Coldness Quotes

Instead of pressing, with the foremost of the crowd, into the palace of Constantinople, Libanius calmly expected his arrival at Antioch; withdrew from court on the first symptoms of coldness and indifference; required a formal invitation for each visit; and taught his sovereign an important lesson, that he might command the obedience of a subject, but that he must deserve the attachment of a friend. ~ Edward Gibbon

The coldness surprised him. It entered his vein, and the initiation proceeded. Veils were falling from large and solemn tableaux that Culafroy's eyes could not make out. Alberto took another snake and placed it on Culafroy's bare arm, about which it coiled just as the first had done. "You see, she's harmless." (Alberto always referred to snakes in the feminine.) Just as he felt his penis swelling between his fingers, so the sensitive Alberto felt in the child the mounting emotion that stiffened him and made him shudder. And the insidious friendship for snakes was born. ~ Jean Genet

Gillman smiles, in the cold manner of an assassin. It's like looking in the mirror. ~ Irvine Welsh

If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that, although you don't charge me with anything downright improper or wicked . . . , you do charge me with coldness, estrangements and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, as though I might have been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make everything quite different, while you aren't in the slightest to blame, unless it be for having been too good to me.
This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far as I too believe you are entirely blameless in the matter of our estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to acknowledge this, then what would be possible is - not, I think, a new life, we are both much too old for that - but still, a kind of peace . . . ~ Franz Kafka

I am less horrible than I could be
I've never set a house on fire
never thrown a firstborn off a bridge
still my whole life I answered every cry for help with a pour
with a turning away
I've given this coldness many names
thinking if it had a name it would have a solution
thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs ~ Kaveh Akbar

And I imagine that, though cold and haughty in her general demeanor, and even exacting in her requirements, she has strong affections for those who can reach them ... ~ Anne Bronte

He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a hot trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other ~ Ray Bradbury

Right then, he thanked his mother for the coldness she'd taught him; for the clarity it could bring, for the protection it represented. Because if he didn't do this he knew he'd fall apart; he knew he wouldn't be able to contain the anger and hurt. ~ Ais

Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

His mother had always been a headstrong woman, and with her grayish-white mane and unsmiling face, she appeared as regal and intimidating as she had ever been. Still, seeing her through other people's eyes, Hanfeng realized that all that made her who she was - the decades of solitude in her widowhood, her coldness to the prying eyes of people who tried to mask their nosiness with friendliness, and her faith in the notion of living one's own life without having to go out of one's way for other people - could be deemed pointless and laughable. Perhaps the same could be said of any living creature: a caterpillar chewing on a leaf, unaware of the beak of an approaching bird; an egret mesmerized by its reflection in a pond, as if it were the master of the universe; or Hanfeng's own folly of repeating the same pattern of hope and heartbreak, hoping despite heartbreak. ~ Yiyun Li

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I'm falling in love with you. As the words left his mouth, his lips pressed to mine, giving me the most intense and explosive kiss I had ever had. With the coldness of his lips and the warmth of his tongue beneath mine I saw fireworks and felt them through every part of my body. ~ Magan Vernon

Even though it's dark and cold there is always a shade of light. ~ Angela Bernabe

Coldness etched his gaze.
Aloofness whispered from his posture.
Calculation radiated from his every pore.
I'd never been so intimidated or so intimately challenged. ~ Pepper Winters

The first symptom of true love in a young man
is timidity; in a young girl, boldness. This is surprising, yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending
to approach each other and assuming, each the other's
qualities.
That day, Cosette's glance drove Marius beside himself,
and Marius' glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went
away confident, and Cosette uneasy. From that day forth,
they adored each other.
The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound
melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become
black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The
whiteness of soul in young girls, which is composed of coldness
and gayety, resembles snow. It melts in love, which is
its sun.
Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard
the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. She did not know
what name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill
because one does not know the name of one's malady?
She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly.
She did not know whether it was a good thing or a
bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable
or prohibited; she loved. She would have been greatly
astonished, had any one said to her: 'You do not sleep? But
that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very bad! You
have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must
not ~ Victor Hugo

Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth. ~ Philip Pullman

Ulis, he prayed, abandoning the set words, let my anger die with him. Let both of us be freed from the burden of his actions. Even if I cannot forgive him, help me not to hate him. Ulis was a cold god, a god of night and shadows and dust. His love was found in emptiness, his kindness in silence. And that was what Maia needed. Silence, coldness, kindness. He focused his thoughts carefully on the familiar iconography, the image of Ulis's open hands; the god of letting go was surely the god who would listen to an unwilling emperor. Help me not to feel hatred, he prayed, and after a while it became easier to ask that Dazhis find peace, that Maia's anger not be added to the weight against his soul. ~ Katherine Addison

Cherish every season of life; for without coldness, there is no comfort in warmth, and without darker days, there is no joy in light. ~ Wes Fesler

His eyes sent coldness deep under my skin, where it spread like a stain. "Domenico, ~ Deborah Harkness

There is one thing I need to be sure of," said the Emperor, taking an arrow, and placing it in the bow, cocking it back, "I need to know where your loyalties lay, Miss Roberts."
"With you, Emperor," said Areli, scared, "of course, they're with you."
"Then prove it," said the Emperor, "prove your obedience to me. Prove your allegiance." He placed the crossbow in her fingers, laced her finger against the trigger, and positioned the butt of the weapon against her shoulders. "That woman there. She's a follower, Areli. She's a deceitful little tramp that had taken residence in the bed of Degendhard's. I want you to kill her for me. I want you to punish her, for her crimes against her Empire." Areli looked at him, bewildered, with eyes that screamed, you can't be serious!
"If you don't. Then I will have no other option than to assume you have been taken to Degendhard's bed as well. You will do this, Areli. You will punish her. Prove your worth." Areli took a deep breath, feeling the smoothness of the wood and the coldness of the trigger for the first time since having the harsh weapon thrust into her hand.
The Emperor, sensing her hesitation, forced himself upon her. Her lifted her arms, and steadied the weapon into her shoulder, his chest pressed up against her back, his lips rubbing against her ear. The crossbow shook. The woman's head lulled back and forth as she was stuck in a drug rendered dream-state, not knowing that her body faced impalement.
" ~ Jeffrey Johnson

Everyone in this town is afraid of me. Do I scare you, Elizabeth?" he whispered, his breaths brushing against my lips.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I see you."
The coldness in his stare softened for a split second, almost as if he was confused by those four words. But I did see him. I saw past the hate in his stare and noticed the hurt in his frown. I saw the broken parts that somehow matched my own. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

English autumn mornings are often like mornings nowhere else in the world.
The air is cold.
The floorboards are cold.
It is perhaps this coldness which sharpens the tang of the hot cup of tea. Outside, steps on the gravel crunch a little more loudly than a month ago because of the very slight frost ~ John Berger

Georgie was the good in me. Without her, I was sure I'd sink into the darkness of my mind and never emerge. She gave me the light to keep coming back. To crawl away from the evil I was surrounded by, the nightmares, the coldness, and she made me human again." Deck ~ Nashoda Rose

The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of nonconviction ... It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirits, the pit at the center, and rising hope. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Of late, she had felt coldness in herself, and though she feared it, she loved it too, for it made her strong. ~ Catherynne M Valente

While it only takes one spouse to be friendly, it takes both spouses to be friends. When both spouses are unfriendly, the marriage is marked by conflict and coldness. When one spouse is friendly and the other is unfriendly, the marriage is marked by selfishness and sadness. But when both spouses each make a deep, heartfelt covenant with God to continually seek to become a better friend, increasing love and laughter mark the marriage. ~ Mark Driscoll

It's about Will. About Will, and me."
"He loves you," Jem said. "I know he loves you. We spoke of it before he left here." Though the coldness had not returned to his voice, he sounded suddenly almost unnaturally calm.
Tessa was shocked. "I didn't know you had ever talked of it with each other. Will did not say."
"Nor did you ever tell me of his feelings, though you knew for months. We all have our secrets that we keep because we do not want to hurt the people who love us." There was a sort of warning in his voice, or was she imagining it? ~ Cassandra Clare

I have heard it said that one loses a woman by loving her too much, that an affectation of coldness, from time to time, brings better results. And so on. I shall play no such tricks with you … Let love be truly love - that is, let it be peace - or let it not exist at all. ~ Henry De Montherlant

I've given this coldness many names thinking if it had a name it would have a solution thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one. ~ Kaveh Akbar

I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you. ~ Anais Nin

It is difficult to conceive any situation more painful than to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption. ~ Zachary Macaulay

If you stare at the center of the universe, there is coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn't care about us. Time doesn't care about us. That's why we have to care about each other. ~ David Levithan

The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Power helpeth our infirmity in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Life ends our deadness in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Wisdom delivers us from ignorance in this holy art ofprayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Fire delivers us from coldness in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Might comes to our aid in our weakness as we pray. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol ... One aunt had fallen asleep with her face in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner; another's fondness for Coors was so unwavering that I can still remember the musky smell of the beer and the coldness of the cans. Most of the men drank the way all Texas men drank, or so I believed, which meant that they were tough guys who could hold their liquor until they couldn't anymore
a capacity that often led to some cloudy version of doom, be it financial ruin or suicide or the lesser betrayal of simple estrangement. Both social drinkers, my parents had eluded these tragic endings; in the postwar Texas of suburbs and cocktails, their drinking was routine but undramatic. ~ Gail Caldwell

There was a coldness in his unwavering ease, his constant and impersonal joy. ~ Emily Ruskovich

Sometimes it was hard to discern judgment from coldness and self-absorption. ~ Kyle Mills

Wait," Kaidan called from behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, but kept walking. Then I felt his hand around my
wrist, spinning me in a half circle and pulling me to his chest. His face was so close. He reached down and cupped my face with one
woolly hand, and wiped the top corner of my lip hard with his thumb. I flinched back.
"What are you doing?"
"I ... " He appeared to have no idea himself. "I wanted to see your freckle."
A vulnerable tenderness flashed across his face, more painful to see than the coldness. It took every ounce of strength I had not to
beg for one last kiss. As fast as his expression had softened, it was back to stone again.
"What do you want from me, Kai?"
"For starters?" His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. "I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body."
A powerful shiver ripped through me. ~ Wendy Higgins

She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

I think coldness is chic among writers, and particularly ironic coldness. What is absolutely not allowable is sadness. People will do anything rather than to acknowledge that they are sad. ~ Mary Gordon

Sever all ties. The words in his mouth like ash. It was not the coldness of the words that horrified him, their utter opposition to anything human, but rather his own affinity for them, the way he was drawn to this vision of solitude with a feeling almost of nostalgia. He had the kind of loneliness that battles everything, that makes a person strange forever. ~ Sofia Samatar

What is most important when the time comes - and it always will - is to live your life with the coldness of a wolf. ~ Mark Rowlands

Why? Why did you kill them?"

He laughed, recognizing it bore a frightening coldness. "Because you walked through the wrong door, and they paid you to do it. You will be a testament to the terror that arrives the moment you or anyone else crosses the invisible line you didn't know existed until tonight. Spread the word. ~ G.S. Jennsen

The world is living today in what might be described as an era of carnality, which glorifies sex, hates restraint, identifies purity with coldness, innocence with ignorance, and turns men and women into Buddhas with their eyes closed, hands folded across their breasts, intently looking inward, thinking only of self. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

A romantic painting shows a heap of icy debris in a polar light; no man, no object inhabits this desolate space; but for this very reason, provided I am suffering an amorous sadness, this void requires that I fling myself into it; I project myself as a tiny figure, seated on a block of ice, abandoned forever. "I'm cold," the lover says, "Iet's go back"; but there is no road, no way, the boat is wrecked. There is a coldness particular to the lover, the chilliness of the child (or of any young animal) that needs maternal warmth. ~ Roland Barthes

Coldness went marching up his arms like the feet of evil fairies. ~ Stephen King

Ice is for death and endings. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

All you who draw near to serve God in prayer, learn to be like Him, meek, humble, and true of heart; do not let there be any deceitfulness or duplicity nor coldness in your soul. ~ John Of Kronstadt

Upon that second reading, much of the book fell away in my mind, revealing a story that was a metaphor for American capitalism in the tale of a great king with three sons: the oldest was given his passion and aggressiveness, the second his sweet nature and childlike qualities, and the third his intelligence, cunning, and coldness. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry." ~ Umberto Eco

Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don't think anything had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike anything we'd seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful empathy for all of them
it's very interesting. It still holds up, and it's still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air. ~ Martin Scorsese

fear of change
is like standing under a hot shower
and knowing the moment you'll turn it off
you'll be freezing cold ~ Erik Tanghe

I'm not afraid to die
no today . . . maybe tomorrow.

But I'll not die
no today . . . maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will go away
from this life that I've just borrowed! ~ John Zea

Margaret could not help her looks; but the short curled upper
lip, the round, massive up-turned chin, the manner of carrying
her head, her movements, full of a soft feminine defiance, always
gave strangers the impression of haughtiness. […]
She sat facing him and facing the light; her full beauty met his eye; her round white flexile throat rising out of the full, yet lithe figure; her lips, moving so slightly as she spoke, not breaking the cold serene look of her face with any variation from the one lovely haughty curve; her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his with quiet maiden freedom. He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself he was - a great rough fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him. Her quiet coldness of demeanour he interpreted into contemptuousness, and resented it in his heart to the pitch of almost inclining him to get up and go away, and have nothing more to do with these Hales, and their superciliousness. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Water. Like a blanket. Dark. Intoxicating. Cold. ~ Shannon Celebi

Where does the coldness come from if it's not from within our hearts? ~ Anthony T. Hincks

I was desperate really for people not to accuse me of coldness. It was taboo. ~ Thomas Dolby

And besides, in the matter of friendship, I have observed that the disappointment here arises chiefly, not from liking our friends too well, or thinking of them too highly, but rather from an over-estimate of their liking for and opinion of us; and that if we guard ourselves with sufficient scrupulousness of care from error in this direction, and can be content, and even happy to give more affection than we receive -- can make just comparison of circumstances, and be severely accurate in drawing inferences thence, and never let self-love blind our eyes -- I think we may manage to get through life with consistency and constancy, unembittered by that misanthropy which springs from revulsions of feeling. All this sounds a little metaphysical, but it is good sense of if you consider it. The moral of it is, that if we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own; we must look at their truth to themselves, full as much as their truth to us. In the latter case, every wound to self-love would be a cause of coldness; in the former, only some painful change in the friend's character and disposition -- some fearful breach in his allegiance to his better self -- could alienate the heart. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

For woman's chief want is to feel that she is wanted. Therefore it is that with women, cruelty is more easily borne than coldness. Indeed, It is astonishing how much downright cruelty a woman will stand from the man she loves or has loved. What women admire is a subtle combination of forcefulness and gentleness. If a woman has to choose between forcefulness and gentleness, always she will sacrifice the latter. ~ Arnold Haultain

The interval between a cold expectation and a warm desire may be filled by expectations of varying degrees of warmth or by desires of varying degrees of coldness. ~ Samuel Alexander

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. ~ George R R Martin

A man like Dmitry was never irate. His coldness was only reflected in the manner in which he destroyed. ~ Latrivia S. Nelson

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs. ~ Roman Payne

No, by God, you've accused me of coldness, but how
can you, when you can feel how hot my body is against
yours? You've said I have none of the red-blooded passion
of my sex, but you don't know. You," he gasped, pressing
against her with a hard thrust of his hips, "you will know it
the depth of my passion. But you will. ~ Charlotte Featherstone

Now, after so many years, I understand what the Coldness was and where it came from - this sense that everything is lost, and worthless, and meaningless. ~ Lauren Oliver

My days of laziness have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous endeavor; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine that rages in my soul. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Let a kind word warm you when your thoughts turn cold ~ Marty Rubin

I wiped the drips from my face and shook my hands free of the coldness and told Wynn how good it tasted. Wynn drank, too, as a reminder to himself that he had been right. No other water on earth tastes quite like that of a mountain stream. ~ Janette Oke

If they let you out," Kaltain said, both of them staring into the blackness of their prisons, "make sure that they're punished someday. Every last one of them."
Celaena listened to her own breathing, felt Chaol's blood under her nails, and the blood of all those men she'd hacked down, and the coldness of Nehemia's room, where all that gore had soaked the bed.
"They will be," Celaena swore to the darkness.
She had nothing left to give, except that. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith. ~ Thomas Merton

To keep a warm heart in a cold world is the real victory. ~ Marty Rubin

Though he never articulated it, I know Tiger believed in the idea of the Package. It went along with the sense of destiny his father had passed to him - that he was put on this earth to do something extraordinary with his special qualities, to "let the legend grow."
But those qualities, foremost among them an extraordinary ability to focus and stay calm under pressure, also included selfishness, obsessiveness, stubbornness, coldness, ruthlessness, pettiness, and cheapness.
When they were all at work in the competitive arena, they helped him win. And winning gave him permission to remain a flawed and in some ways immature person. ~ Hank Haney

Life always gets harder towards the summit - the cold increases, responsibility increases ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford

Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else,
coldness, or weakness, or viciousness,
but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it! ~ Margaret Deland

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world. ~ Lorrie Moore

Dazzling ice stars bombarded the world with rays, which splintered and penetrated the earth, filling earth's core with their deadly coldness, reinforcing the cold of the advancing ice. And always, on the surface, the indestructible ice-mass was moving forward, implacably destroying all life. I felt a fearful sense of pressure and urgency, there was no time to lose, I was wasting time; it was a race between me and the ice. Her albino hair illuminated my dreams, shining brighter than moonlight. I saw the dead moon dance over the icebergs, as it would at the end of the world, while she watched from the tent of her glittering hair. ~ Anna Kavan

This metropolitan world, then, is a world where flesh and blood is less real than paper and ink and celluloid. It is a world where the great masses of people, unable to have direct contact with more satisfying means of living, take life vicariously, as readers, spectators, passive observers: a world where people watch shadow-heroes and heroines in order to forget their own clumsiness or coldness in love, where they behold brutal men crushing out life in a strike riot, a wrestling ring or a military assault, while they lack the nerve even to resist the petty tyranny of their immediate boss: where they hysterically cheer the flag of their political state, and in their neighborhood, their trades union, their church, fail to perform the most elementary duties of citizenship.
Living thus, year in and year out, at second hand, remote from the nature that is outside them and no less remote from the nature within, handicapped as lovers and as parents by the routine of the metropolis and by the constant specter of insecurity and death that hovers over its bold towers and shadowed streets - living thus the mass of inhabitants remain in a state bordering on the pathological. They become victims of phantasms, fears, obsessions, which bind them to ancestral patterns of behavior. ~ Lewis Mumford

And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. this relationship will probably lead to nothing ... this didn't change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea ... ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Spring can still be felt
even if you lay under the bed
Frozen heart can melt
in coldness when wintry love misled ~ Munia Khan

Now will you help me put on my shirt?" he bellowed,exasperated and more than a little embarrassed.
Brownyn shook her head, her blue eyes large with apprehension. "I absolutely refuse to touch you."
Anger flashed in his good eye and in its wake left a coldness that gave her chills. Whatever she had just said instantly changed his mood and the tenor of their quarrel. "Yes,you will, woman," he gritted out. "I am starving and have already skipped one meal listening to you babble about your desires,but I refuse to miss another. ~ Michele Sinclair

He had watched her, after all, mourn her husband's death and it had been for her in part the discovery that grief could attach itself with permanence - something Ishmael had already discovered. It attached itself and then it burrowed inside and made a nest and stayed. It ate whatever was warm nearby, and then the coldness settled in permanently. You learned to live with it. ~ David Guterson

So she ignored Mrs. Arbuthnot's remark and raised forefinger, and said with marked coldness - at least, she tried to make it sound marked - that she supposed they would be going to breakfast, and that she had had hers; but it was her fate that however coldly she sent forth her words they came out sounding quite warm and agreeable. That was because she had a sympathetic and delightful voice, due entirely to some special formation of her throat and the roof of her mouth, and having nothing whatever to do with what she was feeling. Nobody in consequence ever believed they were being snubbed. It was most tiresome. And if she stared icily it did not look icy at all, because her eyes, lovely to begin with, had the added loveliness of very long, soft, dark eyelashes. No icy stare could come out of eyes like that; it got caught and lost in the soft eyelashes, and the persons stared at merely thought they were being regarded with a flattering and exquisite attentiveness. And if ever she was out of humour or definitely cross - and who would not be sometimes in such a world? - -she only looked so pathetic that people all rushed to comfort her, if possible by means of kissing. It was more than tiresome, it was maddening. Nature was determined that she should look and sound angelic. She could never be disagreeable or rude without being completely misunderstood. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

I've heard believers speak of the coldness of science and the warmth of their faith. But my life has been warm too, and I have faith. Faith in love, and faith in the inherent beauty of a world that formed itself. ~ Alexandra Oliva

At the end of an evening, her women friends would hug her, or a friend's husband might slip his arm around her waist to kiss her, just a little too suggestively, and the coldness in her would respond, I don't give a damn if I ever see any of you again. ~ Jennifer Egan

At evening the autumnal forests resound
With deadly weapons, the golden plains
And blue lakes, above them the sun
Rolls more darkly by; night enfolds
The dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their broken mouths.
But in the grassy vale the spilled blood,
Red clouds in which an angry god lives,
Gathers softly, lunar coldness;
All roads lead to black decay.
Beneath the golden boughs of night and stars
The sister's shadow reels through the silent grove
To greet the ghosts of heroes, their bleeding heads;
And the dark flutes of autumn sound softly in the reeds.
O prouder sorrow! you brazen altars
Today an immense anguish feeds the mind's hot flame,
The unborn descendants. ~ Georg Trakl

Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its founder was sublime- I have seen through present-day Christianity only too well. That icy coldness mesmerized even me, in my youth- but I have taken my revenge since then. How? By worshipping the love which they, the theologians, call sin, by respecting a whore, etc, To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is the opposite.ov ~ Vincent Van Gogh

A sudden damp coldness clung to the air around us. I lifted my head, eyeing the burnt orange sky. One drop of water fell, splashing off my cheek. Then the sky opened up, drenching us in cold rain within seconds.
I sighed. Really, it has to rain? ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Women, and what went on under their collars. Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country inside their clothes
mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father's take on things. But men's body temperatures were never dealt with; they were never even mentioned ... ~ Margaret Atwood

She seemed to have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry. ~ Kate Chopin

The emotionally cold or distant trait also rears its head during arguments when one person is experiencing and expressing significant emotion and the narcissistic person just checks out and does not respond - or does so in a cold and clipped manner. At such times you may find yourself spinning - and actually feeling as though you are "going crazy" - because the coldness of the response makes it even more difficult to regulate yourself in that moment. The emotional coldness can be confusing for you and may result in attempts to jump through hoops to generate warmth and connection with your partner. I have observed people wearing themselves out over decades, trying to create a fire where there was no possibility. ~ Ramani Durvasula

Her brain was acutely damaged in the accident.

When the doctor was coming out of the ICU, he feared.
He made an evil prayer.

"I am fine to live with her memories,
I will settle myself with the very
thought that she isn't anymore, happily and gently.

But dear God,
don't make her lose her conscious,
like a dead yet, living body.
Coldness in the eyes,
which I have seen filled with love and surprise
will kill me every day.

I don't want to die a new death every minute.
Take her away,
Or give her back in whole. ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

I have never been joyful, and yet it has always seemed as if joy were my constant companion, as if the buoyant jinn of joy danced around me, invisible to others but not to me, whose eyes shone with delight. Then when I walk past people, happy-go-lucky as a god, and they envy me because of my good fortune, I laugh, for I despise people, and I take my revenge. I have never wished to do anyone an injustice, but I have always made it appear as if anyone who came close to me would be wronged and injured. Then when I hear others praised for their faithfulness, their integrity, I laugh, for I despise people, and I take my revenge. My heart has never been hardened toward anyone, but I have always made it appear, especially when I was touched most deeply, as if my heart were closed and alien to every feeling. Then when I hear others lauded for their good hearts, see them loved for their deep, rich feelings, then I laugh, for I despise people and take my revenge. When I see myself cursed, abhorred, hated for my coldness and heartlessness, then I laugh, then my rage is satisfied. The point is that if the good people could make me be actually in the wrong, make me actually do an injustice-well, then I would have lost. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat. ~ Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Right at the beginning, before the pianist could get her wheels up and fly into that storm, she was hit with a con brio, which I figured meant she had to play either with brightness, with coldness, or with cheese. ~ Richard Bach

I looked and felt my head gradually grow cold. It was the sort of coldness you feel when you take too big a bite from an ice-cream cone or sip too greedily from an ice-cold drink. The kind of coldness that hurt - from the inside out. ~ Herman Koch

The father was dry-eyed but the mother kept erupting, like loudly, unprovoked, in a keening foreign wail that was almost like song; it sounded strangely ceremonial and impersonal, like a lament for an idea. Walter went alone to the morgue, without any idea. His love was resting beneath a sheet on a gurney of an awkward height, too high to be knelt by. Her hair was as ever, silky and black and thick, as ever, but there was something wrong with her jaw, some outrageously cruel and unforgivable injury, and her forehead, when he kissed it, was colder than any just universe could have allowed such a young person's forehead to be. The coldness entered him through his lips and didn't leave. What was over was over. His delight in the world had died, and there was no point in anything. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Our God ... is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction. ~ Thomas Merton

I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white, it's snow-white. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Evidence of this [transformation of animals into fossils] is that parts of aquatic animals and perhaps of naval gear are found in rock in hollows on mountains, which water no doubt deposited there enveloped in sticky mud, and which were prevented by coldness and dryness of the stone from petrifying completely. Very striking evidence of this kind is found in the stones of Paris, in which one very often meets round shells the shape of the moon. ~ Albertus Magnus

It was what he had waited for all these years, but when he had deciphered the signal pattern sitting alone in his small dark room, a coldness had gripped him and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought, didn't it just have to be the Vogons. ~ Douglas Adams