cold hands, warm heart

Undemonstrativeness need not signify lack of feeling. In the singular the term appears in a collection of sayings published by Vincent Lean in 1902 (“A cold hand and a warm heart”). A similar idea is behind Alan S. Blinder’s book on economic policymaking, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts (1987), which claims it is not only possible but necessary to have an economic policy that is both rational and efficient (hardheaded) and socially compassionate (softhearted).