"Docility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extraordinary docility. The Doctor had got the upper hand of me again—a state of things that I might have found it hard to endure, but for a call of duty which put an end to our sitting. One of the female warders appeared with a message from the condemned cell. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... shame. Yonder, terrified and broken-hearted, is the sister of a man who shot another. He is no criminal. There was a quarrel about a matter of money. The lie was given, a blow followed, and then a shot. Her brother a murderer! Her brother, all kindness, docility, and goodness, locked up in a place like this with thieves and hardened convicts! It was a fatal shot—ah, me, so very fatal, so ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... other nations,) have even increased in numbers, under the influence of civilization. But this is the result of numerous favorable causes combined, and proves nothing, from which to infer the Indian's docility. Other savages, on coming in contact with civilized men, have discovered a disposition to acquire some of the useful arts—their comforts have been increased, their sufferings diminished, and their condition ameliorated, by the grafting of new ideas upon the old. But, between the red ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... an admiring, sympathizing wife, and an admirable housekeeper. She still utters inadvertencies now and then, commits new errors at odd times, but never repeats them when exposed. Observing which docility, Uncle Philip has been heard to express a fear that, in twenty years, she will be the wisest woman in England. "But, thank heaven!" he adds, "I ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Hamburg looked upon Frederick as the romantic rescuer and lover of the little dancer. All were conscious of witnessing the development of a romance especially sanctioned by Divine Providence, and looked on with interest and respect. Ingigerd's attitude to Frederick was that of tacit docility, as if she, the obedient ward, recognised ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... protest, a venison dinner was announced for Sunday and received by the Valley in a spirit of hilarious enthusiasm. The preacher refused to deliver the sermon while the meal was in progress, but it was such a gustatory success that at its close, the guests sat in complete docility through a sermon on future punishment. It was a good sermon, quite as modern in most aspects as Lost Chief. Douglas had seen to that. Mr. Fowler had reached the closing sentence when a bull bellowed outside and the door opened disclosing Elijah Nelson, with his horse close behind ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... With the docility of that complete indifference which is bred of deadening weariness, she submitted to being helped to her seat, arranged her veil to protect her face and sat back with folded hands, submissive to endure whatsoever chance or mischance there might ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... rapidly. Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility. Drunken brawls and promiscuous revolver shooting are unknown in the Congo, for the simple reason, that it is impossible up country to procure drink. There are no drink shanties or gambling dens and indeed no ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... not till four years after Strickland's death that Maurice Huret wrote that article in the <i Mercure de France> which rescued the unknown painter from oblivion and blazed the trail which succeeding writers, with more or less docility, have followed. For a long time no critic has enjoyed in France a more incontestable authority, and it was impossible not to be impressed by the claims he made; they seemed extravagant; but later judgments have confirmed his estimate, and the reputation ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... answer moved its giver to the head of the class, as with us. Obedience is the foundation of the Japanese social order, and with children accustomed to unquestioning obedience at home the teacher has no trouble in securing quietness, attention, and docility. There was almost a painful earnestness in the old-fashioned faces which pored over the school-books; even such a rare event as the entrance of a foreigner failed to distract these childish students. The younger pupils were taught chiefly by object lessons, and the older were exercised ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... to a bundle of shawls lying in a Windsor chair, unwrapped a portable writing-case which appeared to be the kernel of the bundle, and laid it on the table—all this with extreme docility. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I started on an elephant, following the camp to Gyra, twelve miles distant. The docility of these animals is an old story, but it loses so much in the telling, that their gentleness, obedience, and sagacity seemed as strange to me as if I had never heard or read of these attributes. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... natural death could not long be postponed. They who attempted to read the prophecy with accuracy were of opinion that the prophet had intimated that had the nation, even in this its crisis, consented to take him, the prophet, as its sole physician and to obey his prescription with childlike docility, health might not only have been re-established, but a new juvenescence absolutely created. The nature of the medicine that should have been taken was even supposed to have been indicated in some very vague ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the insult, and drew herself up to the full height of her indignation. Secretly, silently, in misery and isolation, harshly treated by the people and the things about her, the girl had built up a resolute, straightforward character; tears had tempered instead of softening it. Beneath filial docility and humility, beneath passive obedience, beneath apparent gentleness of disposition, she concealed a character of iron, a man's strength of will, one of those hearts which nothing bends and which never bend themselves. When her father demanded that she lower herself to that extent, she reminded ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... subject. Her temper was strangely uncertain; some chance word in a conversation would irritate her beyond endurance, and after an outburst of petulant displeasure she became obstinately mute. At other times she behaved with such exquisite docility and sweetness that Widdowson ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... impression with previous ones, of the docility and servility we had previously encountered? Docility and subserviency are necessary in dealing with the conquering foreigner, but in such places and on such occasions when those qualities are not required, we get an impression ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the docility of exhaustion. "Peter is seeing to it. He always sees to everything. He knows a woman in the bazaar who would do—an elderly woman—I think he said she is the grandmother of Hafiz who sells trinkets. You know Hafiz, I expect? I don't ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... courage—all combined to turn him from obedience; but obedience bade fair to conquer, when Marcia's laugh rang in his ears, and he could hear her gravely complimenting his prudence and discoursing on the rare value of docility in a husband. Besides, what did it all matter? Had he not said that he sought death? and, surely, the way it came ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the Salon, insisting with a feverish eloquence and invention that he should worship all that she worshipped—no matter if he did not understand!—let him worship all the same—till he had learnt his new alphabet with a smiling docility, and caught her very tricks of phrase. Especially were they haunters of the sculptures in the Louvre, where, because of the difficulty of it, she piqued herself most especially on knowledge, and could convict him most triumphantly of a barbarian ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grounds, nothing could be more satisfactory, more luminous, more able or more decisive than the view taken of it by Sir James Mackintosh. But the House of Commons, as a collective body, have not the docility of youth, the calm wisdom of age; and often only want an excuse to do wrong, or to adhere to what they have already determined upon; and Sir James, in detailing the inexhaustible stores of his memory ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... pistol shots and a mad chorus of shrill cowboy yells broke out, that terrorized train crew and passengers into docility. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... for the moment put in abeyance and new forces are evoked from the "vasty deep" of our souls, we are capable of an entirely different set of manifestations. First of all, those usually associated with the hypnotic state which do not need to be further considered here—a great docility to suggestion, unconsciousness to pain and the like. We have also the possibility of powers which Boirac calls magnetoidal. "These appear to involve the intervention of forces still unknown, distinct from those that ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... competitors, in strength of body, and the accomplishments of skill, yet was not his mind rough and boisterous. Success had not taught him a despotic and untractable temper, applause had not made him insolent and vain. He was gentle as the dove. He listened with eager docility to the voice of hoary wisdom. He had always a tear ready to drop over the simple narrative of pastoral distress. Victor as he continually was in wrestling, in the race, and in the song, the shout of triumph never escaped his lips, the exultation of insult he was never ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... this enumeration one other quality, one without which this harvest will not ripen. I speak of mental docility and reverence. A man will have looked forth to little purpose on the universe if he does not see that, even with his expanding circle of light, there is an ever-enlarging circle of darkness around it. He will have compared his achievements with ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... which are implanted by nature, and are called involuntary; the other, of those which depend on the will, and are more often spoken of by their proper name of virtues; whose great excellence is attributed to the mind as a subject of praise. Now in the former class are docility, memory, and others, nearly all of which are called by the one name of ingenium, and those who possess them are called ingeniosi. The other class consists of those which are great and real virtues; which we call voluntary, such as prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, and others of the same ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... should never be educated save as a German. By this I mean to convey that her education should not go beyond German literature, German history, German veneration of laws, German manners and German passivity and docility. The Princess Hildegarde had been educated in England and France, which simplifies everything, or, I should say, to be ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... and a moment's thought decided him to assume a certain amount of meekness and docility with this evident brother of some religious order, so that he might obtain both sympathy and confidence from him, and from all whom he might be bound to serve. Ill and weak as he was, the natural tendency of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Roosevelt had to be elected to the Twenty-first District Republican Club, for the politicians of those days kept their organization close, not to say exclusive, and in this way they secured the docility of their members. The Twenty first District Club met in Morton Hall, a dingy, barnlike room situated over a saloon, and furnished severely with wooden benches, many spittoons, and a speaker's table decorated with a large pitcher for ice-water. The regular meetings came once a month and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... side of life he did not realize. Though beauty meant little to his practical nature, he sought, in his great love for Margaret, to appreciate the works which excited her to such charming ecstasy. He walked by her side with docility and listened, not without deference, to her outbursts. He admired the correctness of Greek anatomy, and there was one statue of an athlete which attracted his prolonged attention, because the muscles were indicated with the precision ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... think that religious docility demands implicit belief in any of the published details of our future existence. Gold is not comfortable; jasper would not well ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... readily, are tender, and have no disposition to forage; they are not all the time wandering round and flying over the garden fence, and scratching up flower and vegetable seeds. In fact, if you'll notice, there is a docility about my live-stock that is very attractive. The cows and chickens only need articulation to carry on conversation. You didn't see the hatching department of my chicken-house? I modeled the building after ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... overlook. The little boy must have contended with fear in this awesome environment, the child of gentlest nurture, but he thought he was going to his mother, or perchance he could not have submitted with such docility, so uncomplainingly. Only when they had reached the rocky marge of the water and he had been uncoiled from the rug and set upon his feet did he lift ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... painful sight than that of untimely care in children, and it was particularly observable in one whose disposition had heretofore been mirthful. Yet there was so much sweetness and docility about Clara, that your admiration was excited; and if the moods of mind are calculated to paint the cheek with beauty, and endow motions with grace, surely her contemplations must have been celestial; since every lineament ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of his age, and been for a considerable time weaned from her maternal caresses; especially as he felt no wants nor grievances in the family of the Count, who favoured him with a particular share of indulgence, because he perceived in him a spirit of docility, insinuation, and sagacity, far above his years. He did not, however, fail to lament the untimely fate of his mother, with such filial expressions of sorrow, as still more intimately recommended him to his patron; who, being himself a man ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... novelties was in the act of showing forth to an admiring crowd, the docility of a tame hare. On a table in the street, on which was placed a drum, the little animal stood, in an erect posture, and with surprising tractableness obeyed the commands of its exhibiter, delivered in very broken ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... on him fiercely. "Go back!" she said. All the confidence, the gentleness, the docility of the last three days were gone; and in their place suspicion glared at him from eyes grown spiteful as a cat's. "Go back!" she repeated. "I do not want you! I do not want any one, or any help! Or any protection! Go, do you hear, and let ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... to differentiate the island of Basilan from the many others in the Sulu group. The natives seemed far from hostile, however, and Lieutenant Lewis remarked upon their docility to Sergeant Greer. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... which they enjoyed as compared with their friends at home. To speak of them as 'slaves to the corvees and unpaid military service, debarred from education and crammed with gross fictions as an aid to their docility and their value as food for powder,' [Footnote: A. G. Bradley, The fight with France for North America (London, 1905, p. 388).] is to display a rare combination of hopeless bigotry and crass ignorance. The habitant of the old regime in Canada was neither ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... with as much docility as the slave had done, and by their united efforts the patient was soon dressed in warm dry clothes, wrapped in a hot, thick blanket, and tucked up comfortably in bed. But though her form was now limber, and her pulse perceptible, she had not yet spoken or opened her eyes. It was a half an hour ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... perhaps, an immortal soul, he resolved no longer to be governed by such timid counsels, but to endeavour, by application to his officers, to obtain a reprieve, at least, if not a pardon, for the criminal, in whom he felt so unusually interested, at once from his docility of temper ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... instantly she felt him lift his hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... appendage of the miners' camp; the stolid butt of good-humored practical jokes, the victim alternately of careless indifference or of extravagant generosity. He received kicks and half-dollars intermittently, and pocketed both with stoical fortitude. But under this treatment he presently lost the docility and frugality which was part of his inheritance, and began to put his small wits against his tormentors, until they grew tired of their own mischief and his. But they knew not what to do with him. His pretty nankeen-yellow skin debarred ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... mind as to whether she should keep to the drive, or deviate on to the grass by the side of it; but, upon the whole, she behaved fairly well, and turned out of the lodge gates into the high road with perfect docility and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... which illustrates the docility of the sadoe drivers, and the cleverness with which they can ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... don't think you'll ever find San Giorgio fringed with gondolas," Kenwick mocked; "but I'm sure it shows a beautiful spirit in those who do come. I recognize Miss May's docility." ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... sweetly of course, but unmistakably—no one could doubt who saw the two together for five minutes. It would be, in all likelihood, a happy subjugation, for Norbert was of anything but a rebellious temper; his bonds would be of silk; the rewards of his docility would be such as many a self-assertive man might envy. But when Warburton tried to imagine himself in such a position, a choked laugh of humourous disdain ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... an atmosphere of criticism very different from the atmosphere of literary docility and acquiescence of the "Ages of Faith"; thus it came that great scholars in all parts of Europe began to realize, as never before, the part which theological skill and ecclesiastical zeal had taken in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the accused. The prisoners were placed about seven or eight feet from the justices and the accusers between the justices and them; the former were then ordered to stand right before the justices. All this Lois did at their bidding, with something of the wondering docility of a child, but not with any hope of softening the hard, stony look of detestation that was on all the countenances around her, save those that were distorted by more passionate anger. Then an officer was bidden to hold each of her hands, and Justice Hathorn bade her keep her eyes continually fixed ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her his arm, and supported her to the carriage, followed with great docility by Armstrong, who broke out into occasional snatches of music, once a common habit, but in which he had not been known to indulge ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... time, they comprehended that salvation is without money and without price—absolutely free and gratuitous. It was to them news—good news; and when I call to mind Meekha's impetuous temperament, and see him listen with such docility to Christ's teaching, I cannot but hope that, though imperfectly sanctified, the 'good work' is begun in him, which God's grace will complete. He accepts no new truth without a challenge, and nothing short of a 'Thus saith the Lord,' will give it currency with him. At one ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... is often possessed of a very unreliable memory while the unconscious self on the contrary is provided with a marvelous and impeccable memory which registers without our knowledge the smallest events, the least important acts of our existence. Further, it is credulous and accepts with unreasoning docility what it is told. Thus, as it is the unconscious that is responsible for the functioning of all our organs but the intermediary of the brain, a result is produced which may seem rather paradoxical to you: that is, if it believes that a certain organ functions well or ill or that we feel such and ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he hath a winning way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you will, and a smoothness of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of the ancient ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... superintendance of Ribblesdale. She was a politician of the school of Elizabeth, very willing to do good to her inferiors, but positively requiring that they should obey her. Prescription and authority, docility and respect, old principles and old manners, were her favourite topics; and in preaching submission to all superiors from the King to the village constable, precedence and decorum were her constant texts. Her notions were perhaps urged too far, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... yesterday evening harnessed all abreast, their own master in a dancer's habit I was told, guiding them himself, and personating the Cid, which was the name of the ballet, if I remember right, making his horses go clear round the stage, and turning at the lamps of the orchestra with such dexterity, docility, and grace, that they seemed rather to enjoy than feel disturbance at the deafening noise of instruments, the repeated bursts of applause, and hollow sound of their own hoofs upon the boards of a theatre. I had no notion of such discipline, and thought the praises, though very ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... by the mind over the body is derived, and which, for aught we know, may reside, not in the mind, but in the body, and may consist, not of any strength inherent in the former, but of loyalty and docility inherent in the latter. Just as the authority of a popular general over a well-disciplined army is not the less real because the soldiers, every one of whose lives is at the general's disposal, might, if so inclined, mutiny en masse, so it can make no difference in the mind's power ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... I seen such children as the Duc de Quiche's. Uniting to the most remarkable personal beauty an intelligence and docility as rare as they are delightful; and never did I witness any thing like the unceasing care and attention bestowed on ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... cinder ring," she replied with unwonted docility. "The teacher said I would be a ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... surrounded by her children, she thanked God, with tears of gratitude, for her recovery, and all his mercies to us. Then the pretty osier carriage arrived. They had harnessed the cow and young bull to it; Francis answering for the docility of Valiant, provided he guided him himself. Accordingly, he was mounted before, his cane in his hand, and his bow and quiver on his back, very proud to be mamma's charioteer. My other three boys mounted on their animals, were ready before, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... lay idle in her lap, and she leaned back in her chair, absorbed in thought, glancing from time to time at Phil's worn face on the pillow, where he lay like one exhausted and weary, reluctant to return to the turmoil of life. He took his food and medicine with the docility of a child, and occasionally smiled at his aunt when she ministered to him. Gradually he mended and increased in bodily strength until he was able to sit up, and smoke an occasional cigarette. Sometimes he talked ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... persuaded to lend her the family pony and side-saddle, with the view to the completion of her journey. After taking some slight refreshment, she hurried on; Bunce, keeping the road afoot, alongside, with all the patient docility of a squire of the middle ages; and to the great satisfaction of all parties, they arrived in sight of the village just as Counsellor Pippin, learned in the law, was disputing with the state attorney upon the non-admissibility of certain points of testimony, which it ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... for their docility and expertness in handicraft work, and become excellent house-carpenters and joiners, and as an instance of their skill in the arts they practise that of letting blood by cupping, in a mode nearly similar to ours. Among the Sumatrans blood is never drawn ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Kentucky-bred saddlers of much more than average quality, for they had strains of warm blood in their veins. There is no question nowadays as to the value of warm blood in either riding or driving horses. It gives ability, endurance, courage, and docility beyond expectation. One-sixteenth thorough blood will, in many animals, dominate the fifteen-sixteenths of cold blood, and prove its virtue by unusual ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags, and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small one. She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... be hereafter reckoned. The whole business, though connected with the destinies of a nation, takes inevitably a tinge of the ludicrous. The vast preparation of men and warlike material,—the majestic patience and docility with which the people waited through those weary and dreary months,—the martial skill, courage, and caution, with which our movement was ultimately made,—and, at last, the tremendous shock with which we were brought suddenly up against nothing at all! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have a great Docility which may hinder him from neglecting the advice that is given him, not only by the meanest Artist, but also by those that understand nothing of Architecture; for not only Architects, but all the World ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... arrangement, if made, would have excited no discussion. Chamberlain's language, moreover, implies that the book was already in circulation. It would be exceedingly strange if its previous purchasers had the docility to eliminate the title-page from their copies, in deference to an order certainly not very emphatically promulgated. The readiest explanation is that Chamberlain, in his haste to give his correspondent early information, reported ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... character, his inclinations, his impressionability, etc. Hypnosis does not run all subjects into a uniform mold, and make pure and simple automatons out of them, moved solely by the will of the hypnotist; it increases cerebral docility; it makes the automatic activity preponderate over the will. But the latter persists to a certain degree; the subject thinks, reasons, discusses, accepts more readily than in the waking condition, but does not always accept, especially in the light degrees of sleep. In ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... can get its foot on that plank, and not otherwise. I prefer my figure of the shower specially sent on the feeble and half-withered plant. All the divines of every school have always said that there is light enough in nature, if with true docility and love men would follow it. Christ came to shed more light on our path, not the only light; to lift up the lame man, not to create limbs for him or to ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... occasional instances of immoderate instinct, closely approximating to intellect, or even intellect itself, and moral worth, or the absence of ferocity, or the presence of positive amiability, render it possible that the barbarian is not a fiend, or that he may be schooled to tolerable docility, while the general tenor of barbarism is to wrong, cruelty, violence, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... vanished, the ardor deepened, and with an imperious "Lie down!" to his docile attendant, the young man obeyed with equal docility, looking as wistfully toward his mistress as the brute toward her master, while he waited ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... I was well pleased to be married, because I imagined thereby I should have full liberty, and that I should be delivered from the ill-treatment of my mother, which doubtless I brought on myself by want of docility, you, however, O my God, had quite other views, and the state in which I found myself afterwards frustrated my hopes, as I shall hereafter tell. Although I was well pleased to be married, I nevertheless continued all the time of my ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the wedding she surprised herself by her docility and acquiescence in all that was proposed for her. She even accepted without demur the white swiss and blue ribbons that a week before she had considered entirely too infantile for an adult maid of honor. This particular exhibition of virtue was due to the exemplary behavior ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... characterless man, taking the lead from his wife with admirable docility, and asking nothing from fortune but regular work and time to read the newspaper. He had worked for the same firm since he was a boy, disliking change; but since his second marriage he had been dragged from one ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the policy of not resisting Mrs. Westgate by submitting, with great docility and thankfulness, to her husband. He was evidently a very good fellow, and he made an impression upon his visitors; his hospitality seemed to recommend itself consciously—with a friendly wink, ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... quite know what I answered,—my heart was heavy and aching,—but I tried with true feminine docility to follow the lead he had set me. He continued for some time in the same vein; but as we approached the house the effort seemed to become too much for him, and we relapsed again ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... followed with docility at his heels, uttering now and again a plaintive bleat of ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... least, a matter of personal relation between him and the missionaries. He goes to church as the dog follows his master,—expecting a bone and hoping for a pat in return. He comes promptly at a whistle (the chapel-bell); his docility and decorum are unimpeachable; he does what is expected of him with a pleased wag of the tail; but it is still, it is always, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... was right about what he would have accomplished by that time the next night; for before sundown he had half the story written, and, what is more, the chapters had come as easily as any writing he ever did. For docility, Marguerite was a perfect wonder. Not only did she follow out his wishes; she often anticipated them, and in certain parts gave him a lead in a new direction, which, Stuart said, gave the story a hundred ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... and finished the shearing of each animal exactly the same way, every clip of the large shears counting to the best advantage. They told me that he gained much time by the unvarying precision that left no ragged strips to be trimmed off. The docility of those wild sheep was astonishing. Almost while the last clip was being made the sheep was seized by a second assistant standing at the shearer's left, who at once threw the poor thing down on its side, where he quickly painted the brand of that particular ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... as he could tell, grew cheerful. Always having credited her with common-sense, he was pleased now to see her make use of it in a way of which few girls of nineteen would have been capable. She accepted his surveillance with so much docility that, by the time they returned to town in the autumn he was able to ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... fate of Napoleon and of France drew from us groans or imprecations, she ran to us; and, restraining her own tears, reminded us with the wisdom of a philosopher, and the sweetness of an angel, that we should surmount our sorrows and regrets, and submit with docility to the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... made their appearance the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given me an unmistakable clue. Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to the little speech read aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly to understand, for he modified his attitude with a docility not devoid of a degree of majesty, so as to conform to the indications given in the text; then he rode away at the same jerky trot. And nothing could arrest his slow progress. If the lantern were moved I could still distinguish Golo's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... before he gave the king the most certain pledge of his docility. After having held his pontifical court at Bordeaux and Poitiers he declared that he would fix his residence in France, in the county of Venaissin, at Avignon, a territory which Philip the Bold had remitted to Pope Gregory X. in execution of a deed of gift from Raymond ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... I obeyed all my brother's military commands with the utmost docility; and happy it made me that every sort of doubt, or question, or opening for demur was swallowed up in the unity of this one papal principle, discovered by my brother, viz., that all rights and duties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself. His was the judgment—his was the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... work and brilliant recognition was interrupted in 1848 by Ruskin's amazing marriage to Miss Euphemia Gray, a union into which he entered at the desire of his parents with a docility as stupid as it was stupendous. Five years later the couple were quietly divorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Millais. All the author's biographers maintain an indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, but there can be no concealment of the fact that its effect ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... or too little—according to the point of view—to assume that Fouchette was patient under her yoke and that she went about her tasks with the docility of a well-trained animal. On the contrary, she not only rebelled in spirit, but she often resisted with all her feeble strength, fighting, feet, hands, and teeth, with feline ferocity. Having been brought to the level of brutes, she had become ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... horse came down, she coolly stepped on one side, and was on his back again the instant he had recovered himself. That was too much for the obstreperous animal; he knew he was conquered and gave in to the inevitable, allowing himself to be handled and put through his paces with suspicious docility. ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... set George's ordinarily pale countenance into a flame. Harry, his brother's fondest worshipper, could not but admire George's haughty bearing and rapid declamation, and prepared himself, with his usual docility, to follow his chief. So the boys went to their beds, the elder conveying special injunctions to his junior to be civil to all the guests so long as they remained under the maternal roof on ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 'what ought to be.'[232] Occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower, and made a little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[233] The ladies, however, made it up to him. Shelburne made him read his 'dry metaphysics' to them,[234] and they received it with feminine docility. Lord Shelburne had lately (1779) married his second wife, Louisa, daughter of the first earl of Upper Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was the mother of the Lord Holland of later ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... It seemed a somewhat imaginative name for the prison-born whelp, but as he grew out of cub-hood his character and his stature alike seemed to justify it. Influenced by the example of his gentle foster-mother, he was docility itself toward his tamer, whom he came to love well after the reticent fashion of his race. But toward all others, man and beast alike, his reserve was cold and dangerous. Toomey, apparently, absorbed all the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... trouble to write himself about the matter, but sent back an answer by his wife, that the price of transporting the freight from one railway to another at Breslau, Berlin, Magdeburg, and Cologne, would render the scheme impossible. Balzac showed unusual docility at this juncture; he was evidently already half-hearted about the enterprise, and remarked that since his first letter he had himself thought of the objections pointed out by M. Surville, and had remembered hearing that a forest purchased ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... and rejoiced in the fact that with all her docility, Eleanor held firmly to her preconceived notions. She continued to wear her dresses short, but when she was not actually on exhibition, she hid her long legs behind every available ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... still be renown'd for her song, The Eagle for strength, and for softness the Dove, Higher praise to the Baya of India belongs, For gentle docility, duty and love. ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... leaving one convent to enter another. I know you; you are a coward, and you will submit to the yoke of family life with a lamblike docility. But I am here to direct you; you must come to Paris. There we shall drive the men wild and hold a court like queens. Your husband, sweetheart, in three years from now may become a member of the Chamber. I know all about members now, and I will explain it to you. You will work that machine ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... man of about five and fifty, of the complexion common to those whose lives are passed on the bluffs and beaches of an ocean isle. He extended the four quarters of his face in a genial smile, and his hand for a grasp of the same magnitude. She gave her own in surprised docility, and he continued: ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... among the early Mongolians, the dog remained savage and neglected for centuries, prowling in packs, gaunt and wolf-like, as it prowls to-day through the streets and under the walls of every Eastern city. No attempt was made to allure it into human companionship or to improve it into docility. It is not until we come to examine the records of the higher civilisations of Assyria and Egypt that we discover any distinct varieties ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... rationalize our sense-data by putting ideal constructions upon them, though he had abstained from sanctifying the practice by a hideous jargon of technical terminology. But this way of eking out the facts only seemed to him to falsify them. Truth in his view was to be reached by accepting with docility the sensations given from without. To set to work to 'imagine' connections between them, and to claim for them a higher truth, had seemed to him an outrage. What right, then, had Kant to legitimate the mind's impudence in tampering with ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... advantages they had obtained from their British allies. It was not long, indeed, before the Portuguese, laying aside their characteristic pride and vain boasting, clung to their ancient protectors, and submitted to their direction with a docility and patience that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The docility of the child, who believes whatever is told him, has in it an element of submissiveness. There is submissiveness also in the receptive attitude appropriate in observation and forming opinions—the attitude of ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... our grammar and public schools. A studious, pains-taking, and docile youth, will, no doubt, learn a great deal, no matter where he has been placed in pupilage; but we have heard from a contemporary of M. Rollin, that he was not particularly distinguished either for his industry or his docility in early life. The earliest days of the reign of Charles X. saw M. Ledru Rollin an etudiant en droit in Paris. Though the schools of law had been re-established during the Consulate pretty much after the fashion in which they existed in the time of Louis the XIV., yet the application of the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... aught, save to take her home again. Our little daughter she had named Beatrice, after her maternal grandmother. She was born six months and six days after Agnes's abstraction. She spoke highly of the pongos, of their docility, generosity, warmth of affection to their mates and young ones, and of their irresistible strength. At my wife's injunctions, or from her example, they all wore aprons: and the females had let the hair of their heads grow long. It was glossy black, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... of which he turns either to the organising of a governing machine or to some form of personal service (in either case merging his own individuality) is as much foreign to the American spirit as is the docility of the less intelligent class of Germans under their political leaders—a docility which, until very recently has caused the German voters in America to be used in ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... unexpected docility, and Polly went into the dining-room, where Tom was wandering about in a restless way. If he had been "raging like a bear," Polly would n't have cared, she was so pleased that he wanted her, and so glad to be a confidante, as she used to be in the happy old days, that she would joyfully have faced ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... ridiculous mistress. Repeatedly confuted, he was perpetually resisting old reasonings and producing new ones. Were only genius requisite for an able mathematician, Hobbes had been among the first; but patience and docility, not fire and fancy, are necessary. His reasonings were all paralogisms, and he had always much to say, from not understanding the subject of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the docility of great weakness, Columbine swallowed the proffered nourishment. She wanted to recall all that had happened, but her brain felt too clogged to serve her. She could only lie and gaze and gaze at a little vase of wild white roses that faced her ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... breed they were identical with the famed "Basuto pony," for which long prices are given today. It is a great pity that these ponies have been allowed to become practically extinct in the Cape Colony. For hardiness and docility they were unequalled. Like so much else, they melted away in the coffers ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... said it was necessary they agree that the pig be weighed, as that would be a means of ascertaining how he fared during his stay with the lonely woman. This point being settled satisfactorily, the pig answered to his name, and ran to his master with the docility of a spaniel. And now, amidst the loudest of squeals his lungs were capable of, his hind legs were secured and his body hung suspended by the steelyards, the dog in the meantime keeping up a loud barking, and threatening to make ribbons ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale" |
