The central fact of life, its core of splendour, he said to himself as, arrived at home, he hung up his hat in the passage and prepared to plunge with renewed appetite into his laboratory, was work; but, he added as he passed the open door of the sitting-room, and was reminded by its untidiness of domesticities, since one had to withdraw occasionally from the heat of that great middle light and refresh oneself in something cooler, one needed a place of relaxation where the interest was more attenuated, a ring of relative tepidity round the bright centre of one's life, and this ring was excellently supplied by the object commonly called the family circle.
"The Pastor's Wife"
Elizabeth von Arnim
You bet I rejoice at the outlook-I long to escape from tepidity.
"The Letters of William James, Vol. II"
William James
Desolation and tepidity vanish.
"The Prodigal Returns"
Lilian Staveley