cause to find, How body acts upon impassive mind; How fumes of wine the thinking part can fire, Past hopes revive, and present joys inspire; Why our complexions oft our soul declare, And how the passions in the features are; How touch and harmony arise between Corporeal figure, and a form unseen; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... one of those amazingly unsympathetic rooms in which the walls, windows and doors all have a stiff, unsalient aspect of the most hard-finished indifference to every emotion of humanity, and a perfectly rigid insensibility to the pleasures or pains of the tenants within their impassive shelter. In the whole configuration of the heartless, uncharacterized place there was not one gracious inequality to lean against; not a ledge to rest elbow upon; not a panel, not even a stove-pipe hole, to become dearly familiar to the wistful eye; not so much as a genial ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... sallow, wan face of his? I wish the Academie would give me leave to dub such faces the lunar type. It was like silver-gilt, with the gilt rubbed off. His hair was iron-gray, sleek, and carefully combed; his features might have been cast in bronze; Talleyrand himself was not more impassive than this money-lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret's, and with scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that you see ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... overhear R. Schmidt's impassive estimate of the first cabin parade, or he might have had something to repeat that would not have pleased those ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... deliberate and well-poised wisdom of the judge seemed to shower down cold truth upon the jury from his very eyes. His words were low in their tone, though very clear, impassive, delivered without gesticulation or artifice, such as that so powerfully used by Mr. Chaffanbrass; but Alaric himself felt that it was impossible to doubt the truth of such a man; impossible to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... stake than she cared to confess, and she was not equal to it. She shone, but did not blind those thousand eyes; she sang but did not cast enchantment. And David Cannon would not help her. He sat at the piano, uncouth, impassive, deliberately detached, as if he gave her and his music over to an anonymous crowd of whose existence he was hardly aware. There was something huge and static about him, something elemental as an earth-shape, containing in and by itself mysterious rhythms. His songs were things of faun-like ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... is a separate race, with its own patois, in Monaco. You would never spot it in the somewhat Teutonic cosmopolitanism of the Condamine and Monte Carlo tradesmen and hotel servants. It is not apparent in the impassive croupiers of the Casino. But within a few hundred yards, in half a dozen streets and lanes, the physiognomy, the mentality, the language of the people make you realize that regarding Monaco as a separate country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... same time I offered him the needle, and as he pierced the insect before fixing it on the cork, Sir Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and, drawing near a bandbox, he began to examine the spider crab of Guiana with a feeling of horror which was strikingly portrayed on ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... and I came into personal contact with only one or two. Grant, I saw once, after he was Lieutenant-General, on the platform of a railroad station submitting stoically to the compliments of a lively crowd of women. Once again I saw him, in academic surroundings, sturdy and impassive, an incongruous element among the caps and gowns; but it was among such men that he won what is to my mind one of his greatest victories. What triumph of Grant's was greater than his subjugation of Matthew Arnold! I rode once ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... like that of most Americans, from books and chance observation of the handful of Kwangtung men who are earning their living among us by washing our clothes. Silent, inscrutable, they flit through the American scene, alien to the last. What lies behind the riddle of their impassive faces? Perhaps I could find an answer. Then, too, it was clear, even to the most unintelligent, that a change was coming over the East, though few realized how speedily. I longed to see the old China before I made ready to welcome ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... full sense came home to him, although his face remained impassive, I saw his dark eyes shine with the light of triumph. Moreover I heard him whisper to Marut words that ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... change of guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides, an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by danger, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be resisted by even the most impassive recruit. Jack alone, of his whole party, remained indifferent and unmoved; but his wife, all of the savage in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... on the poor girl, whilst sentence upon sentence was poured into her ear; and as the death of her relation was mentioned, she fancied she perceived a movement in her seemingly impassive features. She opened her eyes, and looked at Mrs Prothero, who went to her, and seeing her lips move, knelt down by ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... 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, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... he, M. de Veron, wished to speak with him immediately. On hearing this order, Eugene looked quickly up from the desk at which he was engaged, to his father's face; but he discerned nothing on that impassive tablet either to dissipate or confirm ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... they could just stick on their stationary and impassive mounts, so drunk that they talked thickly. And they were disputing and arguing and wrangling with their voices raised almost to a shout. Thickly as they talked, we had listened to them but a few moments when we were sure that they were low-class highwaymen who had robbed two Imperial ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... over-plentifully; here and there, accentuating the picture, the gorgeous colors of some eastern prince stood out like the brighter bits in a kaleidoscope. Steele's glance swept over royalty, rank and condition. It took in persons who were more than persons—personages; it passed over the impassive face of a dark ameer who looked as if he might have stepped from one of the pages of The Arabian Nights, and lingered on a box a little farther to one side. Here were seated Sir Charles and his wife and party; and among them he could discern ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... ungratified one on the part of his daughter. He was considering, also in a leisurely sort of way, the columns of the morning paper; she considering him and the paper, and at intervals knocking with her knife against the edge of her plate, — a meditative and discontented knife, and an impassive and unimpressed plate. So breakfast went on till ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the Faith, by Law Established," and by us despised as the self-willed tyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to gratify his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled into dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable tyranny over the parental ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... his honor with impassive judicial dignity, but the faces of the lumber trust attorneys were wreathed with smiles at the audacity of the suggestion. The corporation lawyers very politely registered their objections which the ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... tracks, that no such train was in readiness, she ran at one of the puffing and strutting children whose muffler was loose, and tied it up again. Then, struck by another thought, she returned to the impassive man ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... out of the house, in a pulpy, watery state, while the butler handled his swing doors with a stony, impassive countenance, intended for the deception of the very elect, though it did not deceive me. I knew well enough that next time he was off duty, and strolled around our way, we should meet in our kitchen as man to man, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... 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
... shouted, by the fear, the pain, the entreaties of his victim, that the poor creature, after asking Mme. Verdurin whether he should stay and receiving no answer, had left the house in stammering confusion and with tears in his eyes. Odette had looked on, impassive, at this scene; but when the door had closed behind Saniette, she had forced the normal expression of her face down, as the saying is, by several pegs, so as to bring herself on to the same level of vulgarity as Forcheville; her eyes ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... have replied; but she was silent. Her silence seemed to grow over him like a cloud. When the lights came in, he looked the same proud, impassive Harold Gwynne, as in the old time. Already his clasp had melted from Olive's hand. Before she could guess the reason why, she found him speaking, and she answering coldly, indifferently. All the sweetness of that sweet hour had with ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... The impassive countenances of these bland young Secretaries of Legation seemed to acquiesce far too much as a matter of course in the idea that there was no society except in the old world. She broke into the conversation with an ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... in itself significant. The Duke alone remained impassive. Bransome's face was dark with anger. Even the Prime Minister was annoyed. Bransome would have spoken, but the former held out his hand to ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 'No; there was few travelers any way in October.' He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: 'It's a pity folks don't know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport never so smart!' Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, the most impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were talking, and I was seemingly measuring with my eye the depth of the water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their position, and come close to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... grace the landscape lacks, too spacious, Impassive, silent, lonely, to be fair, Their kindness swiftly comes more soft and gracious, Who ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... the money gleam in the gaslight. These croupiers are the most extraordinary race of men it is possible to conceive. They seem to unite the stoicism of the American Indian to the politeness of the Frenchman of the ancien regime. They are never seen to smile, and wear the same impassive countenance whether the banque is gaining or losing. In fact, what do they care as long as their salary is regularly paid? They seem to fear neither God nor man: for when a shock of the earthquake was felt at Wisbaden, in 1847, though ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... found that we knew a great deal of the same country, so we began exchanging reminiscences. I told the story about Tyrer, and added that I had often wondered as to what had become of him. Our host, who had listened to my long relation with an impassive face, then remarked ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... conversation as she did in the next ten minutes. The "Argus," the new chapel rules, Miss Raymond and her theme classes, the sophomore elections,—none of them evoked a responsive chord in the strange girl who sat impassive, with no thought apparently of her social duties ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... and packed the horses, and shortly after eight Bill led the way deeper into the forest. The snow-swept trees, the white glades between, the long line of pack horses following in the wake of the impassive form of Bill made a picture that Virginia could never forget. And ever the snow sifted down upon them, ever heavier on the branches, ever deeper on ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... of excitement in the human hive, which the bailiff suppressed by a sharp rap of his gavel. Those who had caught the signal turned their eyes from Silvia to the large man, but there was nothing in his impassive demeanor to attract attention. ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... face worn into hollows, pale from lips to eyes, but wrapped in serenity as in a veil, as in a shroud. The consultants spoke in low tones, cast furtive glances as each other, or exchanged some barbarous word, remaining impassive, without even a frown. But this mute and reticent expression of the doctor and magistrate, this solemnity with which science and justice hedge themselves about to hide their frailty or ignorance, had no power to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... mere servile livery. Their painted, immobile faces and plumed heads towered with grave dignity above the meaner crowd; their inscrutable eyes returned no response to the timid glances directed towards them. They stood by themselves, alone and impassive,—yet their presence filled the room with the sense of kings. The unostentatious, simple republican court suddenly seemed to have become royal. Even the interpreter who stood between their remote dignity and ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the heads of that crowd of brokers like steam through a boiler, now hot, now cold, but always at high pressure, for upon the correctness of the answers depended the fortune of many who breathlessly awaited the renewal or the suspension of the contest. Even Barry Conant's usually impassive face wore ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... a Spaniard from the upper deck and obliged him to conduct us to the magazine, and there, sure enough, was Frey Bartolomeo, calm and impassive as ever. He had stove in the head of one barrel of gunpowder, and now stood over the powder holding a lighted candle in his hand. As we burst in the door and confronted him, he raised his pale face and regarded us with ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... apparently impassive, stood silent at the Table. When storm exhausted itself he quietly added that in accordance with law he would forthwith retire from the House "until, if it pleases them, my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... from the room, through the halls, into the park, where, though he followed, he never could find her. One day she and Madame returned from a walk in the forest, the one with high color and brilliant eyes, the other impassive as ice. Now, all these things did not escape Maurice, but he could not piece them together with ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... her leather coat flung over the end of the bunk and she flushed, looking sideways at the man. He seemed impassive, unconscious, and her puzzled gaze wandered over his face and form. She noted striking differences in the tanned, lean face and the lithe body. The skin was clear and the eyes no longer red and swollen. He stood upright and moved with ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... 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
... to my feet. I beheld Miller Gorse sitting impassive, with his encompassing stare, the strongest man of them all. A change of firmaments would not move him. But Dickinson had risen and put his hand on my shoulder. It was the first time I had ever seen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and back, and thence coastwise to Saltcoats and the land of Burns. I told her, if she had anything to communicate, to address her letter to the care of the postmaster, Ayr—ha, ha!" He broke off and gazed reproachfully into Dalmahoy's impassive face. "Ayr—air," he explained: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Pickering, with a pang for the swarm of ragged, dirty little creatures, but not showing it in the least on his impassive face. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... with grim, impassive face. "There is nothing to keep back," he declared. "You have the constitution of a cowboy. There is no reason why you should not live for another ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced in the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and the barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined tramway. His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with indignation and horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his eyes flew off, and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a rate of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... heard Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie coming up to say goodnight, he slipped between the sheets and remained impassive while they fussed about, touching the pillow here or patting the coverlet there. At last, alone for the night, he crossed silently to the door and locked it; then drew a chair to the window and gazed moodily out into the trees, one of whose branches brushed the ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... scant hour, but a dozen or fifteen minutes of life could make small difference. Then again, once the dusk filled the glade my impassive victim would become alert and up to some of his devilish tricks. He did not change his position except as he turned his head to gaze fixedly at the western forest wall. One could imagine him to be ignorant ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... straight, black hair; black, horizontal eyes; low forehead, somewhat compensated by its breadth; beardless; of the middle height, but thick-set; broad, muscular chest; small hands and feet; incurious; unambitious; impassive; undemonstrative; with a dull imagination and little superstition; with no definite idea of a Supreme Being, few tribes having a name for God, though one for the "Demon;" with no belief in a future state; and, excepting ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... a friend. To Goutran alone did he ever open his heart, and even when he had been with him for hours, laughing and talking with gayety, he appeared before Monte-Cristo as impassive as ever. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a hunted look in the eyes. 'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched her arm with his own. The voice behind ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... came to give the children their lessons, they found that they had to give them also to a little lady in a white silk frock with rows and rows of little frills, who stared at them solemnly with her large, impassive blue eyes, and never answered a word to any of their questions. Princess Pansy no longer wished to be ten years old; she no longer wished for anything: she had everything she wanted in the unchangeable Lady ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... of hoofs in the 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
... Monarchy.' His part is taken: 'but of this be sure, to do aught good will never be his task!' He will guard carefully against all possible improvements, and maintain all possible abuses sacred, impassive, immortal. He will not give up the fruit of centuries of experience, of struggles, and of one century at least of liberty, since the Revolution of 1688, for any doubtful experiments whatever. We are arrived at the end of our experience, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Mrs. Owsley does with her shoes?" Nancy asked, being careful not to smile while the impassive woman's eyes were turned ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... resolute and daring, had completely lost his nerve, and his teeth were chattering in his head. His father, on the other hand, was emotionless and impassive as ever. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inspectors at Ventimiglia is a small, wizened Frenchman, with a face as cold and impassive as the sand-blown Sphinx. He possesses among other accomplishments a nose, peculiar less for its shape than for its smell. He can "smell out" tobacco as a witch doctor in Zululand smells out a "devil." Fate directed this individual toward the Americans. Hillard knew him of old; and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... ardour of that intellectual awakening, under the strange influence of the apparently reserved and impassive woman, who had come to read history with her for six months, at the suggestion of a friend of her father's, a certain cultivated and clever Lady Tonbridge, "who saw ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and gave it a more vigorous push. Helene went higher, each ascent taking her farther. However, despite the motion, she did not lose her sedateness; she retained almost an austre demeanor; her eyes shone very brightly in her beautiful, impassive face; her nostrils only were inflated, as though to ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... kept strong rein on her feelings, her impassive manner had deceived me. Now that my sympathy with her made me more keenly alive to her distress, I saw the deep pain in her pale face, and the unnatural look of grief in one so young. She tied on her hat in her old, hopeless way, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of a rare interest in his companion's conversation. His eyes were bright, his usually impassive features seemed to have become more mobile and strained. He laid his hand on ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... joined us on the third day to begin haymaking, and the air was fragrant of tossed and sun-dried grass. One of them walked apart from the rest, without interest or freedom of movement; her face, sealed and impassive, was aged beyond the vigour of her years. I knew the woman by sight, and her history by hearsay. We have a code of morals here—not indeed peculiar to this place or people—that a wedding is 'respectable' if it precedes child-birth by a bare month, tolerable, and to be recognised, ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... tall, thin man in the late forties, enters left. He has an impassive, intellectual face, interesting though unsympathetic. His manner is calm and quietly alert, suggestive ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... mail aside unread, and sat for a long time thinking. Presently he called for his stenographer, and dictated telegram after telegram, the import of which made that impassive person start and glance up in amazement several times. Then, seizing a sheet of paper, the banker started to ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... But impassive of his victory, he inflated his chest, with his right hand in the breast of his buttoned coat, and began. His usual high color had paled slightly, but the small pupils of his prominent eyes glittered like steel. The young girl leaned forward ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... a wonderful illumination and agitation over the girl's usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... through a terrific letter from a young man, who took up seventeen enormous double sheets of paper in trying to tell me something about himself. The handwriting was good, the air of educated assurance breathed from the style was quite impassive, and the total amount of six thousand eight hundred words was sufficient to say anything in reason. Yet this voluminous writer managed to say nothing in particular excepting that he thought himself very like Lord Byron, that he was fond ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... at least with a heart-whole pity for the poor, weak gentleman, swept over us. We pressed round him with our hands upon the hilts of our swords, swearing that we would stand by him, though all the world stood between him and his rights. Even the rigid and impassive Puritans were moved to a show of loyalty; while the courtiers, carried away by zeal, drew their rapiers and shouted until the crowd beneath caught the enthusiasm, and the air was full of the cheering. The light returned to Monmouth's eye and the colour to his ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a surprise 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 irate ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... kneeling, or the like; and this face has an expression of fear. The arms or legs may be raised, but if left to themselves will not drop, as in lethargy. The eyes are wide open, but the look is fixed and impassive. The fixed position lasts only a few minutes, however, when the subject returns to a position of relaxation, or drops ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... for whisky, had brought up decanter and glasses. As he set the tray upon the small table, I noticed Pasquale look with some curiosity at my man's impassive face. But he said nothing more about the slipper. I poured out his whisky and soda. He drank a deep draught, curled up his swaggering moustache and suddenly broke into one of his disconcerting ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... baby to her breast, sat up gasping. The baby had come to no harm; it had cried at first when the thunder broke, but now it seemed impassive, almost dazed. Dick stepped from under the tree and looked at the prodigy in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... chronometer to the tenth of a second by that of the engineer Murchison, who was entrusted with setting fire to the powder by means of the electric spark; the travellers shut up in the projectile could thus watch the impassive needle which was going to mark the precise instant ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... 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 the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Queen of the Ansarey could not have received them with an air more impassive had she been holding a levee at St. James'. Seated on her divan, she was clothed in a purple robe; her long dark hair descended over her shoulders, and was drawn off her white forehead, which was bound with a ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... probably a drayman. JIM—Small, lean, sallow, grey-eyed, with a kind of quiet restlessness; in civil life probably a mechanic with leanings towards Socialism. POZZIE—A thick-set, low-browed, impassive, silent country youth, with a face the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Jew cried "bravo" and clapped softly. The swarm of Jewish children again appeared in the doorway, and looked into the room out of large, piercing eyes. Boris and Billy listened smiling, and only the face of the Jewess remained impassive, looking with weary scorn at the three yonder ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... to the point at last. He looked hard at Marcy to see what effect the words would have upon him, and Marcy returned his gaze with an impassive countenance, although he felt his heart ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... at Alexander's grinning face, his own impassive, but a shattering certainty exploded in his mind—Alexander was a telepath! That was his difference! That was the thing that made him feared and respected by his business associates. It wouldn't have been enough on ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... set upon a concentrated Council, but it rose upon faces that looked momentous. Only the Governor's and Treasurer's were impassive, and they concealed something even graver ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... resort shake hands with one another, the sermons of the chaplain lose their frost-bitten savour and die down into something like charity, scandal and tittle-tattle go to sleep in the sunshine. The stolid, impassive English nature blooms into a life strangely unlike its own. Papas forget their Times. Mammas forget their propriety. The stout British merchant finds himself astride of a donkey, and exchanging good-humoured ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight of a massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery send down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such a fleet of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst forth as will charge ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... through the thoroughfares, around island points, across reaches of the sea, sweeping onward now with an audible gurgle in their wake, the sails bellying forward; veering this way, falling off there, as the impassive man touched the tiller, obeying an instinct, seeing into the dark beyond. Now a bit of cliff loomed in the fog, again a shingled roof or a cluster of firs, and the whistling buoy at the harbor's mouth began to bellow sadly,—reminders ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... be ever so unwell in mind or body, and he must go through his service—hand the shining plate, replenish the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork—never laugh when you yourself or your guests joke—be profoundly attentive, and yet look utterly impassive—exchange a few hurried curses at the door with that unseen slavey who ministers without, and with you be perfectly calm and polite. If you are ill, he will come twenty times in an hour to your bell; or leave the girl of his heart—his mother, who is going to America—his dearest friend, who has ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stamp. Lindsay watched the white, dexterous hands of the dealer with an honest distaste. All along the border from Juarez to Calexico he had seen just such soft, skilled fingers fleecing those who toiled. He knew the bloodless, impassive face of the professional gambler as well as he knew the anxious, reckless ones of his victims. His knowledge had told him little good of this breed of parasites who preyed upon a ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... yard an hour after that, his face drearily impassive, a dead man lashed to the saddle. He asked for paper and a pen, and in a firm, even handwriting he described tersely the manner of Burt Brownlee's death, told where the dead horse and the saddle would be found, and as an afterthought, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... proposed that we should join company, and engage five horses and three sleds for ourselves and luggage. The Swede willingly undertook to negotiate for us, and set about the work with his usual impassive semi-cheerfulness. The landlord of the only inn in the place promised to have everything ready by six o'clock the next morning, and our captain, who was to go on the same evening, took notices of our wants, to be served at the two intervening post-stations on the road. We then visited the ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... moment, upon the 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 ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... mine sought one another, and, as we waited thus, we could see above us the noble form of Don Alonzo, cool and impassive as a man on parade, saluting his King's ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... 'I plead for mercy!' she said and at that moment the Queen entered, accompanied by Sir Henry and Good, and took her seat with an impassive face. As for poor Good, he looked intensely ill ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... young compatriots were winning. Apparently he was playing on a system, for, in spite of his want of success, he continued steadily backing certain definite combinations. He showed neither impatience or annoyance when he lost. His face remained perfectly impassive, and Ann had a feeling that he would play precisely as steadily, remain as grimly unmoved, if the stakes were a hundred times as high as those permitted at the Kursaal. She could imagine him staking his whole fortune, losing it, and then walking out ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... 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
... a 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 half ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... to give Doris' messages to Elinor and the rest, hurried off, leaving the drawing-room windows once more blank and impassive. She ran into the studio as Griffin was rising to go, with her umbrella, reclaimed from the stand, still dripping slow occasional drops unheeded on the ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... busily working, my face impassive under his scrutinizing glance. In a flash it came to me that this must be the writer of some of the letters Lesperon had given me, the original of the ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... though my countenance is exceptionally mobile, I possess marvellous powers for keeping it impassive when necessity arises. In this instance, at mention of Theodore's name, I showed neither surprise nor indignation. Yet you will readily understand that I felt both. Here was that man, once more ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... darkness with a little broken laugh. She passed me half an hour later in the Customs' house with a languid impassive stare which even her ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the hush of expectation, in that dead silence which is so peculiarly oppressive because it is possible only when many human beings are gathered together, Mr. Webster rose. He had sat impassive and immovable during all the preceding days, while the storm of argument and invective had beaten about his head. At last his time had come; and as he rose and stood forth, drawing himself up to his full height, his personal grandeur and his majestic calm thrilled all who looked upon ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... was caught for just a moment under the slight weight of his body. There was a short, snapping sound, but Oliver Symmes took no notice. His face remained impassive. Even pain had lost ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... He said, "You understand, the fight will begin to-morrow and will be carried on to the bitter end." I said, "Yes," and added, as I reached the door, "Good night." Then, as the door opened, my opponent, or visitor, whichever one chooses to call him, whose face was as impassive and as inscrutable as that of Mr. John Hamlin in a poker game, said: "Hold on! We accept. Send in So-and-so [the man I had named]. The Senator is very sorry, but he will make no further opposition!" I never saw a bluff ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... well-poised wisdom of the judge seemed to shower down cold truth upon the jury from his very eyes. His words were low in their tone, though very clear, impassive, delivered without gesticulation or artifice, such as that so powerfully used by Mr. Chaffanbrass; but Alaric himself felt that it was impossible to doubt the truth of such a man; impossible to suppose that any juryman ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us is so valuable to the litterateur, and ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for L5; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle- box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the far end, and the light was getting dim, for it was about five o'clock. We could see a grey shadow against the pale light. It was a woman, who did not attempt to rise, but who remained impassive to our bow and our words. This seated shadow, looking so drowsy, was Madame Sand, and the man who opened the door was the engraver Manceau. Madame Sand is like an automatic machine. She talks in a monotonous, mechanical voice which she neither raises nor lowers, and which is never animated. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... nerve," retorted the stranger. The keen eyes, flattening almost to slits, fixed on the impassive face of the other. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... copy was a little too apparent, Mr. Aldridge's acting was really very fine. The Russians were enthusiastic in their applause, though very few of them, probably, understood the language of the part. The Oriental auditors were perfectly impassive, and it was impossible to guess how they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... exaggeration. But handsome he undoubtedly was—tall without suggesting the thought of height to the observer, erect yet graceful, powerfully built, while preserving the effect of slenderness. His face in repose had the outline of the more youthful guardsman-type—regular, finely-cut, impassive to hardness. When he talked, or followed with interest the talk of others, it revealed almost an excess of animation. Then one noted the flashing subtlety of his glance, the swift facility of his smile and comprehending brows, and saw that it was not the guardsman face at all. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... first heard of 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 fall of Antwerp. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... could hardly speak; and as he lay there impassive, Miriam's hatred of his silent white face increased. She had too much self-control to express herself; but at times she was almost on the point of breaking out, of storming at him, and asking him whether he had no pity for her. One night, as ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... view; but even through my personal preoccupation I remember being struck by the fact that, though she talked foolishly, she didn't talk like a fool. She was not stupid; she was not obtuse; one felt that her impassive surface was alive with delicate points of perception; and this fact, coupled with her crystalline frankness, flung me back on a startled revision of my impressions of her father. He came out of the test more monstrous than ever, as an ugly image reflected in clear water is ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... officiating clergy, taking hasty cover in a truly novel trench; while the central figure of the obsequies, sublimely indifferent to the Hun and all his frightfulness, lay on the grass outside, calm and impassive amid the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... tiffs—tough and smart—has poor Nelly borne? Her grief has been so sore that she has torn her hair out by the roots in frenzy and stamped upon it; but Tom, surly and impassive Tom, is her lord as well as her most exacting master, and in their own way they are ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... would educate her, form her mind. She would then understand that this cure for which she thought herself indebted to the Blessed Virgin, had in reality come to her from the Only Mother, serene and impassive Nature. But even whilst he was thus settling things in his mind, a kind of terror, born of his religious education, arose within him. Could he tell if that human happiness with which he desired to endow ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... know what to think of him," she said; "his face does not tell me anything, it is like looking at a mask; but you see I am not accustomed to read brown men's characters, they are so different from Europeans, their faces all seem so impassive. I suppose it is the way in which they are brought up ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid. Margaret flung open the door to the stairs. A noise as of drums seemed to deafen her. A woman, an old woman, was descending, with figure erect, with face impassive, with lips ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... across like a Barbary ape, he entered the window and stepped down inside. There was something anomalous in being close to the familiar furniture without having first seen his father, and its silent, impassive shine was not cheering; it was as if his relations were all dead, and only their tables and chests of drawers left to greet him. He went downstairs and seated himself in the dark parlour. Finding this place, too, rather solitary, and the tick of the invisible clock ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... which they reach forth to the glories of the latter day. This attitude of Israel, in all the generations, is the one striking feature of this history. No soulless sphinx facing a trackless desert with blind eyes—no impassive Buddha ensphered in placid silence—is the genius of this people, but some strong angel poised on mighty pinion above the highest peak of Pisgah, and scanning with swift glances the beauty of the promised land. Now any people of which this ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... she saw Indians crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on the stone. She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the gate. Faster and faster she turned, and at last ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... finally the entire face of the safe was disclosed. Jimmie Dale stared at it—and pursed his lips. It was an ugly safe, extremely ugly—from a cracksman's point of view! Also, there seemed a hint of irony, a jeer almost, in the impassive wall of steel that confronted him. It was one of his own make—one that had helped, in the old days, to amass the millions that his father had left to him—and it ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... received the news with impassive gravity, but the neighbor women of Palma who awaited his passing along the streets to set their rice over the fire, saw him no more. Eighty-six! He had strolled enough. He had seen enough of this world. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... wearily up; his face showed the set lines of a protracted session. He neither spoke nor nodded to the newcomer, but recognized him with a mere glance. Then, though his eyes had rested for only an instant on the new face, he spoke in an impassive tone across the intervening heads: "What happened ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Hudson, they had felt some contact with the past; but here, Stern's eye looked out over a world as virgin as on the primal morn. And a vast loneliness assailed him, a yearning almost insupportable. that made him clench his fists and raise them to the impassive, empty sky that mocked him with ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... been notable throughout the war. His most intimate friends and daily associates, his most prominent and trusted generals, patriotic but hot-headed complainants, turbulent malcontents,—all alike found him courteous and considerate, yet hedged about with an impassive dignity that no one ever dared to violate. A superb horseman, a powerful and active swordsman, an unfailing marksman with rifle or pistol, he never made a display of these qualities; but there are many anecdotes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Potter slowly drew off his apron, carefully folded it and tucked it into a corner. He moved very deliberately, as though reluctant to leave his chief. Had Hollis shown the slightest sign of weakening Potter would have stayed. But watching closely he saw no sign of weakness in the impassive face of his chief, and so, after he had made his preparations for departure, he drew a deep breath of resignation and walked slowly to the back door, where his pony was hitched. He halted at the threshold, looking back ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... along while we waited, watching with fascinated eyes, and drawing a deep breath of relief as each stepped safely from the perilous path. Whether they had also felt fearful I could not tell; their faces were wonderfully impassive, and, except when roused by savage ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... with the ardor of his faith, shaped the ideal forms of his worship into visible realities. Brbeuf sat conspicuous among his brethren, portly and tall, his short moustache and beard grizzled with time,—for he was fifty-six years old. If he seemed impassive, it was because one overmastering principle had merged and absorbed all the impulses of his nature and all the faculties of his mind. The enthusiasm which with many is fitful and spasmodic was with him the current of his life,—solemn ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... be told, Doe left his desk, and came and stood by me. It was a theatrical action, such as only he would have done, and our master concealed his surprise, if he felt any, by an impassive face. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to no one in particular, but addressed the room at large, his face impassive, and his voice without an intonation. The spies stood in the midst of the tumbled clothes, watching us silently, ominously. Janchu now crept up into Marie's lap again. As a matter of course, I went into the other room and changed into ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with determined faces, while their companion, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... whirled and saw them, were now signalling 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 ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... had been any one to observe this solitary traveler, he would have said that the man gave no heed to the beauty of the day. Since he had broken camp his impassive gaze had been fixed for the most part on the ground in front of him. Occasionally he swung his long leg across the rump of the horse and dismounted to stoop down for a closer examination of the hoofprints ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 been and ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... which triumphantly held its own against the cut-and-dry argumentation of scholastic rationalism, was love. Love which assuredly meant different things to different minds; a passionate benevolence towards man and beast to godlike simpletons like Francis of Assisi; a mere creative and impassive activity of the divinity to deep-seeing (so deep as to see only their own strange passionate eyes and lips reflected in the dark well of knowledge) and almost pantheistic thinkers like Master Eckhardt; but love nevertheless, love. "Amor, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... thoughts were otherwise occupied, and he scanned it carelessly. Suddenly he saw the heading which had attracted Lady Kelsey's attention. He read the letter, and he read the leading article. No one who watched him could have guessed that what he read concerned him so nearly. His face remained impassive. Then, letting the paper fall to the ground, he began to think. Presently he turned to the amiable stranger who had given him the paper, and asked him if he had seen ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... if our existence were composed of separate states, with an impassive Ego to unite them, for us there would be no duration, for an Ego which does not change, does not endure. La duree, however, is the foundation of our being and is, as we feel, the very substance of the world in which we live. Associating his view of Real Time with the reality of change, he points ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... processional: three steps and a halt for the trumpets to blow a tucket; three more and another tucket; the great yellow horse stepping high and casting up his head, from which flew many flakes of white foam. With its slow, regularly interrupted gait, dominated by the impassive yellow face of Norfolk, the whole band had an air of performing a solemn dance, and Udal shivered for a long time, till amidst the train of mules bearing leathern sacks, cupboards, chests and commodes, he saw come riding a familiar figure in a scholar's gown—the ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... hue of her white skin, the dimming of her splendid eyes, spoke so unmistakably of some strange collapse of the vital forces, that it seemed to the boy who worshipped her as if all the noises of the Universe were shrieking his anguish. At the same time he fought for an impassive exterior, then bolted from the house and rode across the Island for a doctor. The man came, prescribed for a megrim, and Alexander did not call him again; nor did he mention his mother's condition to the rest ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... said Mrs. Pasmer. "Do you sketch, Mr. Mavering? But of course." She pressed forward, and studied the sketch inattentively. "How very, very good!" she buzzed deep in her throat, while, with a glance at her daughter, she thought, "How impassive Alice is! But she behaves with great dignity. Yes. Perhaps that's best. And are you going to be an artist?" she asked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his eyes towards her with the look that used to go so deep of old, 'we have both gone through what makes the unchangeableness of these impassive ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Once more his fine eyes were impassive. With ready grace he admired the delicately-thonged tunic and the beaded sash, the bright turban with the beaten band of silver and the darkly lovely ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... laid out side by side. Their occupants did not speak or move. It was as if they had reached their limit of endurance. They lay with closed eyes, or with impassive, upturned faces, swathed in their brown blankets against the chill. Here and there a knitted neck scarf had been loosely wrapped about a head. All over America women were knitting just ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for a long time in silence, her face calm and impassive, her eyes intent upon him. The Earl looked back upon her with unchanged fear—looking back thus out of his weakness and helplessness, with a fear that seemed intensified by the consciousness of that weakness. But Hilda's face softened ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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
... trampled snow by an open fire, where Shorty and two young Indians, squatted on their hams, were broiling strips of caribou meat. Three other young Indians, lying in furs on a mat of spruce-boughs, sat up. Shorty looked across the fire at his partner, but with a sternly impassive face, like those of his companions, made no sign and went on ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Eva Bernheimer, and a light crept into his ordinarily impassive eye. At the same time, West's ordinarily buoyant face ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... revengeful, not seeking for death, but merely stating the case as it might be stated by some planet or remote fixed star. Then there was a short pause, while the prosecutor for the Crown laid down his notes. And the same slow, clear, impassive ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... knotted up in a red handkerchief; her gown was of blue faded to green, her feet were bare. If a gipsy, she was to be trusted to take care of herself; if but a sunburnt vagrant she could be let to shift; and yet he watched her curiously, while she sat as impassive as a young Sphinx, and wondered to himself ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... at once begin to do, but sat impassive—apparently without thought—while the heavy breathing of the men in the room marked off the seconds of time. Finally abruptly Galen Albret's cavernous voice boomed forth. Something there was strangely mysterious, cryptic, in the virile tones issuing from a bulk so massive and inert. ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... before her—this Arab with the impassive face, the camels at his feet, her life in his hands if ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... end quite 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
... 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 like ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... reiterated Captain 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
... an impassive aide brought an outfit for him. He slipped into the clothing as he finished ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... he corrected himself, "what does it matter? I'll put the things on," and, with his old impassive air, he went to the table and, aided by the guard, quickly donned the boots and garments of the wood carver. He even smiled ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... not how long I sat there gazing silently into his impassive leathern face, turning over within my own mind the argument of his words. He was neither woodsman nor mountaineer, yet possessed some judgment. Thus considering, I saw but one possible objection to his plan—lack of water or of game along the unknown route to be traversed. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... David rose to meet him, and at the same moment the chief of the Boulains closed the door behind him. There was no greeting in Carrigan's manner. He was the Law, waiting, unexcited, sure of himself, impassive as a thing of steel. He was ready to fight. He expected to fight. It only remained for St. Pierre to show what sort of fight it was to be. And he was amazed at St. Pierre, without betraying that amazement. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... had witnessed this brief scene in a grave and impassive manner. The young man was delighted to see these Thursday evenings resumed. He ardently desired them to be continued, aware that he would have need of these gatherings to attain his end. Besides, without asking himself the reason, he felt more ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... 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 that was full of ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... thus in both hands looking fixedly at it, with his head bent forward. Had Mr. Compton thought of taking a look at his usually impassive companion, he would have been surprised at the change which had taken place in him at the mere sight of that tremulous handwriting. For in that he had read grief, misfortune, perhaps death; and as he sat there, pausing before he ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... moment after the last munch and loud swallow with which old Grandfather Vine, who was unfortunately the slowest as well as the largest eater, announced repletion, all the chairs were pushed back on the drugget and a row of properly impassive faces confronted Mr. Huxtable the lawyer as he took his stand by the window. Only Joanna remained sitting at the table, her warm blue eyes seeming to reflect the evening's light, her arm round little Ellen, who leaned against ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... midst of relief she found another emotion more vehement still. She found passionate joy, and overwhelming temptation, and then again a sharp icy fear. The emotions were all gone in an instant. She was once more self-possessed. She returned to the workroom with an impassive face. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... 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 brought a clew. Should the human scout be found wanting where ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... warrior, plumed, painted, and gaudily bedecked with savage ornaments, stalked solemnly within, circled about us without sign of greeting, and seated themselves cross-legged upon the bare ground. The uplifted door-skin permitted the red flames from without to play freely over their stern, impassive faces, and shone back upon us from their glittering eyes. It was an impressive scene, their stoical demeanor breathing the deep solemnity of the vast woods and plains amid which their savage lives ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... had stood watching impassive, looking not at the child, but at Brangwen. He became aware of the woman looking at him, standing there isolated yet for him dominant in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... excited, spoke threateningly to Vaucoux; who, like an impassive image of hatred, only answered briefly: "I have killed the Adversary, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... and rang the bell. When the butler told her, with an impassive face, that he would find out if Mrs. Baxter were in, Susan hoped, in a panic, that she was not. The big, gloomy, handsome hall rather awed her. She watched Burns's retreating back fearfully, hoping that Mrs. Baxter really was out, or that Burns would ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... two miles; but the Federal generals were too well satisfied with having gained a success, when acting on the defensive in a strong position, to risk a defeat in attacking the position of the Confederates, and their forces remained impassive until pontoon bridges were thrown across the river, and the Confederate army, with their vast baggage train, had again crossed into Virginia. The campaign had cost the Northern army 23,000 men in killed, wounded, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... 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
... mother say that Sally was a bit too fond of having things her own way. She did not speak very much, but as she grew older she seemed to be acquiring a quiet sense of humour, and sometimes uttered a remark which suggested that beneath her impassive exterior she was quietly bubbling with amusement at her fellow-creatures. Philip found that with her he never got on the terms of affectionate intimacy upon which he was with the rest of Athelny's huge family. Now and then her indifference slightly irritated him. There was something ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... trick at the wheel. But Jack, instead of resting, promptly placed the range-finder. As he tried to adjust the telescope the submarine boy's hands shook. Jack glanced over at Lieutenant Danvers, cool and impassive. Danvers knew all about working that range-finder. But the naval officer was aboard as an official spectator. If the lieutenant aided in any way, then the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... are of little importance or interest, being dwarfed by the collective life of humanity in general, which in turn is overshadowed by the vast phenomenon of life as a whole, while this again is but a transient vapor on the face of the immense universe. So the poetic creed of an impersonal and impassive art was more or less blended with a materialism pervaded with a buddhistic pessimism that is vexed and wearied with the vain motions of this human world, and longs for the rest of Nirvana; and this vexation and weariness frequently rise to a poignant intensity. However ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... same moment with his famous prophecy that the abolition of all dynastic and aristocratic institutions was at hand, with "the tranquil inauguration" of elective industrial governments throughout the world. So history moves doggedly on, propheten rechts, propheten links, a perfectly impassive welt-kind in the middle of them. In Copenhagen Ibsen had, after all, missed Brandes, delayed in Rome by a long and dangerous illness; and all he could do was to exchange letters with this still unseen but increasingly sympathetic and beloved young friend. To Brandes ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... drew up, the hall-door of "The Cedars" was thrown open by the butler, a fair-haired clean-shaven man of about forty-five, with grave, impassive face, and eyes that gave the impression of allowing ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... and all over Estremadura, following their shepherd after the manner with which Old Testament history makes us familiar, are said to be direct descendants of the old Arabian flocks, and certainly the appearance of one of these impassive-looking shepherds leading his flock to "green pastures, and beside the still waters," takes one back in the world's history in a way that few other things do. The flock know the voice of their shepherd, and follow him unquestioningly ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... of the soul Are infinite, but how to be revealed? On what impassive matter must the whole Inveterate coil of good and ill be sealed! How much too simple all the tale of deeds To pattern out these labyrinthine things, These knots of bright unreason, ghostly bredes Veiled weavers weave, moving with silver wings Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions Their ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... broad forehead of his. He looked into his eyes, but saw nothing there save a cold, steady light that he had often seen before when the doctor was discussing subjects that interested him deeply. As for his face, it was utterly impassive—the face of a dispassionate scientist quietly discussing the possible solution of a problem that had been laid before him. Whether his friend was really driving at some unheard-of and unearthly solution of the problem which he himself had ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... kept his eyes steadily fixed on infinite space. He dined at the high table, but uttered no word. He never played the part of host, nor did he ever seem to be a guest. He read the service in chapel when his turn came: his voice had a creaking and impassive tone, and his pace was too deliberate to please young men with a morning appetite. As he says here, he was a complete stranger in the college. We looked upon him with the awe proper to one who was supposed ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... Chief remained impassive. He never moved, but when the leaf was brought to him, he looked on the youth with a kindly smile. George was quick to notice this. He again walked over to the Chief, and placed the weapon in his hand, and guided his finger to the trigger, while at the same ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... things; but the cold truth is that I was scared almost to death because I didn't know what was coming. However, I did the best thing under the circumstances, obeyed orders and looked steadily astern, or up into the bronzed impassive face of my chief, who towered above me, scanning with eagle eyes the sea ahead. The other boats were coming flying along behind us, spreading wider apart as they came, while in the bows of each stood the harpooner with his right hand on his first iron, which lay ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... 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 ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... if they were turned elsewhere, you asked in what lay the power of the face, and sought in vain amid its long wrinkles and indeterminate lines for the secret of that spiritual and bodily repulsion which the least look into this impassive countenance was calculated to produce. She was a woman of immense means, and an oppressive consciousness of this spoke in every movement of her heavy frame, which always seemed to take up three times as much space as rightfully belonged to any human ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... uncorrected by reflection, exaggerated in narration, and intensified by the repetition of a number of writers, come to constitute a body of public belief, not strictly rational in its birth or subsequent growth, but as impassive in its resistance to argument as it was innocent of mental ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... himself before her, Countess Caroline's heart gave a great throb of welcome and of pity; but her impassive face grew only a little colder, and, though in the first seconds of looking into the eyes of Sophia's son, hearing the familiar, inherited tricks of her sister's speech, she was betrayed into the suggestion of a genuine frankness, she soon bethought herself of an imminent danger ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... came a knock at the door, and in answer to his summons the impassive butler person ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... with languor rare, Impassive, passionate of art, And, like the murdered Ines fair, Dancing, a dagger in ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... full speed, the carromatas 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 world ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... kind-hearted friend, and promised that she would 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 ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... 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 ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... flamed and glistened under the great wash-kettle. A tree-toad was persistently calling for rain in the dry distance. The girl, gravely impassive, beat the clothes with the heavy paddle. Her mother shortly ceased to prod the white heaps in the boiling water, and presently took up ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... impulsive, and always met his officers in an unceremonious way, with a quiet "How are you" soon putting one at his ease, since the pleasant tone in which he spoke gave assurance of welcome, although his manner was otherwise impassive. When the ordinary greeting was over, he usually waited for his visitor to open the conversation, so on this occasion I began by giving him the details of my march from Winchester, my reasons for not joining Sherman, as contemplated ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... motionless, impassive. Meynell's voice had beautiful inflections, and he spoke with strong feeling. Few persons whom he so addressed could have remained unmoved. But Mrs. Bateson only retreated farther into the dreary little parlour, with its wool mats and antimacassars, and a tray of untasted ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by assault is one thing. But to stand impassive in a rain of shot, amid exploding shells, amid infernal din and blinding smoke; to fire at an invisible enemy, to dispute foot by foot ground covered with traps, to retake the same village ten times, to burrow into the soil and crouch there, to watch day after day for the moment when the beast at ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... greenish depths and as limpid and motionless as a woodland stream on its bed of cresses. Then the rocks would reappear closer than before and more numerous. On one side was the ocean with its breakers foaming around the lower rocks; on the other, the straight, unrelenting, impassive coast. ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... I offered him the needle, and as he pierced the insect before fixing it on the cork, Sir Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and, drawing near a bandbox, he began to examine the spider crab of Guiana with a feeling of horror which was strikingly portrayed on his fat ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Henceforth, those who saw his wife invariably saw him also,—driving with her in her carriage, riding with her courageously if ungracefully, standing or seated near her in the shadow of her box at the Nouvelle Opera, silent, impassive, grave, noticeable only through the contrast he afforded to her girlish beauty ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... eyes from the coals and gazed at the impassive face of the hunter. Once the question trembled on his lips, but he was sure the Great Bear would evade the answer, and the lad thought too much of the man who had long stood to him in the place of father to cause him annoyance. Beyond a doubt Willet had his interests at ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... surely a joke, and Sam and the others in the office would be watching him for signs of anguish. His machine steadily clicked off the item. He struck not one wrong letter. He hung the sheet of copy on its hook and waited for the explosion of crude humour. He felt that his impassive demeanour had foiled the mean intention. But no one regarded him. Sam Pickering wrote on. Terry Stamper stolidly ran off cards on the job press. They were all indifferent. Something told him it was not ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... was enough sarcasm in my tone to bring a flush upon her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and when I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck me. But she did no more than hiss an ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... crowd bows to the dust as the sovereign passes; but Pharaoh looks neither to the right hand nor to the left. He stands erect and impassive in the swaying chariot, holding the crook and whip which are the Egyptian royal emblems. On his head he wears the royal war helmet, in the front of which a golden cobra rears its crest from its coils, as if to threaten the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... conspicuously dark against the whiteness of her gown. She carried herself not ungracefully, and yet without the least movement of her arms or body, and answered us both without turning her head. There was a curious provocative reserve in that impassive and rather long face, a half-unconscious ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
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