"Susceptibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and throughout the weeks that followed, Rachael mused somewhat sadly upon the extraordinary susceptibility of the human male. Magsie's methods were those of a high-school belle. She pouted, she dimpled, she dispensed babyish slaps, she lapsed into rather poorly imitated baby talk. She was sometimes mysterious and tragic, according to her own lights, her voice deep, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Britain, and Ireland—did the Celts manifest that susceptibility to progress which is the invariable mark of a state antagonistic to barbarism. In this they totally differed from the Vandals and Huns, whom it took the Church such a dreary period to conquer, and whom no other power save the religion ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... one of those short ages of almost insupportable suspense, when the mind, wound up to the keenest susceptibility of endurance, seems vibrating on the verge of annihilation,—as if the next pulse would snap its connection with the world ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... sycophants; extols pious enthusiasts, frantic penitents, zealous fanatics, who for the most ridiculous opinions have disturbed the tranquility of empires. Nature urges the husband to be tender, to attach himself to the company of his mate, to cherish her in his bosom; superstition makes a crime of his susceptibility, frequently obliges him to look upon the conjugal bonds as a state of pollution, as the offspring of imperfection. Nature calls to the father to nurture his children, to cherish their affection, to make them useful members of society; superstition advises him ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... fanciful to imagine that it is with the Irishman as I have always fancied it was with the Greek philosopher, that by reason of his own knowledge of the dangerous burning fever of poetry, from his own susceptibility to its enchantments, he decided to crown the poets with garlands and banish them to another city? That, indeed, is an idle fancy. Mr. Shaw exists to prove that there are Irishmen who do not suffer from the intoxication of beauty, who are not ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... have only been about eight weeks on food reform and the general result, so far, is less susceptibility to draughts and ability to sleep with windows open top and bottom, which I could not do before, and a feeling of lightness and freshness. On the other hand, I have not the same nerve force or power. I am of a highly sensitive ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... benefit, but a necessary evil. A certain degree of power must be granted to public officers, for they would be of no use without it. But the ostensible semblance of authority is by no means indispensable to the conduct of affairs; and it is needlessly offensive to the susceptibility of the public. The public officers themselves are well aware that they only enjoy the superiority over their fellow citizens, which they derive from their authority, upon condition of putting themselves on a level with the whole community by ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... hydropower and tourism, areas of recent foreign investment interest. Prospects for foreign trade or investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community's role of funding more than 60% of Nepal's development budget and more than 28% of total budgetary expenditures will likely continue as a ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... truth, that you may remember you prescribed for my spiritual cure". Mr. Brown smiled. "Perhaps", he continued, "these men are not capable of appreciating the mild aspect of mercy. They do not possess the susceptibility to which you have been appealing. They need to have the terrors of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... energy, dynamic energy; dynamic friction, dynamic suction; live circuit, live rail, live wire. capability, capacity; quid valeant humeri quid ferre recusent [obs3][Latin]; faculty, quality, attribute, endowment, virtue, gift, property, qualification, susceptibility. V. be powerful &c. adj.; gain power &c. n. belong to, pertain to; lie in one's power, be in one's power; can, be able. give power, confer power, exercise power &c. n.; empower, enable, invest; indue[obs3], endue; endow, arm; strengthen &c. 159; compel &c. 744. Adj. powerful, puissant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... or beautiful aspect of the home, in short, must be created through the mind of the family or owner, and is only maintained by its or his susceptibility to true beauty and appreciation of it. It must, in fact, be a visible mould of invisible matter, like the leaf-mould one finds in mineral springs, which show the wonderful veining, branching, construction and delicacy of outline in a way which one could hardly be conscious ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... greatest care the place occupied by it in the chest, asking to have some of the demonstrations repeated two or three times, and when he went out, questioning some of the young men who were following the medical courses, about the susceptibility of the organ, which cannot receive ever so slight a blow without death ensuing from that blow: all this with so perfect an indifference and calmness that no one about him conceived ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pole of susceptibility we find persons who believe firmly that other persons have psychic power over them, and who are consequently more or less afraid of such persons and of their influence. This belief and fear operates in the direction ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... tourism, areas of recent foreign investment interest. Prospects for foreign trade or investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, its civil strife, and its susceptibility ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... professional look of the British traveller abroad; the air of preparation for exposure, material and moral, which is so oddly combined with the serene revelation of security and of persistence, and which excites, according to individual susceptibility, the ire or the admiration of foreign communities. They were the more unmistakable as they presented mainly the happier aspects of the energetic race to which they had the honour to belong. The fresh ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... that Pep's daughter was a woman. Could that child, that pretty, white doll, really care for men? He felt the strange sensation of the father who has loved many women in his youth, but who, later in life, judging by his own lack of susceptibility, cannot understand his daughter's fondness ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... my conversion. Providence sent me into the world with an excellent nature, with a true heart, with a remarkable susceptibility to the influence of estimable sentiments. My parents neglected my education, and left me in the world, destitute of everything but youth, beauty, and a lively temperament. I tried hard to be virtuous; I vowed, before I was out of my teens, and when ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... to the place where is Emer of the Beautiful Hair.... So Cuchulain went thither that night, and spent the night with his own wife." There is indeed the old Irish hero faring forth to battle as a lover to the love tryst! How natural, how inevitable with warriors of such absurd and magnificent susceptibility, such boyish love of swagger, how natural, I say, the free and generous emotion combined with an overmastering sense of personal honour, and a determination to win at all costs, which are so prominent in the Leinster version of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... a Believer because he had no particular love for the world and no great susceptibility to its temptations; but what had drawn Daniel Gray from the open sea into this quiet little backwater of a Shaker Settlement? After an adventurous early life, in which, as if youth-intoxicated, he had plunged from danger to danger, experience to experience, he suddenly found himself in a society ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Middle Ages. "To estimate fully the force of these popular ebullitions in the Middle Ages, we must bear in mind the susceptibility of the people to contagious emotions and enthusiasms of which we know little in our colder day. A trifle might start a movement which the wisest could not explain nor the most powerful restrain. It was during the preaching of this ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... for the fun of the frisson," she reflected, "would he really care for any of their old ghosts?" And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one did see a ghost at Lyng, one ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... take refuge upstairs and to weep and long for death. She hated Concha as she did all the women who entered his studio. But this impression of sadness did not last very long in the painter; he was used to his wife's susceptibility. Besides, the consciousness of his faithfulness calmed him. His conscience was clean, and Josephina might believe what she would. It would only be one more injustice and he was resigned to endure his ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the established premises of science, demands not new, but the very largest deductions to reach the borders of her life—a being whose support with the earth-life is widened and strengthened by each added organ, function, susceptibility—whose divine support is opened, established, confirmed in increased degrees over man's by each womanly inlet to the spiritual nature—I see such a being irradiating the future years and paths of my race, and my soul grows strong and glad ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dignified mind, combined, it must be confessed, with the flattering admiration of his genius, entirely captivated the philosophical antagonist of marriage. It is not surprising that Marmion Herbert, scarcely of age, and with a heart of extreme susceptibility, resolved, after a struggle, to be the first exception to his system, and, as he faintly flattered himself, the last victim of prejudice. He wooed and won ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... French "mobilite." I am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions—at the same time without losing the past: and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... rebellious and deceitful self-will, craving for repose for satisfaction, for independence! is there not some relic of selfishness in such a disinterestedness, such a fear, such idle susceptibility. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... described it to be. From the fashionable Fifth avenue establishment down to the cellar lodging-houses of the Five Points, all boarding-houses are alike in this respect. Their success in tormenting their victims depends upon the susceptibility and refinement of feeling and taste on ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... moved him much, with extraordinary fire and force, though always in light, laconic sentences. When so moved, the fingers of his right hand often rested against his mouth, and quivered through nervous susceptibility. But, excitable as he was in conversation, he was never angry or irritable; nor can there be any greater mistake concerning him than that into which some persons have fallen, when they have inferred, from the fiery vehemence with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... inclination of such natures with punishment, or harsh correctives, is as useless as would be an attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the tide. You must nurture the feelings, he thought, create a susceptibility, get the heart right, by holding out the value of a better state of things, and make the head to feel that you are sincere in your work of love; and, above all, you must not forget the stomach, for if that go empty crime ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... that one may choose one's friends!" she had finally stated; and her husband allowed the subject to drop, not displeased at her repugnance to the doctor whom he marked dangerous to feminine susceptibility ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... was aware of the threat, not of the degree of the prince's susceptibility; and asked him if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... herself on her susceptibility to the beauty of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch. Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... negative coefficient of magnetic susceptibility; having permeability inferior to that of air. Such substances placed between the poles of a magnet are repelled; if in the form of bars, they tend to turn so as to have their long axis at right angles to the line joining the poles. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... It is considered by all medical men as a peculiar form of disease. It seldom manifests itself before the age of six, and scarcely ever continues beyond the sixtieth year. It depends, physically, upon the susceptibility or delicacy of the nervous system; and on this account females are more liable to it than males; and in youth it manifests itself more frequently than in mature age. It is caused mentally by any violent and profound ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... guard, that rested consciously upon his immaculate linen, sustained the presumption. But for those and a few other reasons, he was looked upon as a man of rigid method and severe discipline, a man outside the grasp of ordinary human susceptibility, or, in more familiar terms, a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... called even in his mistress's house, to which he often went and invariably on Sundays after mass—would have been excellent in all respects—if he had not had one weakness which has been the ruin of many men on earth, and was in the end the ruin of him, too—a weakness for the fair sex. Akim's susceptibility was extreme, his heart could never resist a woman's glance: he melted before it like the first snow of autumn in the sun ... and dearly he had to pay for ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... his features be exposed to the flaring notoriety of canvas. Once, indeed, he allowed himself to be painted by Mr. George A. Flagg; but the picture having been exhibited in the Trumbull Gallery of Yale College, Percival's susceptibility took alarm, and he expressed annoyance,—though whether dissatisfied with the portrait or its public exposure I cannot say. The artist proposed certain alterations, and the poet listened to him with seeming assent. The picture was taken back to the studio; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the victim's body and had nothing to do with the poison in which the missile had been previously steeped. To my knowledge no recognized studies have ever been made to ascertain the true force of legop, so one is free to calculate it at its maximum or minimum, especially when its susceptibility to atmospheric changes ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... which act in precisely opposite methods. On the other hand, the very simple natural explanation of the illness of Mr. Van Ness which was offered by the defence at the trial accounts for the unity and the diversity of the attacks, the basis of which, according to it, was over-susceptibility of the nervous system and of the stomach, produced by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... know what the Closerie might be. But he was not without susceptibility to the allurement of a quiet dinner in Paris, and began to feel the exhilaration of having accomplished a perilous feat, to which he would certainly drag in some reference in his great work. It would be difficult, as he was as far as possible remote from ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... spirit at the sight of God's beautiful universe—a rapture of love awakened by a morning in spring, by the blue infinity of the sky, by the eternal loneliness and sublimity of the sea. Or, in some moment of susceptibility, the smiles of dear home faces, the tender trill of a voice, a surge of solemn music, may have power over the young heart to change its entire future. And again, it is some vivid experience of temptation and suffering that shapes the great hereafter. ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... returned as speedily as he had departed, but in the ante-chamber he was forced to appeal to the king's authority. Villefort's dusty garb, his costume, which was not of courtly cut, excited the susceptibility of M. de Breze, who was all astonishment at finding that this young man had the audacity to enter before the king in such attire. The duke, however, overcame all difficulties with a word—his majesty's order; and, in spite of the protestations which the master ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... used to amuse himself with the small boy's susceptibility to music, and would sometimes shut him up in the 'cello case, promising him some candy if he would stay there while he (Uncle Jens) played. But Ole could never endure the ordeal for long. He had to come out where he ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... endowments," that no one who remembered her husband's character could fail to recognise. Her intense love of nature happily remained unchanged; and the green hills, the flowing river, and the tangled wildwood, could still soothe a soul that, but for its susceptibility to these beneficent charms, might have said in its sadness of everything earthly, "miserable comforters are ye all." Continuing to reside at Forge while her children were young, she devoted herself to the direction of their education, the cultivation ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... experience that the proper exercise of the nerves of motion tends to reduce any extreme susceptibility of the nerves of sensation. On the contrary, the neglect of such exercise tends to produce an excessive sensibility in ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... your resemblance to her brother, your age and personal accomplishments, might, after a certain time, and in consequence of suitable contrivances on my part, give a new direction to her feelings. To gain your concurrence, I relied upon your simplicity, your gratitude, and your susceptibility to the charms of this ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the time you have been half as long living in the great and the political world as I have been, you will be quite case-hardened, and will hear your friends abused, without feeling it in the least. Believe me, I once was troubled with a great deal of susceptibility like yours—but after all, 'tis no bad thing for you to have fought a duel —a feather in your cap with the ladies, and a warning to all impertinent fellows to let you alone—but you were wounded, the newspaper said—I asked you where, three times ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the time; and before man and high heaven I most solemnly declare that I do not now believe that during the whole eight years, I was sane for thirty-six consecutive hours, in consequence of the trance and the susceptibility thereto. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... is right, a thousand times right. However, it is never a mistake in politics, your majesty knows better than myself, to be unjust in order to obtain a concession in your own favor. If your majesty were to complain as if your susceptibility were offended, you will stand in a far higher position ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... In all his enterprises he spared not himself. He asked no man to do that which he was not prepared to do, but if any failed him there was no mercy for that man; and, although in deference to modern susceptibility no mention is made of the tortures he so frequently caused to be inflicted on his victims, they were none the less a daily spectacle to those who lived under his rule. He possessed, it is true, the rough geniality of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... sowing the nascent mind with tenderest graces or vilest errors. The slow attrition of vicious associations and law-defying indulgences, or the sudden impetus of some terribly multiplied and social disaster, must have worn away the susceptibility of conscience and self-respect, or dashed the mind from the height of these down to the depths of despair and recklessness, before one of ordinary life could take counsel with violence and crime. In no such manner was the life of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the smaller physical tests of explosives. It was rendered fire resistant by heavily covering the floors, ceiling, and walls with cement on metal lath, and otherwise protecting the openings. In it are installed apparatus for determining calorific value of explosives, pressure produced on ignition, susceptibility to ignition when dropped, rate of detonation, length and duration of flame, and kindred factors. Elsewhere on the grounds is a gallery of boiler-steel plate, 100 ft. long and more than 6 ft. in diameter, solidly attached to a mass of concrete at one end, in which is embedded a ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus, who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria. Varus was a true representative of the higher classes of the Romans; among whom a general taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual gratifications, a minute acquaintance with the principles and practice of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools of the rhetoricians, and a fondness for either partaking in or watching the intellectual strife of forensic oratory, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... resented, as a weakness, his susceptibility to the influence of others' moods; he did so to-day, when having gone to Mrs. Borisoff in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, he came away languid and despondent. But his scheme of life permitted no such idle brooding as used to waste his days; self-discipline ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... habit, the Wellands had left the previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed susceptibility of Mr. Welland's bronchial tubes, they always spent the latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, with no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might interfere; ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... his nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... blaming myself, and sometimes her—yet ready to excuse and forgive her at a moment's notice. A boy in experience even more than in years, I loved with a boy's headlong passion, and suffered with all a boy's acute susceptibility. I was intensely sensitive—abashed by a slight, humbled by a glance, and so easily wounded that there were often times when, seeing myself forgotten, I could with difficulty drive back the tears that kept rising to my eyes. On the other ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... intellect—every thing. He was always attractive and agreeable. He was always making a graceful effort to please, and He was—with me—always successful. He was four and twenty, yet he was a genuine boy. He was full of a boy's love and full of a boy's charming susceptibility. He was responsive to the different natures of many women. He was peculiarly a loveable man. He had diligently, conscientiously courted a goodly number of these different natured women; and they all had, at some one time, a tender leaning toward, without ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... semi-tropical climate. Zenos, in the Standard Bible Dictionary, says: "The waters of the lake are noted for abundant fish. The industry of fishing was accordingly one of the most stable resources of the country round about.... Another feature of the sea of Galilee is its susceptibility to sudden storms. These are occasioned partly by its lying so much lower than the surrounding tableland (a fact that creates a difference of temperature and consequent disturbances in the atmosphere), and partly by the rushing of gusts of wind down the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... a person who suffered from too delicate a susceptibility. The shame of his present position did not affect him deeply. Indeed, he was one of those men who have no sense of shame before certain persons; and Guy Oscard was one of those. The position was not ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... joys, whose cares, almost whose wishes were in common, how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's swans;" we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a fond dream—alas, how wide ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the selection system, although natural to tolerant species, is the only one adaptable to them. While the one class demands light, the other does not demand shade. It is merely capable of enduring it. Indeed, except for the greater susceptibility of some species to extreme heat and dryness when very young, as a rule shade bearing trees grow much better if they do have ample light supply. Consequently clean cutting may be the best system for these also under certain ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... fancy, with profundity, imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,— and let the object of action be man universal; and we shall have—O, rash prophecy! ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... rent and a knowledge of the latest dances could be obtained cheaper in this way than in any other. The pupils had made rapid progress, displaying in fact a natural aptitude for rhythmic motion, and a keen susceptibility to musical sounds. As their race had never been criticised for these characteristics, they gave them full play, and soon developed, most of them, into graceful and indefatigable dancers. They were now almost at the end of their course, and this was the evening of ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... would be essentially promoted. Medical men would no longer be consulted so exclusively for the cure of disease, but would be called upon to advise regarding the best means of strengthening the constitution, from an early period, against any accidental or hereditary susceptibility which might be ascertained to exist. More attention would be paid to the preservation of health than is at present practicable, and the medical man would then be able to advise with increased effect, because he would be proportionally well ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... He had almost acknowledged that he was conscious of the slander against which he had made up his mind to present a blank front of unconsciousness and passive resistance, and he was angry with himself for his susceptibility to this unexpected voice of kindness. He was going home, but he did not care for going home. Poor Mrs Hadwin's anxious looks of suspicion had added to the distaste with which he thought of encountering again the sullen shabby rascal to whom he had given shelter. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... general opinion that these natives are not a long-lived race. The poverty of their food may account for this, together with the want of shelter from the vicissitudes of the climate. The care taken by civilized man to preserve health is, by increasing susceptibility, the indirect cause of disease; the more rigid is the observance of regimen, the more pernicious will be the slightest aberration from it; but a total disregard of all the comforts of regular food, and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... old and the young. The story of Ninon and her Abbe—the unfortunate relationship, and the unfortunate catastrophe excepted—was the story of hundreds or thousands in every city of France fifty years ago. It arises from the vividness of the national mind, the quick susceptibility to being pleased, and the natural return which the heart makes in gratitude. If it sometimes led to error—it was the more to be regretted. But I do not touch on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... a grave and earnest person like her, had little chance with one so full of playful wit and fun as Bessie Keith, to whom her very dignity and susceptibility of annoyance made her the better game. To have involved the grave Rachel in such a parody of an adventure was perfectly irresistible to her, and to expect absolute indifference to it would, as Grace felt, have been requiring mere stupidity. Indeed, there was forbearance in ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... voice, from the introduction of snuff into the facial sinuses. As to smoking, I am well satisfied that it is calculated to cause a feverish state of the body; and in certain constitutions it weakens the membranes which line the nostrils, throat, and lungs, produces a susceptibility to colds, and even more serious affections of these parts, when ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... returned. Casanova laughed, wept, and told him that God had ordered him to make this trip of six weeks, to leave without speaking of it, and to return to his chamber at Dux. Enchanted at seeing us again, he agreeably related to us all the misfortunes which had tried him and to which his susceptibility gave the name of humiliations. 'I am proud,' he said, 'because I am nothing'. . . . Eight days after his return, what new troubles! Everyone had been served strawberries before him, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... springs of life, and renders character sympathetic and fluent. The past is easily put away; we become plastic to new influences; we are delighted at the discovery of unexpected affinities, and astonished to find in ourselves so much wit, eloquence, and fine susceptibility, which we did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... intercourse, on the other hand, they will gladly and easily allow themselves to take their tone from the person with whom at the moment they are occupied; and thus by a mixture of impassiveness and susceptibility, by persisting and by yielding, they continue to keep the government to themselves, and no man in the cultivated world can ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... famous in the Chamber and in literature, "that the satisfaction due to France had been accorded her—-that Prussia had expiated by a check the grave fault she had committed,"—that France had prevailed in substance, and all that remained was "a question of form," "a question of susceptibility," "questions of etiquette." The experienced statesman asked for the dispatches. Then came a confession. The Prime-Minister replied, that he had "nothing to communicate,—that, in the true sense of the term, there ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... lovely ode that is! What knowledge of town life! what susceptibility to the rural! Of all the Latins, Horace is the only one with whom I could wish to have spent a week. But no! I could not have discussed the brief span of human life with locks steeped in Malobathran balm and wreathed with that silly myrtle. Horace and I would have quarrelled over ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soul which is sometimes linked with an ardent imagination and a strong will. The traveller was an orphan, more than that, a solitary orphan. The sweet sedulousness of a mother's love, a sister's mystical affection, had not cultivated his early susceptibility. No soft pathos of expression had appealed to his childish ear. He was alone, among strangers calmly and coldly kind. It must indeed have been a truly gentle disposition that could have withstood such hard neglect. All that he knew of the power of the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... muzzle and a flint lock. However, we were going to annihilate a ruthless foe; and the clumsiness of our accoutrements was of little moment. A few good-natured observations passed between us and the Norseman concerning the susceptibility and quality of the powder, for its grains were coarser than those black beads of which ladies in England make their purses. The said powder for security, was poured into an empty porter-bottle, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... hundred houses. There is a variety of roads hereabout; one leading to Sambas, one to Landa, one to Mintrada, &c. Groves of cocoanut-trees mark the site of ancient villages, since demolished; and indicate that it once enjoyed a superiority and preeminence, of which it has been despoiled. In point of susceptibility of cultivation, it is a full half century beforehand with Pontiana; it is capable of great improvement, and much grain might be raised with very ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... everything by committing the very blunder against which he had sought with so much pains to guard. At his height above the torrent, as will be remembered, no one was disturbed by the roar of the waters far below. Because of his susceptibility to sounds, he heard an exclamation uttered by some one near him. The point whence it came was a clump of rocks hardly fifty feet distant, and he fancied he recognized the voice as Bill Tozer's. To his relief he could see no one, and it was safe, therefore, to assume that no one as ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... glassed itself in the llyns which shone with an enjoyment of the beauty like the magic mirrors of Snowdonian spirits. The loveliness indeed was so bewitching that one or two of the Gypsies—a race who are, as I had already noticed, among the few uncultivated people that show a susceptibility to the beauties of nature—gave a long sigh of pleasure, and lingered at the llyn of the triple echo, to see how the soft iridescent opal brightened and shifted into sapphire and orange, and then into green and gold. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... analysis of our second type or element of music. The successful recognition of this depends not only upon the susceptibility of the hearer to delicate shades of sensation, but also upon the receptivity of the hearer and his power to accept freely and unrestrictedly the mood shadowed forth by the composer. Such music cannot be looked upon objectively. To those who would analyze it ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... false, he might have seen a clear and steady light where he has only beheld difficulties and confusion. As we have already seen, and as we shall still more fully see, Edwards confounds the power by which we act with the susceptibility through which we feel: the will with the emotive part of our nature. Every one knows that we may feel without acting; and yet feeling and acting, suffering and doing, are expressly and repeatedly identified in his writings. Having merged the will in sensibility, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... reducing subsidies, privatizing state industries, and laying off civil servants. Prospects for foreign trade and investment in the 1990s remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, and susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community provides funding for 70% of Nepal's developmental budget and for 30% of total budgetary expenditures. The government, realizing that attempts to reverse three years of liberalization ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... expend the vigor of the one, or the fervor of the other. The energies of her character, finding no legitimate outlet, beat back upon herself, wearing away by continued friction the fine perception of beauty and susceptibility of true enjoyment. The vine that finds no support for its upward growth, grovels on the earth and covers it with rank, unshapely leaves. The mountain stream, turned back from its course, becomes a dark and stagnant pool. Even if the rank and long-neglected vine is made ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... textile art to secure a prominent place in the field of archeologic evidence is due to the susceptibility of the products to decay. Examples of archaic work survive to us only by virtue of exceptionally favorable circumstances; it rarely happened that mound fabrics were so conditioned, as the soil in which they were buried is generally porous ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... in short, be a serving class. They suppose that the same sovereign God which distributes instincts, and wisdom, variously, to animals, and gifts of understanding to men, will, in the same sovereign way, create men and women with such degrees of capacity and susceptibility as will lead inevitably to their being superiors and inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... said simultaneously. He waved his pipe, a corn cob, towards the east. "New York!" he remarked, and we stood side by side for a moment in silence. The simple observation seemed to me to imply a susceptibility to the sublimity of the prospect that we had not discovered to any extent among our other neighbours. To them, apparently, New York was no more than London is to Hampstead; they had the suburban sentiment in an acute form. Nevertheless I was somewhat at a loss to continue our conversation. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of proportion, then, is that fineness of susceptibility by which we appreciate in a given object, person, force, or mood, serviceableness in regard to reason's work; in other words, by which we estimate the capacity to transform the Universe in such a way that men may ultimately be enabled to give their hearty ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... cool ... yet it appeared to be what she desired. Nevertheless, this preference turned out shortly to have been erroneous and, as the result of a practical trial, Lola changed her mind and voted for anything "between 12 deg.—16 deg.!" Here is one more test I put with regard to her susceptibility to touch: I got someone else to trace figures with their fingers on the dog's back, placing myself so that I could not see what was being described; then I put the questions, and each time her replies tallied almost invariably. One put to her in this manner ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... our people. A pleasing change has succeeded. The briars have been removed, trees planted, and when necessary to be laid out, new burial-ground spots have been selected remarkable for attractiveness and susceptibility of improvement. The brook has been led in and conducted in tortuous paths, as if to lull with a soft hymn the tired sleepers, and then expanded into a fairy lake, around which the weeping willow lets fall its graceful pendants. The white pine, the various species of firs, the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... brief and clear analysis the history of his whole life as she had thought it out during the lonely musings of her widowhood. She dwelt on the ancestral causes that gave him a nature of exceptional and dangerous susceptibility. She went through the mismanagements of his childhood, the history of his school-days, the influence of the ordinary school-course of classical reading on such a mind as his. She sketched boldly and clearly the internal life of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at once confess frankly that, with the usual susceptibility of callow youth, I promptly became captivated by the charms of our lovely hostess; and I may as well complete my confession by stating that, with the equally usual overweening conceit of callow youth, I quite expected ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... her position only increased his susceptibility to her charms. It seemed to him very probable that she had but a moderate income; perhaps she was not free from anxieties on that score. But such a woman would of course marry again, and marry well. The thought grew troublesome, and presently ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... with his carefully developed flair for character study, guessed them from the first. Susceptibility to musical intoxication was a thing which he understood, a thing to which he himself was more or less subject. He knew the danger and the value of it. Without some such susceptibility, he believed, artistic ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... enliven it much. Other houses had flowers or birds in the windows, or at least pleasant glimpses of white curtains, but this one, with its half-closed blinds, had almost a funereal aspect. Nelly had a keen susceptibility of externals, and her heart sank a little; but she rang the bell, determined to make the best of it. The door was opened by an elderly woman in rusty black, with a hard, careworn face, which did not relax into the slightest perceptible smile, as she regarded Nelly scrutinizingly, saying at last, ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... an American's betraying undue susceptibility on the score of every little unpleasant occurrence that arises at home. No one of the smallest intelligence can believe that we are to be exempt from human faults, and we all ought to know that they will frequently lead to violence and ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... must confess, it may have an insensible influence in destroying. For instance, the sweetness, of the temper is seldom increased by increased refinement of mind; on the contrary, the latter serves to quicken susceptibility and render perception more acute; and therefore, unless it is guarded by an accompanying increase of self-control, it will naturally produce an alteration for the worse in the temper. This is one point. For the next, personal beauty may ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the fact that odious creatures possess a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish! At this word "villain," the female Thenardier sprang from the bed, Thenardier grasped his chair as though he were about to crush it in his hands. "Don't you stir!" he shouted to his wife; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... plenty of wits, she, bred in the mountains of Switzerland, had no conception of such an idiosyncrasy as that of M. de Maurepas, a man who saw in an outspoken expression of feeling only an opportunity of discovering the vulnerable point. As soon as he knew M. Necker's susceptibility he flattered himself that, by irritating it, he would drive him to give in his resignation." [onsiderations sur la Revolution frangaise,t. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... my readers the speeches of two advocates in a ceremony of this kind, at which I had the curiosity to be present. In order not to wound the susceptibility of the parties, the advocates never speak but in allegorical terms, and at the ceremony which I honoured with my presence the advocate of the young Indian ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... town. We have seen how this man had once believed that Providence had called him to an exceptional and brilliant destiny. The total renouncement of what once glowed as a mission requires a sturdy nature and plenty of active work. Clifton possessed an exceeding susceptibility of nervous organization; he was full of subtile intimations of what was passing in the minds of other men, and at times seemed to have a strange power of controlling them. The deep passion for metaphysical knowledge, which in his youth had been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... disinterestedness, and those high ideals which must have led her—for what else could?—to prefer the German professor, who had so soon become decrepit, to himself. But the result of it all had been that the period of highest susceptibility and effervescence had passed by, leaving him still unmarried. Since then he had had many women-friends, following harmlessly a score of 'chance desires'! But he had never wanted to marry anybody; and the idea of surrendering the solitude and independence of his pleasant ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... convenient to make a division into the following three classes. In the first place there are a certain number of people upon whom tobacco in any shape or form has an absolutely poisonous influence. There must be some peculiar susceptibility of the system in their case which renders them especially vulnerable to its action. On this account, therefore, they are better without tobacco at all, and any attempt to habituate themselves to it must be attended with prejudice to health. Secondly, ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... been attributed to religious sentimentality or religiosity. The latter word has been defined as "an excessive susceptibility to the religious sentiments, especially wonder, awe, and reverence, unaccompanied by any correspondent loyalty to divine law ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... not be tasted. At last the requirements of the body are to some extent mastered, and it follows the dictation of the soul without complaint. The long-experienced traveller can scarcely fail to be astonished at the delicate susceptibility of his casing of flesh, which is bruised by blows, torn by thorns, devoured by insects, and yet, day after day, the persevering man continues to face death under its most horrible aspects—poison from venom of serpents, giddiness from sun-stroke, blindness from the power of the moon, want ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... letters home she gave to her mother an exact account of her daily life, and among the hindrances she found this nervous susceptibility was not omitted. It had never occurred to her that it was a thing under her own control, therefore she was not a little surprised when she received the following ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... describe all that the Holy of Holies suffered from these heartless beings; for the sight affected me so excessively that I became really ill, and I felt as if I could not survive it. We ought, indeed, to be ashamed of that weakness and susceptibility which renders us unable to listen composedly to the descriptions, or speak without repugnance, of those sufferings which our Lord endured so calmly and patiently for our salvation. The horror we feel is as great as that of a murderer who is forced to place his hands upon the wound he ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... a promise to come and sit on the hay with her, when at leisure. Evidently, Priscilla found but scanty requital for her love. Hollingsworth was likewise a great favorite with her. For several minutes together sometimes, while my auditory nerves retained the susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low, pleasant murmur ascending from the room below; and at last ascertained it to be Priscilla's voice, babbling like a little brook to Hollingsworth. She talked more largely and freely with him ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... suffer," says one of this sex, "are synonymous, with woman." This may exaggerate the strict truth, and yet it is doubtless substantially correct. Some of the noblest virtues of her sex imply great sensibility. What gives fortitude, in her case, such illustrious merit? Her extreme susceptibility of suffering. The blow, from which the gnarled oak will rebound, shall crush the frail dahlia. Why is patience a prime grace in woman? Not only because she has such burdens laid on her spirit, but still more ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... imply from this analogy that it will take such an age to accomplish this result. Because of the increased mobility of society, resulting from the greater like-mindedness and consciousness of kind incident to our modern communities of interests and systems of communication, and from our greater susceptibility to rational rather than traditional appeals, a reform can be wrought more easily and the people can adjust themselves to the change far more readily than ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... parties to the deed and the witnesses must meet, and it would be unadvisable, for several reasons, to irritate the lady's susceptibility previous to signature; the appointment having been made at her house, it had better ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... his own susceptibility. Born cautious," explained Dona Rita crisply with the slightest possible quiver of her lips. "Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati, who had been reminding me by a constant stream of messages that he was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad |
