"Rigidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mathematically accurate, but are nevertheless close approximations to those which would be obtained by a perfect observer using an ideal instrument of geometrical accuracy, standing on an earth of absolute rigidity, and viewing the heavens without ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... One would think that the constant use of the language in the national forum for purposes of argument and persuasion would help to make it flexible and subtle; and that the almost total absence of such employment would tend toward narrowness and rigidity. In this instance exactly the contrary is the case. If we may trust the testimony of those who know, we are forced to the conclusion that the English language, compared with the Russian, is nothing but an awkward dialect. Compared with Russian, the English language is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... of the spectrum they rose and fell; blazing orange, silken, wonderful, translucent blues, and shimmering reds. Below, a broad band of paler hue, like sheet lightning fixed to rigidity, wavered and rippled. All the auroras of the northland blended in one could but have paled away before the splendour of that ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... heath. When she looked again at Sir Henry, she was startled to see that his cheek, which had gained some colour during his conversation with the King, had relapsed into earthly paleness; that his eyes were closed, and opened not again; and that his features expressed, amid their quietude, a rigidity which is not that of sleep. They ran to his assistance, but it was too late. The light that burned so low in the socket, had leaped up, and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the relative impotency of generals? Is it not that the helmsman acts through the medium of mechanism, while the generals act through the medium of men? A ship is not only made of rigid metal, but all her parts are fastened together with the utmost rigidity; while the parts of an army are men, who are held together by no means whatever except that which discipline gives, and the men themselves are far from rigid. In the nature of things it is impossible that an army should be directed as perfectly ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... fairyland that I had anticipated, but rather the gaunt, intimidating home of ogres, rank and more than a trifle forbidding. It had an air of age that was not immortal, but stiffly declining into a stubborn resistance against the slow rigidity of death. These espaliers made me think of rheumatic veterans, obstinately faithful to ancient duties—veterans with ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... include all the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was almost light. The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant, as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking. Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between fervour and resignation. Her black hair was looser now than either of them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest. The ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together, mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly if it is wished to depend on the moral conduct of man as on natural results, this conduct must become ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... history tells, and the man did not hesitate to hold the plow, as the example of Cincinnatus will show us. Time was precious, and thrift and economy were necessary to success. The father was the autocrat in the household, and exercised his power with stern rigidity. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... bought at the Horse Show?" Mr. Gunning repeated with an increase of rigidity, "Oh, yes—I got ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... had learned the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... heart, and a pennypiece would cover the four," exclaimed Nick Johnson. "'Twill do!" He put his bow-point to his toe, loosened the string, and laid the weapon aside. Brother Ned slipped his own bow from his shoulder, strung it, tested its tautness and rigidity, and took six arrows from the boy who waited upon the patrons of archery ground. He shot; the arrow went wide. He sighed, rubbed his eyes as though to clear them from mist, and shot again. The shaft lodged on the outer edge of the target, almost splintering the wood. "Better," said ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... conditions, the science of steam-enginery was still very backward. Notably, the expenditure of coal was excessive; to produce a given result in miles travelled, or speed attained, much more had to be burned than now, a condition to which contributed also the lack of rigidity in the wooden hulls, which still held their ground. Sails were very expensive articles, as I heard said by an accomplished officer of the olden days; but they were less costly than coal. Steam therefore was accepted at the first only as an accessory, for ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... stomachs, though they will often crave them. Boiled meat is generally preferable to roast meat, for nourishment and digestion. Boiling extracts more of the rank strong juices, and renders it lighter and more diluted. Roasting leaves it fuller of gravy, but it adds to the rigidity of the fibres. The flesh of young animals is best roasted. Fried and broiled meats are difficult to be digested, though they are very nourishing: weak stomachs had better avoid them. Meat pies and puddings cannot be recommended, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... he was not a sycophant, Forester, when he returned home with his friend Henry, took every possible occasion to contradict him, with even more than his customary rigidity; nay, he went further still, to ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Carlos appeared, notwithstanding all his efforts to hold his features in the same position; instead of placid composure there was now grim rigidity. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Newcastle and Darlington, the Leicester and Swannington, and other Railways, where crossed by local coal Railways of a narrower gauge, and has never succeeded. The practical difficulties also are obvious, of securing with waggons constructed with moveable bodies, the rigidity and solidity requisite for safety, and to prevent excessive wear and tear, and damage to the articles conveyed. Even if we were to suppose, however, all mechanical difficulties overcome, the serious objection would still remain, that in addition to the ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... fixed and cold, was made the more appalling by the immobility of the head, which was like a skull standing on a doctor's table. The body, clearly outlined by the coverlet, showed that the dying man's limbs preserved the same rigidity. All was dead, except the eyes. There was something mechanical in the sounds which came from the mouth. Don Juan felt a certain shame at having come to the deathbed of his father with a courtesan's bouquet on his breast, bringing with him the odors of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... An advocate, he passed for having great talent, and greater industry, and had already gained a certain amount of notoriety. He was an obstinate worker, cold and meditative, though devoted to his profession, and affected, with some ostentation, perhaps, a great rigidity of principle, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... in a hard and dry, but not unkind voice. In fact, the rigidity of her aspect, the hardness of her voice, and the singular blackness of her costume, seemed to be too monotonously uniform and resolute not to indicate something willful or unhealthy in the woman's condition, as if the whole had been rather superinduced than ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... that (a) there is more acid within reach, and (b) a slight buckling is not so dangerous, and indeed is not so likely to occur. The plates are now generally made thicker than formerly, so as to secure greater mechanical rigidity. At the same time, the manufacturers aim at getting the active materials in as porous ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... wire, this being lighter, and offering less windage than hemp-rigging of the same strength; but, in order to counteract its rigidity and give play to the spars, we adopted the expedient of connecting the deadeyes to the chain-plates by a bolt and shackle arrangement, interposing a thick india-rubber washer between the shackle and the bolt-head. This plan answered most ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... had from the beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what it is—heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of events so remote that their discussion could give no offense. Sometimes authors accepted ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Wals, we get an idea of how the passage is made from the liquid to the gaseous state and that this passage is not abrupt. Similarly there is no gap between the liquid and solid states, and in the proceedings of a recent congress is to be seen, alongside of a work on the rigidity of liquids, a memoir on the flow ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... children the nightmare a century after the stern-browed promulgators of them were dust. The early laws against crime in New England were severe, though death was seldom or never inflicted save for murder. But more irksome to one used to the lax habits of to-day would have been the punctilious rigidity with which they guarded the personal bearing, speech, and dress of the members of their community. Yet we may thank them for having done so; it was a wise precaution; they knew the frailties of the flesh, and how ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... hitherto resolved upon—of passing off Sidney as the legitimate orphan of a distant relation; it would be made a great handle for gossip by Miss Pryinall. Added to all these reasons, one not less strong occurred to Mr. Morton himself—the uncommon and merciless rigidity of his wife would render all the other women in the town very glad of any topic that would humble her own sense of immaculate propriety. Moreover, he saw that if Catherine did remain, it would be a perpetual source of irritation in his own ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of an unnatural color, and to have a strange rigidity about the features. When I approached, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... is determined by the cost of subsistence of the labourer, is generally known as 'The Iron Law of Wages.' But has not this law been discarded even by some Socialists? There have been attempts in some quarters to demonstrate that this law does not actually operate with the rigidity at first claimed for it; but in truth, it stands as firmly to-day as when insisted upon by Lassalle."[161] "Capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest standard of subsistence which the people will accept,"[162] for "the basis ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... liberation is not the leg with which the locust makes its leaps; it has not as yet the rigidity which it will soon acquire. It is soft, and eminently flexible. In those portions which the progress of the moult exposes to view I see the legs bend under the mere weight of the suspended insect when I tilt the supporting cover. They are as flexible as two strips of elastic indiarubber. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... on his knees, his body stretched forward, his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. With silent awe, they stood apart and watched him, lest they should invade the privacy of prayer. But he did not stir; there was not even the motion of breathing, but a suspicious rigidity of inaction. Then one of them, Matthew, softly came near and gently laid his hands upon Livingstone's cheeks. It was enough; the chill of death was there. The great father of Africa's dark children was dead, and they were orphans. The ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... from fears of all kinds. As a young girl she was somnambulistic, and once fell down a stairhead during sleep. In spite of her bodily sufferings with indigestion, eye-strain, and depression she retains her youthfulness. She has slight powers of reasoning. She has had times of unconsciousness and rigidity, I have never heard any mention of epilepsy. She has a horror of showing prudishness in regard to the healthful manifestations of sex life, and is always praising examples of what she ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... himself up with military rigidity, close his mouth and inflate his cheeks, momentarily expecting two blows, delivered simultaneously by both hands, to expel the air from the ruddy globe of his face. At other times these redoubtable personages tested the strength of their arms upon ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... keelson. These are connected to the keelson, to the beams, and to each other by iron bands. The whole of the ship's interior is thus filled with a network of braces and stays, arranged in such a way as to transfer and distribute the pressure from without, and give rigidity to the whole construction. In the engine and boiler room it was necessary to modify the arrangement of stays, so as to give room for the engines and boiler. All the iron, with the exception of the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... beauty, music, poetry, art—to say nothing of sweet and kindly persons—they are all the witnesses of His spirit; and the Church is, in my belief, simply hampered and restricted from doing what she might, by the woeful rigidity, the mechanical and hard precision, which she has imported into the spiritual region. The moment that the liberty of the spirit is restricted, and grace is made to flow in definite traditional channels, that moment the stream loses ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of its acceptance, and it was of course refused; but he made his way to the prisoner, and wrung his chill hand with all his might. The pressure seemed to waken the poor lad from his frozen rigidity; the warmth came flowing back into his fingers as his friend held them; he raised his head, shut and re-opened his eyes, and pushed back his hair, as though trying to shake himself loose from a too horrible dream. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the end without a change in the rigidity of her face and attitude. "Very well, then," she said, when he had finished, "I see exactly what you have done. You have thrown ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... them she buried her face in their petals. Their perfume was the potent spell that now melted her to tears, and the tension of her overtaxed nerves gave way in a passionate burst of sobs. When she rose a few moments later, the storm had passed; the face regained its stony rigidity, and henceforth she fronted fate with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that each sat now stiff and solemn as martinets awaiting some command; Morton, eying hopelessly the tiny bouillon-cup before him, with the healthy appetite of a boy who had not eaten anything since an early breakfast; while Molly, after a stony rigidity of perhaps two minutes, suddenly gave a little twist and drew a sigh as long and lugubrious as the wail of an autumn blast. Professor Macon looked at her with ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... lips of a hole in its belly. All its strings were shrivelled up save one, which burst as he gazed. And beside, stern as a Druidess, sat his grandmother in her chair, feeding her eyes with grim satisfaction on the detestable sacrifice. At length the rigidity of Robert's whole being relaxed in an involuntary howl like that of a wild beast, and he turned and rushed from the house in a helpless agony of horror. Where he was going he knew not, only a blind instinct of modesty drove him to hide his passion ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... replied, "but it is odd to find this rigidity so early." I began to press his eyelids apart. The right eye opened. I uttered a ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... and heavier. Little aggravating changes were made. The Japanese military authorities decreed that Japanese time should be used for all public work, and they changed the names of the towns from Korean to Japanese. Martial law was now enforced with the utmost rigidity. Scores of thousands of Japanese coolies poured into the country, and spread abroad, acting in a most oppressive way. These coolies, who had been kept strictly under discipline in their own land, here found themselves masters of a weaker people. The Korean magistrates could not punish ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... fastest!" cried the little boy on the chair suddenly, after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round eyes, his heels thrust forward and his ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... split your place in two. How many a small house-lot lawn we see split down the middle by a row of ornamental shrubs or fruit-trees which might as easily have been set within a few feet of the property line, whose rigidity, moreover, would have best excused the rigidity of the planted line. But such glaring instances aside, there are many subtler ones quite as unfortunate; "don't" be too sure you ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... words his paleness became ashen, and the rigidity of his features was so ghastly that, forgetting everything else in her alarm, she ran to his assistance. He ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... you have all the Germanics, a great sea of confused and dreaming people, lost in philosophies and creating music, frozen for the moment under a foreign rigidity, but some day to thaw again and to give a word to us others. They cannot ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... unreality of the roots was their rigidity. I stepped from one slender tendon of wood to the next, expecting a bending which never occurred. They might have been turned to stone, and even little twigs resting on the bark often proved to have grown fast. And this was the more unexpected because of the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... is not my largest but about average being 12-1/2" in diameter 3' above the ground with a limb spread of 30' and a height of 24'. It has a very symmetrical shape with enough rigidity in the limbs to hold them off the ground so the tree does ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... rude litter, hastily made from bushes fastened together. Upon this lay the dead body of a man, his white face upturned, and his limbs stiffened in the rigidity of death. Hawbury did not remember very distinctly any of the particular events of his confused struggle with the brigands; but he was not at all surprised to see that there had been one of the ruffians sent to his account. The brigands who carried in their ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... little fool! Do as I tell you. It isn't a lie—only a piece of conventional humbug which everybody understands. There, please!" His tone of entreaty was more disagreeable to her than his roughness. All the pride and rigidity of her Puritan temperament was up in arms against the indefinable something which it had long ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... dealing with them. When he attempted to pass her, she threw herself down and clung to his feet, shaking with her terror. When she saw that Grom was at last impressed, she stretched herself out as if dead, and then, after a few moments of ghastly rigidity, with fixed, staring eyes, she came to and held up one hand with ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... herself and with Burnaby that she should feel this way; be so moved by "primitive virtues." She detested puritanism greatly, and righteously, but so much so that she frequently mistook the most innocent fastidiousness for an unforgivable rigidity. "If they once do," she concluded, "once do fall in love with their husbands again, they're safe, you know, for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and laid her head back upon her husband's bosom. The rigidity and distress went out of her face. In this hour of darkness and distress, God, to whom she looked and prayed for strength, came very close to her, and in his nearer presence ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... sir! march easy!" he cried importantly, and the offender dropped his rigidity, the result being that the sergeant returned to his place in the rear of the company, while Private Gedge relieved ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... the poor lady, led to despise mankind, began to see them all in a false light. Her character acquired, necessarily, a secret misanthropy, which threw a tinge of bitterness into her conversation, and some severity into her eyes. Celibacy gave to her manners and habits a certain increasing rigidity; for she endeavored to sanctify herself in despair of fate. Noble vengeance! she was cutting for God the rough diamond rejected by man. Before long public opinion was against her; for society accepts the verdict an independent woman renders on herself by not marrying, either through losing suitors ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... service was limited in respect to admitting wheels whose half diameter did not exceed the distance from the back of the jaw of the machine to the face of the mortise tool; so that to give to this machine the requisite rigidity and strength to resist the strain on the jaw, due to the mortising of the key-grooves, in wheels of say 6 feet diameter, a more massive and cumbrous frame work was required, which was most costly in space as ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... her reserve with as much rigidity as on the former occasion. Unconvinced by this experience, our imaginations still ran riot. They shadowed forth every possible beauty and horror which such a giant chest might contain. The story even of "The Bride of the Mistletoe-Bough" might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... be noted in Holy Willie that the poet is not letting himself out in a burst of personal spleen. He is again girding at the rigidity of a lopped and maimed Calvinism, and attacking the creed through the man. The poem is a living presentment of the undiluted, puritanic doctrine of the Auld Light party, to whom Calvinism meant only a belief in hell and an assurance ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... individual or the family, seeing that the good of the family and of the individual is the cause and reason of the organization of the State. Not that our country is a Moloch on whose altar lives may lawfully be sacrificed. The rigidity of antique morals and the despotism of the Caesars suggested the false principle—and modern militarism tends to revive it—that the State is omnipotent, and that the discretionary power of the State ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... the words. Accustomed to the iron rigidity of military discipline, and to the broad gulf placed between officer and soldier by the king's commission, the possibility of a duel between M. de Berg and myself, although it would have been no unnatural occurrence between rivals of equal rank, had never occurred to me. For a moment ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... sea damsel; or the chemical 'cobalt,' 'which,' remarks Webster, 'is said to be the German Kobold, a goblin, the demon of the mines; so called by miners, because cobalt was troublesome to miners, and at first its value was not known.' Ah! but these terms were created before Science, in its rigidity, had taught us the truth in regard to these matters. Yes! and fortunate is it for us that we still have words, and ideas clustering around these words, that have not yet been chilled and exanimated by the frigid touch of an ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with that from immersion in strong and weak solutions of the salts of ammonia; for the former do not excite movement, whereas the latter act energetically. A temporary suspension of the [page 73] power of movement due to heat is called by Sachs* heat-rigidity; and this in the case of the sensitive-plant (Mimosa) is induced by its exposure for a few minutes to humid air, raised to 120o-122o Fahr., or 49o to 50o Cent. It deserves notice that the leaves of Drosera, after being immersed in water at 130o Fahr., are excited into movement by a solution ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... his eye along the line, and observed that most of the boys were troubled about their arms. Some allowed them to hang in stiff rigidity by their sides. One, even, had his clasped behind his back. Others let theirs dangle loosely, swinging now ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. "Oh! Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked positively scared ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the type to accentuate the paradox. Great affairs above all things require for their successful conduct that class of mind which is eminently sensitive to the drift of events, to the characters or changing views of friends and opponents, to a careful avoidance of that rigidity of standpoint which stamps the doctrinaire or the mule. The mind of success must be receptive and plastic. It must know by the receptivity of its capacities whether it is paddling against the tide ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... paid in the ordinary labor market to the class from whence they come. But labor in England is uncertain, whereas in the States it is certain. In England the soldier with his shilling gets better food than the laborer with his two shillings; and the Englishman has no objection to the rigidity of that discipline which is so distasteful to an American. Moreover, who in England ever dreamed of raising 600,000 new troops in six months, out of a population of thirty million? But this has been done in the Northern States out of a population of eighteen million. If England ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... its social and political institutions so hardened and so unresponsive that he declared it incapable of movement without an antecedent general crash and breaking up. No laws, he reasoned, could be made because there were no means by which the general will could express itself, such was the rigidity of absolutism and feudalism. The splendid studies of Montesquieu, which revealed to the French the eternal truths underlying the constitutional changes in England, had enlightened and captivated the best minds of his country, but they were too serious, too cold, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the hall, the dog shook his head and gave two loud and insinuating taps on the floor with his tail, but alas! the whistle did not sound to release him. Kolya looked sternly at the luckless dog, who relapsed again into obedient rigidity. The one thing that troubled Kolya was "the kids." He looked, of course, with the utmost scorn on Katerina's unexpected adventure, but he was very fond of the bereaved "kiddies," and had already taken them a picture-book. Nastya, the elder, a girl of eight, could ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of 1530, however, the Church was to receive a rough reminder that the Defender of the Faith was a stickler for the rigidity of the statutes. He had already struck at Wolsey because, urged thereto by himself, the Cardinal had obtained and exercised legatine powers contrary to the Statutes of Praemunire. Such was the King's reverence for the Law ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... of hair were braided and wound coronet-style about the small uplifted head. The eyes, deep, dark, and mystical gave no clue to the inner woman; but the mouth, while it was tender in its curves, had a rigidity of purpose in its expression that fixed the attention. A pretty, rounded chin, a slender, slightly tilted nose, an exquisite throat set off by the cloud of lace—such was the face that Gaston beheld, and presently it wrung ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... than its contrary. There were Eclectics, who picked and chose. But the majority of those who affected a positive philosophy attached themselves either to the Stoic or else to the Epicurean system, not necessarily with orthodox rigidity on every point, but as a general guide—at least in theory—to the conduct of life. Where we belong to a certain religious denomination or church, and "sit under" a certain class of preachers, they belonged to a certain school of philosophy, and attended the lectures of certain ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... come to the point of recognizing the railroad man's shibboleth, "charge what the traffic will bear," is perhaps dubious. And the new Taft Act, in its long-and-short-haul provision, takes a long step in the direction of geographical uniformity and rigidity of rates. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... state intermediate between perfect dryness and humidity, from which different parts of its structure, being unequally affected in this respect, will acquire different degrees of relaxation and rigidity, and thus have a tendency to assume a wavy or slightly curly form, provided the hair be left loose enough to allow it. For this purpose nothing is better than washing the hair with soap and water, to which a few grains ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... reasonable efficiency, at least in water matters, for there is nothing primitive about today's technology. But esthetically it would leave much to be desired even by present standards, and politically, furthermore, its very wholeness and rigidity would mean that it would have to be sold as a complete package or else be doomed to fragmentation, which would lead to much the same sort of piecemeal expedient development as no plan at all. Quite aside from the budgetary difficulties of the moment, the Potomac Basin's political complexity ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... was the leader. Starr recognized him, despite his paint, as a fellow who had visited his home on several occasions, and who was known as Bent Arm, because of a peculiar rigidity of the left arm, made by some ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... what party does he belong?' but 'Is he capable by character and life of influencing men for good, and winning them for God and His Church?'" Again, the extremely free use of the Prayer Book and of any and every sort of devotion, at any and every hour of day and night, has broken up all prejudiced rigidity of use. Methods that did not help were dropped; methods that helped men were welcome, from whatever source ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... habits and associations. We find no granite formations of character underlying the race, such as are met with in the tribes and peoples of Asia. Compare, for instance, the plastic mobility of the Pangwee and Bakwain with the rigidity of the Hindu or Chinese. Or where the case may be seen in even a more striking way, compare the African negro with the American Indian; take the one from his tropical wilds, the other from his forest home, and place them both under the same civilizing influences, and where ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... swarthy, sinewy man of forty, with all his fibres indurated and worked down to the whip-cord meagreness and rigidity of a racer, his frame presenting a perfect picture of the sort of being one would fancy suited to the exhausting motion of a dromedary, and to the fare of a desert. He carried a formidable knife, in addition to the long musket of which he had been deprived, and his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... with a bead-edged cover bearing acanthus-leaf decorations. The S-shaped stem is 21 inches long and only one-fourth inch in diameter. The great length of the stem was necessary to cool the smoke; the S-shape added rigidity to the silver. The piece undoubtedly is the work of a competent craftsman but it bears no ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... is carried out in the other, we shall see in all probability an attempt to copy the unique scale decoration which still exists on the tympanum under the corresponding principal arch on the north side, cut with modern tools with all the lifeless rigidity of modern work. Another mistake which has been made, is the scraping off of the plaster from the interior walls of the chamber known as St Michael's Loft, over the Lady Chapel, and the re-pointing of the stonework. Old builders invariably covered their rubble walls with plaster, but the modern ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... a posture between lying and sitting, his back propped with pillows, his eyes turned with an expressionless stare towards the harbour. Save for its rigidity and a slight drawing down of the muscles on the left side of the mouth, there was nothing to shock or terrify in the aspect of the face, which kept, moreover, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... listening. A curious rigidity affected his nerves. Something had happened—but what? His dry lips refused to frame the question. All at once, he roused himself. With a couple of strides across his little study he threw open the door ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... forward, anxious to be done with ceremony and get to the dancing; and Mildred did not prolong the intimacy of Alice's enthusiastic whispering. With a faint accession of colour and a smile tending somewhat in the direction of rigidity, she carried Alice's hand immediately onward to Mrs. Palmer's. Alice's own colour showed a little heightening as she accepted the suggestion thus implied; nor was that emotional tint in any wise decreased, a moment later, by an impression that Walter, in concluding the brief exchange of courtesies ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Lady Maitland changed, in an instant, from a state of violent passion to the rigidity and appearance of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... saturation determines the limit of the weight of the iron. Soft wrought iron, divided into the largest possible number of pieces, will serve our purpose best. The question of strength of materials plays also an important part. We cannot reduce the quantity and division to such a point that the rigidity and equilibrium of the whole structure is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... have sailed on vessels commanded by naval officers have been inclined to smile over the minutia of navy discipline and have expressed doubt whether the naval men would find a certain rigidity any more useful in a given situation than the civilian seamen would find a looser ordered system. We can but base judgment on facts, and among the facts that have come under the writer's observation, was the difficulty which ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... incredible quickness. The rigidity left Ruth's body immediately. Her breath came in fast-quickening gasps, and her eyes fluttered open as Dixon ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... of the day had told on her, and she was so tired that she could scarcely drag herself about; her eyes kept closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, so far ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... thing is to kill it once and for all. Life, as was said in the first chapter, is something unique, with the unique property of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... middle of the room stood a long black cloth-covered box. Lane stepped forward. Upon the dark background, in striking contrast, lay a white, stern face, marble-like in its stone-cold rigidity. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... inheriting rigidity from the maternal Cyclops, drew herself up and declined stiffly; but the other, whom the dancing-master had called Rosalie, got up directly and said she would ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... details of the cut-off are shown in Fig. 2; the valve, G, which covers the cut-off, F, acts like a four way cock. The spindle of the cut-off, F, is connected with the lever, I, and is moved by the rudder, as already described. By enlarging or gradually narrowing the ends of the steam ports great rigidity or elasticity may be given to the hold of this engine, according to the requirements of the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... de Grost, glanced at the card which his butler had brought in to him, carelessly at first, afterwards with that curious rigidity of attention which usually denotes the setting free of a flood ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him the dead but imperishable bodies of the long-buried brothers of the convent sat erect in their lidless coffins, their cold, starry eyes glaring at him with lifeless rigidity, their withered fingers locked together on their breasts, their stiffened limbs motionless and still. It was a sight to petrify the stoutest heart; and the monk's quailed before it, though he was a philosopher, and a sceptic to boot. At the upper end of the vault, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... than for most foods. Some days before, thin bones such as leg or wing bones of fowl, or rib bones of lamb should be soaked in diluted hydrochloric or nitric acid (one part acid to ten of water), to dissolve the mineral substance which gives the bone its rigidity. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... is being convulsed by the attempted substitution of some inflexible law for a personal God with a living will, it is not strange that some phase of the same idea should creep into even the purest theology, and that in Mr. Robertson's theory of prayer we should find traces of the rigidity characterizing 'ultra predestinarian' as well as 'development' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... plexus, it can, at will, draw to itself, by a sort of aspiration, the greater part of the living forces which animate the latter. One sees, then, by a singular inversion, life withdrawn from the body, which then exhibits a cadaverous rigidity, and transfers itself entirely to the phantom, which acquires consistency—sometimes even to the point of struggling with persons before whom it materializes. It is but exceptionally that it shows itself in connection ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... body was fastened to the bed as if with adamantine chains, while her mind and soul were the voiceless spectators of a tragedy of which she knew that she was the cause. She could not even open her eyes. If she could have loosed but a muscle from the rigidity of the trance, she knew that her whole frame would be relaxed in an instant. Then she would have bounded—oh! with what speed—into the other room, where her immortal part was helplessly watching the conflict, and interceded at the risk of her life. Alas! ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... number from 4 to 16, the 4 corner ones being larger and extending up to support the roof. Four horizontal pieces attached to these corner posts and, supported by several of the small posts, form, together with a few joints, the support for the floor. In order to give more rigidity to the building and to render the floor stronger, the joints are supported by several posts, these last being propped by braces set at an angle of about 45. In the case of a house built for defense, the number of supports and crosspieces is such that ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... as I began to speak that I had won my case. There was no struggle to escape from my arms; and, as I went on, she relaxed even her rigidity, and reposed on my breast ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... refinement or rusticity, his extravagance or economy, his follies or his cleverness. You have listened to his conversation and noted the inflexions of his voice, the attitudes he has assumed, so as to judge of his spirit, self-abandonment or gayety, his energy or his rigidity. You consider his writings, works of art, financial and political schemes, with a view to measure the reach and limits of his intelligence, his creative power and self-command, to ascertain the usual order, kind, and force of his conceptions, in what way he thinks and how ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... possible to divide literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period the school, which for some time had been gradually breaking up, seems finally to have succumbed. The later productions in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in which he had now consciously lived for the last twelve months was, in spite of the sharp rigidity and certitude and inexorable logic from which he shrank, undoubtedly a place of large horizons. In fact it seemed as if there were no horizons. On all sides there stretched out illimitable space, for eternity (with its corollaries) was fully as effective in it as was time. Those with whom ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... door and looking out upon the street. She was aware of his presence, but walked stiffly past, disregarding him, and he coughed behind his wasted hand. She thought the cough had a sound of embarrassed appeal or deprecation, as perhaps it had, but she refused to take notice of it, except by an added rigidity of demeanor. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... in the breast of his coat, and did not see the sudden rigidity that fell on the girl. For a moment she sat perfectly still; her heart had leapt to her throat, it seemed, and was hammering there.... But by the time he had found the letter she was ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... returned to the fort, Putnam alone among them expecting reprimand. He had never before disobeyed the orders of his superior. He well knew the rigidity of military discipline and its necessity. Possibly General Lyman might not be content with a simple reprimand, but might order a court-martial. Putnam entered the fort, not fully at ease in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... him incapable of framing an idea. He was a part of the great engine that tore along, controlled by a superior will. The command ran along the line: "Keep touch of knees! Keep touch of knees!" in order to keep the men closed up and give their ranks the resistance and rigidity of a wall of granite, and as their trot became swifter and swifter and finally broke into a mad gallop, the chasseurs d'Afrique gave their wild Arab cry that excited their wiry steeds to the verge of frenzy. Onward they tore, faster and faster still, until their gallop ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola |
