"Frigidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slow lady, the unmarried daughter of a noble house, about fifty at this time, and luckily—or unluckily—for Priscilla, a great lover of much food and its resultant deep slumbers) would bow in her turn in as stately a manner as her bulk permitted, and with a frigidity so pronounced that in any one less skilled in shades of deportment it would have resembled with a singular completeness a sniff of scorn. Her frigidity was perfectly justified. Was she not a hochgeboren, a member of an ancient house, of luminous ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... action. It is the same with periphrasis. Used with discretion it may be one of the subtlest ornaments of style, and even when fulfilling no particular purpose is capable of imparting a luxuriant and somewhat rococo richness to the verse. The effect, however, is frequently one of unrelieved frigidity, as ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... at dinner, she evinced an icy frigidity. She made no offers to serve Florent, but several times remarked: "It's very strange what an amount of bread we've got ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... more highly in proportion to its brevity, but the clever word-juggling of such prestidigitators as Poe and Verlaine is perilous. Figurative language must spring only from living, figurative thought, otherwise the lyric falls into verbal conceits, frigidity, conventionality. Stanzaic law must follow emotional law, just as Kreisler's accompanist must keep time with Kreisler. All the rich devices of rhyme and tone-color must heighten and not cloy the singing quality. But why ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... offhand way of greeting Molly this same evening. That great lady, having expected to find that Molly had, acting on her advice, abandoned Mrs. Delaport Green, was quite disappointed in the girl when she met them still together in London, and so she extended her frigidity to both of them. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of burning words.” He possessed many of the qualities necessary to debate: concentration, the power of pouncing upon the weak spot in his adversary’s argument, and above all a wonderful memory. What he lacked was that calm and calculating frigidity so necessary to the successful debater. Instead of freezing his opponent to silence with deliberate logic, he would strive rather by the tempestuous quality of his rhetoric to hurl him into ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... evening at the Manor was not a very brilliant affair. Stafford did not appear, pleading that it was a Friday, and a strict fast for him. Kate was distinctly out of temper, and treated the company in general, and Eugene in particular, with frigidity. Everybody felt that the situation was somewhat strained, and in consequence the pleasant flow of personal talk that marks parties of friends was dried up at its source. The discussion of general topics was found to be ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... coldness and reserve that the young girl had adopted in her intercourse with Marien, her stepmother could see, was no evidence of coquetry. She showed, in her behavior to the friend of the family, a freedom from embarrassment which was new to her, and a frigidity which could not possibly have been assumed so persistently. No! what struck Madame de Nailles was the suddenness of this transformation. Jacqueline evidently took no further interest in Marien; she had apparently no longer any affection ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... their extreme poverty, were most touching. Inhabiting, as they do, one of the hottest and dampest places on the earth's surface, where mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that they exist at all. Truly, man is a strange being, who can adapt himself to equatorial heat or polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on the ground, and driving away the bloodthirsty mosquitos from their bare backs. For this they use a fan of their own manufacture, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... was not present at the time," said Mrs. Saltillo, rebuking my eagerness with a gentle frigidity, "I am unable to do so. Anything else would be mere hearsay, and more or less ex parte. I ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... she appeared in the dining-room, late as usual, her frigidity was not especially marked. On the contrary, her face rippled into one smile after another, and seizing Blake by both hands, she danced ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... with respectful curiosity by all within the house. Her cold and aristocratic bearing half repelled them, half excited their admiration. She was very beautiful, and her high breeding was evident in her manner; but there was about her such frigidity and such loftiness of demeanor that it repelled those who would have been willing to give her their love. She brought a maid with her who had only been engaged a short time previously; and it was soon known that ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... climate seemed to have a tendency to melt away that frigidity which is a characteristic of people of the north, and the residents of the island were as frank, free, and hospitable as if they had never been out of the tropics. I soon formed many pleasant acquaintances and acquired many ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... familiar entry between the curtains at the back of the stage, standing in the favourite attitude of simple, triumphant expectation, and smiling with that rather foolish friendliness that until now had never shaken her audiences from their frigidity. To them she had always been a spectacle, a strange vital thing with a lurid past and a dubious future, shocking and stimulating. They would never have admitted that they liked her. But tonight they gave her a sort of ashamed welcome. Perhaps it ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... one there is excess of sentiment, in the other the contrary vice of frigidity, and a premeditated and ostentatious use ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... features of those who drag, as it were, their languid bodies to the stifled music of unwilling slaves. And while daylight seems modestly contending with the vulgar glare within, there appears among the pale revellers a paler ghost, who, having stalked thrice up and down the hall, preserving the frigidity and ghostliness of the tomb, answering not the questions that are put to him, and otherwise deporting himself as becometh a ghost of good metal, is being taken for a demon of wicked import. Now he pauses at the end of the hall, faces with spectre-like ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... took in the Promenade, in which she stood. She surveyed the Promenade with a professional eye. It instantly shocked her, not as it might have shocked one ignorant of human nature and history, but by reason of its frigidity, its constraint, its solemnity, its pretence. In one glance she embraced all the figures, moving or stationary, against the hedge of shoulders in front and against the mirrors behind—all of them: the programme girls, the cigarette girls, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... familiar with the artists and writers who frequented the house. Thus it was only in the presence of something extremely insulting that she again showed herself the last of the Vaugelades, and would all at once draw herself up and display haughty contempt and frigidity. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception or vigour ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in my own senses until I saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold blood—saw him open the book, and heard him read these following lines, with the same inflectionless judicial frigidity with which he always read his charge to the jury, or administered an oath ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... herself by watching the small coteries of stiff and starched Britons scattered throughout the room; she was endeavoring to classify the traveled and the untraveled by varying degrees of frigidity. As it happened, she was wholly wrong in her rough analysis. The Englishman who has wandered over the map is, if anything, more self-contained than his stay-at-home brother. He is often a stranger in his own land, and the dozen most reserved men present that evening were probably known ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... with an inexpressible feeling of exultation that I drove off with her. At last we were alone together, and would be so for hours. The frigidity which had grown up within her during the last two months might possibly be relaxed now under the influence of this closer association. My heart beat fast. I talked rapidly about every thing. In my excitement I ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... made a profound bow to the captain; the footmen forgot their usual smirk when he alighted. Captain Delmar was ushered in solemn silence into the drawing-room, and his aunt, who had notice of his arrival received him with a stiff, prim air of unwonted frigidity, with her arms crossed before her on ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... both, there was in her temper something so gentle, meek, and unupbraiding, that even the sense of injustice lost its sting, and one could not help loving the softness of her character, while one was most chilled by its frigidity. Anger, hope, fear, the faintest breath or sign of passion, never seemed to stir the breezeless languor of her feelings; and quiet was so inseparable from her image that I have almost thought, like that people described by Herodotus, her very sleep could never be disturbed ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Harding escaped any ill effects, but in truth, although I have said little about physical sufferings, most of that journey was terrible work. I got into a way at last of classifying the various stages of frigidity on departure from a stancia, and this was their order: (1) the warm; (2) the chilly; and (3) the glacial. The first stage of comparative comfort was due to the effect of a fire and warm food and generally lasted for ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... throughout its course, he scorned those tactful arts and melodramatic ways which win over waverers and inspire the fainthearted. Here he showed himself not a son of Chatham, but a Grenville. The results of this frigidity were disastrous. All Frenchmen and many Britons believed that he went out of his way to assail a peaceful Republic in order to crush liberty abroad and at home. History has exposed the falseness of the slander; but a statesman ought not to owe his vindication to research in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... century as "an aristocratic drawl," and his pronunciation was archaic. Like other high-bred people of his time, he talked of "cowcumbers" and "laylocks," called a woman an "'ooman," and was "much obleeged" where a degenerate age is content to be obliged. The frigidity of his address and the seeming stiffness of his manner, due really to an innate and incurable shyness, produced even among people who ought to have known him well a totally erroneous notion of his character and temperament. To ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... his presence was removed. Mrs. LaGrange and her son were also absent, preferring to take their meals privately in an adjoining room which Hugh Mainwaring had often used as a breakfast-room. The silence and frigidity which had lately reigned at the table seemed to have given place to almost universal sociability, though Ralph Mainwaring's face still wore a ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Mr. Dodd. If you like to expose yourself to ridicule, it is no affair of mine." The lady's manner was a happy mixture of frigidity and crossness. David stood benumbed, and Lucy, having emptied her flower-pot, glided indoors without taking any ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... presented to her "Mr. Thorn;" and Fleda's fancy made a sudden quick leap on the instant to the old hall at Montepoole and the shot dog. And then Dr. Quackenboss was presented, an introduction which Capt. Rossitur received coldly, and Mr. Thorn with something more than frigidity. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... models of truthfulness and honesty. In fact their virtues in this respect are something phenomenal. The same cannot be said, however, for their sexual morals, which, as a rule, are the contrary of good. Even a short stay among the hyperboreans causes one to smile at Lord Kames's "frigidity of the North Americans," and at the fallacy of Herder who says, "the blood of man near the pole circulates but slowly, the heart beats but languidly; consequently the married live chastely, the women almost require compulsion to take upon them the troubles of a married life," etc. Nearly the same ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... of our agreement. But the retrospect is only worth a thought now, because it illustrates a duality which seemed to him, and is, very simple; but to many is baffling in its very simplicity. When I say his weapon was logic, it will be currently confused with formality or even frigidity: a silly superstition always pictures the logician as a pale-faced prig. He was a living proof, a very living proof, that the precise contrary is the case. In fact it is generally the warmer and more sanguine sort ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... height, and comfortably guarded against the frigidity of the night by a long fur coat buttoned snugly around her neck. She wore a small squirrel tam, and was heavily veiled. In her right hand she carried a large suit-case and in her ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... by the frigidity of the subchief where he had expected gratitude or at least hospitality, glanced questioningly at Yuara. But the young man ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Even at lunar sunset the Earthlight was sixteen times brighter. At midnight, when the Earth was full, it would be bright enough for any activity. Actually, the human beings on Luna were nearly nocturnal in their habits, because it was easier to run moon-jeeps in frigidity and keep men and machines warm enough for functioning, than it was to protect them against the more-than-boiling heat of midday ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... in a tone of polite frigidity. "And since you place conditions on his welcome to your house, permit me to remark that I prefer his acquaintance to yours." He bowed with ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... most blustering and wintry aspect. In one sense, however, the character of the season had changed; the dry, equal cold, that was generally supportable, having been succeeded by tempests that were sometimes a little moist, but oftener of intense frigidity. Of course the equinox was past, and there were more than twelve hours of sun. The great luminary showed himself well above the northern horizon; and though his circuit described an arch that did not promise soon to bring him near ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Professor Felton, of Harvard, and the party made an evening's entertainment out of them." This last sentence is the one I allude to; and were it not for fear of appearing too fanciful I should say that these few words were, to the initiated mind, an unconscious expression of the lonely frigidity which characterised most attempts at social recreation in the New England world some forty years ago. There was at that time a great desire for culture, a great interest in knowledge, in art, in aesthetics, together with a very scanty supply ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... was much easier here and they made rapid progress toward the top. Suddenly Luke realized that it was growing very cold; there was a bite to the foul air, and moisture from the red mist was frosting his beard. The liberation of the tiny planet and consequent shifting of the terminator was bringing frigidity to Vulcan's Workshop. ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. What he does best, he soon ceases to do. He no sooner begins to move than he counteracts himself; and terror and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity.' In all this, our critic seems more bent on maintaining the equilibrium of his style than the consistency or truth of his opinions.—If Dr. Johnson's opinion was right, the following observations on Shakespeare's ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... in a glow of triumph; satisfied, notwithstanding her frigidity, that he had compassed his immediate aim, which was that she might not be able to dismiss from her thoughts him and his persevering desire for the shadow of her face during the next four-and-twenty-hours. And his confidence was well founded: she ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... there seems to have been some truth in the remark of one of his contemporaries that he could charm ten thousand men in a public speech but meet them individually and send every one away his enemy. His manner, even to senators and representatives of his own party, was reserved to the point of frigidity. When he granted requests for patronage he was so ungracious as to anger the recipients of favor. Although his personal character and integrity were as unquestioned as those of Hayes, and although he was a man of cultured tastes, well-informed, thoughtful and conscientious, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... complained that Europe took little note of or interest in this conference, and among the delegates of some of the Latin American states—representatives of all of which were present—Europe was blamed for frigidity to thoughts of arbitration. But the world grows wiser slowly, and Spanish-America not more rapidly. Important matters which occupied the attention of the Congress were the questions of some standardising of Spanish-American Custom-house ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... as ashes, for for all those millions we would not have given an ounce of fish-meal. Clark grumbled something about their being meteor-stones, whose ferruginous substance had been lured by the magnetic Pole, and kept from frictional burning in their fall by the frigidity of the air: and they quickly ceased to interest our sluggish minds, except in so far ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... changed so often from hot to cold that I really felt myself in a fever and an ague. I never even attempted to speak to them, and I looked with all the frigidity I possibly could, in hopes they would tire of bestowing such honours ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... and the Breton Marshal de Rieux both claimed the wardship of the young Duchess, for whose hand the widower Maximilian was already a prominent suitor. Now up to this point Henry had refused to adopt a hostile attitude towards France, and had treated overtures from Maximilian with frigidity. But in six months' time he was concluding alliances both with Brittany ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes |
