"Elastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is that the moral is written at the end of the fable, not at the beginning. The organization in youth is so dangerously elastic that the result of these intellectual excesses is not seen until years after. When some young girl incurs spinal disease from some slight fall, which she ought not to have felt for an hour, or some business man breaks down in the prime of his years ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the road. The shop was small and unpretending. In the window the chief ornaments were speckled plaster limbs clad in elastic socks, and photographs of hideous complaints before and after treatment with a celebrated ointment; and there were certain trophies which indicated that the chemist numbered dentistry among ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... aerial observers realized that the tremendous sledge-hammer blows, directed with consummate skill and resiliency, left the mass of wastage on the German side; for, with strategical and tactical problems suddenly changed from boxed-in trench warfare to the elastic manoeuvers of open battle, the directing mind which is more elastic, all things else being equal, wins the day—and, whatever other virtues the Boche may possess, his mind can hardly be said to expand ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... wish a better supper than ripe berries and molasses? Nor was there need of sleeping under roof nor of lighting candles to grope his way to pallet of straw, when he might have the blue vault of heaven arching over him, and all God's stars for lamps, and for a bed a horse blanket stretched over an elastic couch of pine needles. There were two gaunt pines that had been dropping their polished spills for centuries, perhaps silently adding, year by year, another layer of aromatic springiness to poor Tom's bed. Flinging his tired body on this grateful ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... undefined. It was grey, and looked transparent, but it was a warm-grey, and grew moment by moment less transparent, gradually assuming the shape of his friend of the previous day, alive and to all appearances uninjured, as, with its soft, elastic, cat-like step and undulating body and tail, it walked slowly down to the edge of the bank, and stood staring at Rob as if waiting for him ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry?[30] You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection, is possible. The indispensable concert ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... assume when in a state of suffering and distress, and I never could succeed in making them take any other when in a situation of constraint. The skin of the cameleon is of a very soft and delicate texture, and appears to the observer similar to a shagreen skin, elastic and pliable; and it may be owing to this extraordinary construction that it changes its colours and size with that facility which astonishes us; but what may be considered as a more wonderful faculty is, its expanding and contracting ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... Romance still beckons to eager eyes and gallant hearts. The rutted money-grabber may deny till he is a nerve-racked counting-machine, but youth, even to the end of time, will laugh to scorn his pessimism and venture with elastic heel where danger and mystery ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... stretched on a plastic-sheeted couch, while her maid, Rendarra, was rubbing her body vigorously with some pungent-smelling stuff about the consistency of machine-grease. Her face was masked in the stuff, and her hair was covered with an elastic cap. He had always suspected that beauty was the real feminine religion, from the willingness of its devotees to submit to martyrdom for it. She wiggled a hand at him ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... knew how, found himself once more in the study. On the table lay the packet he had given her. It was much smaller—she had evidently gone over the papers with care, destroying the greater number. He loosened the elastic band and spread the remaining envelopes on his desk. The publisher's ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... one day, he came up on several of the boys, who were amusing themselves by climbing up the trees and swinging down again, as they slender elastic stems bent till their tops touched the ground. Dan paused a minute to watch the fun, without offering to join in it, and as he stood there Jack took his turn. He had unfortunately chosen too large a tree; for when he swung off, it only bent a little way, and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... debate, the Public Attorney is in the presence of a difficulty which he cannot ignore. It cannot be put even in the nature of a condemnation, since offenses to public morals and to religion are somewhat vague and elastic expressions which it would be necessary to define precisely. Nevertheless, when we speak to right-minded, practical men we are sure of being sufficiently understood to distinguish whether a certain page of a book carries an attack against religion and morals or not. The difficulty is not in ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... we could and struck right away as the crow flies for one of several tremendous hills that we saw in the distance. Under our feet was the purple heath with great patches of whortleberry, that tiny shrub that bears the little purply grey fruit. Then there was short elastic wiry grass and orange-yellow bird's-foot trefoil. Anon we came to great patches of furze of a dwarf kind with small prickles, and of an elegant growth, the purple and yellow making the place look like some vast ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... ease, spirit, and elastic vigour, may be ranked his clear, sharp intellect. He may be called more a logician than a poet. He reasons often, and always acutely, and his rhyme, instead of shackling, strengthens the movement of his argumentation. Parts of his "Religio Laici" and the "Hind and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Wentworth that there were not other two such eyes in Carlingford. Not that they were brilliant or penetrating, but as blue as heaven, and as serene and pure. So many persons thought, and the Perpetual Curate among them. The grey cloak fell in pretty folds around that light elastic figure; and there was not an old woman in the town so tender, so helpful, so handy as Lucy where trouble was, as all the poor people knew. So the three went down Prickett's Lane, which leads from George Street towards the canal—not a pleasant part of the town by any means; and if Mr Wentworth ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... able to learn, to be elastic to the point of flexibility, is surely the secret of all progress, and these girls of True Tred had little need of such ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... two hundred newspapers denounce every day the 'monopolists' and the 'gold-bugs,' the 'lies and shams' of the Bank Returns, and the 'paid perjurers of Somerset House.' The group of financiers who control the syndicate stand to win enormous sums by the creation of a more 'elastic' currency, and subscribe largely to a Free Money League, which includes a few sincere paper-money theorists who have been soured by the contempt of the professional economists. A vigorous and well-known member of parliament—a not very reputable aristocrat perhaps, or some ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... He was caught occasionally, but not often; and even when he was, there were mitigating circumstances, for he was generally put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was a dark close, sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown tired of looking at the triangle of black elastic in the teacher's "congress" shoe, and tired of wishing it was his instead of hers, he would tie one end of a bit of thread to the button of his gingham shirt, and, carrying it round his left ear several times, make believe he was Paganini ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... certain that there is some unfairness in suggesting this explanation for every incident of the kind. It means stretching to the uttermost and perhaps stretching too far the elastic powers of that amiable maid-of-all-work, telepathy. For that matter, there are cases in which the telepathic interpretation is even more uncertain, as in that described by Miss R. C. Morton in vol. viii. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... came the elastic end with stinging force against Randy's back and shoulders. Maddened by the pain he partially rose and leaned forward. At the second blow he reeled to one side, stumbled against the combing, and went out of the ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... come in the early days of the colony, and made a lot of money, being a shrewd man, and one who took advantage of every tide in the affairs of men. He was honest, that is honest as our present elastic acceptation of the word goes—and when he had accumulated a fortune he set to work to buy a few things. He bought a grand house at Toorak, then he bought a wife to do the honours of the grand house, and when his domestic affairs were quite settled, he bought ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... sister Thea. The schoolboy link between Lance and Roy had created a lasting friendship between their respective families; and it was General Sir Theo Desmond—now retired—who had invited Roy, in the name of his 'Twin,' to start with an unlimited visit to the Leighs; the sort of casual elastic visit that no one would dream of proposing outside India,—unless it were Ireland, of an earlier, happier day. The prospect was a secret consolation to Roy. It was also a secret jar to find he needed ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... out. The only time when Grumps was thoroughly nonplussed, was when Dick Varley's whistle sounded faintly in the far distance. Then Crusoe would prick up his ears, and stretch out at full gallop, clearing ditch, and fence, and brake with his strong elastic bound, and leaving Grumps to patter after him as fast as his four-inch legs would carry him. Poor Grumps usually arrived at the village, to find both dog and master gone, and would betake himself to his own dwelling, there to lie down and sleep, and dream, perchance, of rambles ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... right? Hey?" he seems to ask, cocking his head, and flipping out the curt inquiries with tail-jerks. Glad of any excuse to stop work, the boy stands statue-still, while Mr. Robin drags from the upturned clods the long, elastic fish-worms, and then with a brief "Chip!" flashes out of sight. Be right still now. Don't move. Here he comes again, and his wife with him. They fly down, he all eager and alert to wait upon her, she whining and scolding. She doesn't think it's much of a place ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... his hairdresser, he presented no such bad figure at the altar, and none would have thought that he was an ancient admirer of his bride's mama, as certainly none knew he had lately proposed for Mrs. Doria before there was any question of her daughter. These things were secrets; and the elastic and happy appearance of Mr. John Todhunter did not betray them at the altar. Perhaps he would rather have married the mother. He was a man of property, well born, tolerably well educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria rejected him for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were to have come, but they all dined at Blackwall. Brougham, Plunket, and John Russell came the next day. Brougham is not so talkative as he was; his dignities, his labours, and the various cares of his situation have dashed his gaiety, and pressed down his once elastic spirits; however, he was not otherwise than cheerful and lively. Plunket I never met before, he was pretty much at his ease, and talked sufficiently without exhibiting anything remarkable. Lemarchant is a clever, industrious fellow, whom I remember ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... philosopher cannot expect to have it. But when technical expressions are properly formed, even a bad writer can make himself understood. In the early days of Buddhist philosophy in the Pali literature, this difficulty is greatly felt. There are some technical terms here which are still very elastic and their repetition in different places in more or less different senses heighten the difficulty of understanding the real meaning intended to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... simplicity and practicability; but they are at least worthy of trial. There is no special significance in the arrangement of the days and this may be changed in any way desirable. Further, all plans should be elastic; there will come special days, such as festivals and birthdays, when the program should be varied. For example, on a birthday the child whose anniversary then occurs should have the privilege of making the choice of recitation or reading or of determining ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... fakirs and time-servers and flunkies. He was one of those rugged, adamantine spirits, who could stand against the world for a principle, but he was gracious, courteous, tender and sympathetic withal. Tall, slender, symmetrical, erect in bearing, with a graceful and elastic walk, with a refined and aristocratic face that was lighted up by keen penetrating but kindly eyes, and surrounded by the gray hair and beard which gave him a venerable appearance, with a rich, ringing, resonant baritone voice, which had not lost its ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... of extension and always endeavouring to contract. Thus we are at liberty when dealing with the motions of the drop to think of the interior liquid as not coherent, provided we furnish it with a suitable elastic skin. Where the surface skin is sharply curved outwards, as it is at the sharp edge of the flattened disc, there the interior liquid will be strongly pressed back. In fact the process of flattening and recoil is one in which energy of motion is first ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... weariness all gone. When a bird sang we always stopped to listen; and the song acted upon them as the music of a band acts upon drooping soldiers. On the next stage of the journey their eyes sparkled, and their step was more elastic. When one stumbled and fell, we helped him to his feet and praised his effort, wholly ignoring the fall. Sometimes one would become discouraged and would want to drop out of the company and return home. When this happened, we would gather about him and tell ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... treatment. The skin should first be lightly rubbed with olive oil; except in very special cases "friction" between hand and skin is to be avoided. The hand should move the skin to and fro over the muscles and bones beneath, and should be always elastic, so as to go easily in and out of the hollows, and avoid violent contact with projecting bones in the case of emaciated patients. The good rubber should know anatomy so far as to understand where bones and muscles lie (See Diagram, page 216). An intelligent moving ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... and freshened the air, but it was already too late in the season for the summer to recover herself with the elastic brilliancy that follows the rain of July or early August; and there was I know not what vague sentiment of autumn in the weather. There was not yet enough of it ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... say good-morning? I forget, and it matters little. We were walking together. How light the air was!—cool and rapturous like snow-chilled wine that is drunk beneath the rose at thirsty Teheran. The ground on which we trod, too, how strangely elastic! The pine-trees give out how good a smell! Is my heart beating at all, or only so fine and quick that I ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... dispatch to His Majesty's ships. As a matter of course the place was strongly built, heavily barred and massively bolted, being in these respects merely a commonplace replica of the average bridewell. Where it differed from the bridewell was in its walls. Theoretically these were elastic. No matter how many they held, there was always room within them for more. As late as 1806 the press-room at Bristol consisted of a cell only eight feet square, and into this confined space sixteen men were frequently packed. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 581—Admiral ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Low and High Tension. Elastic Property of Electricity. The Condenser. Connecting up a Condenser. The Interrupter. Uses of ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... on the west, lies Westward Ho!—a tiny (and modern) watering-place, named after Kingsley's famous book. Along the western shore as far as the Taw stretch Northam Burrows, covered for some distance by a fine elastic turf that is far-famed, and by patches of rushes. Beyond the golf-links the ground breaks into sand-hills, all hillocks and hollows of pure sand, soft and yielding, dented by every footstep, set with rushes and spangled with ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... sternness from one of our teachers. It was not given in my presence, but the boy, bewildered by the severity which he did not anticipate, coupled indeed with a hint that he must be prepared, if he could not exhibit a more elastic sympathy, to have his course suspended in favour of some more simple discipline, told me the whole matter. "What am I to do?" he said. "I cannot care for Barbara; her whole nature upsets me and revolts me. I know she is very good and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... into Gordon's honest face again and to return his manly grasp. And he looked well—he looked happy; to see that was more delightful yet. During these few instants, while they exchanged a silent pledge of renewed friendship, Bernard's elastic perception embraced several things besides the consciousness of his own pleasure. He saw that Gordon looked well and happy, but that he looked older, too, and more serious, more marked by life. He looked as if something had happened to him—as, in fact, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... unable to purchase an elastic or other abdominal supporter can make a substitute (not so good, but of considerable service) from unbleached muslin made in the shape of the letter T, and having the cloth double. It should go up ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... the musical profession, having fully examined the Royal Pianofortes manufactured by MESSRS. D'ALMAINE & CO., have great pleasure in bearing testimony to their merits and capabilities. It appears to us impossible to produce instruments of the same size possessing a richer and finer tone, more elastic touch, or more equal temperament, while the elegance of their construction renders them a handsome ornament for the library, boudoir, or drawing-room. (Signed) J. L. Abel, F. Benedict, H. R. Bishop, J. Blewitt, J. Brizzi, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... bed-room, she left a large gobbet of sperm on the stool, which the old one wiped off. I washed her cunt, threw her on the bed, and looked at the little quim. It seemed impossible I could have been up it; but from that day I knew a cunt to be the most elastic article in the world, and believed the old woman's saying, that a prick can always go ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... galvanized and tyrannized by one too happy and all-mastering idea in spite of himself. The audience too, in spite of themselves, were sucked into its whirling ecstacy, and it was imperatively encored. In Mozart's Non piu Andrai the chaster prototype of Rossini's Largo al factotum, his vocalization was elastic, spirited and elegant, but the effect of such a piece was necessarily lost upon the outer circles of so vast ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... waltz with a 'bock' in their hand, singing the Gaudeamus igitur, that students' hymn glorifying the material life free from care. The French sing amid rippling laughter, and dance with their free and elastic limbs, greeting with rapturous applause their fantastic and monkey-like movements. The English have turned their dance into gymnastics, with the energy of a healthy body delighting in its own strength. But all these ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Most rules are elastic and contract and expand according to circumstances. You do not remind Mrs. Smith of having met her before, but on meeting again any one who was brought to your own house, or one who showed you an especial courtesy you instinctively ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... her that had not behaved well in the shop tests, in the various machines that put the metal under bending stress, cross-breaking, hammering, drifting, shearing, elongation, contraction, compression, deflection, tension, and torsion stresses. The best of the steels had their elastic limits; there was none that ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... not smile. His sense of humor was suffering from temporary exhaustion and his strongest consciousness was a feeling of relief that neither Benis nor anyone else appeared to notice their arrival. Even the unique spectacle of a middle-aged lady in elastic-sided boots proceeding on tiptoe, and with all the tactics of a scouting party, toward the evidently deserted tents provoked ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... husbandman, on whose frame the hard and unintermitted toil of thirty generations has stamped its unmistakable impress, and, correspondently, he is a less persevering and less vigorous labourer; but, as a general rule, his stature is taller and his step far more free and elastic than that of the sturdy but slow and stunted labourer of our southern counties. There are wild mountainous districts of the west, indeed, in which the lowest type of the Irish peasantry is found, that must be ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... elastic Mahayanist Canon of this kind are preserved, one in the Sikshasamuccaya[155] attributed to Santideva, who probably flourished in the seventh century, and the other in a little work called the Duration of the Law, reporting a discourse by ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... consists in the vibrations of the air, it may not be disagreeable to the reader to attend to the immediate causes of those vibrations. When any sudden impulse is given to an elastic fluid like the air, it acquires a progressive motion of the whole, and a condensation of the constituent particles, which first receive the impulse; on this account the currents of the atmosphere in stormy seasons are never regular, but blow and cease to blow by intervals; as a part of the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... opposite, and they smiled at me in a watery sort of way as if they thought a smile was expected of them. I meant to talk to the little girl, but I saw she was almost on the verge of tears, and it didn't take me long to discover what was the matter. Her little pink hat was held on by an elastic band, which, being put behind her ears and under her chin, was cutting her cruelly. I knew by experience that if the band were placed in front of her ears the tension would be lessened; so, with ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... particular straw of this dank, damp bed was elastic with delight, at bearing such angelic pressure; and, as our heroine cast her ineffably beaming eyes about the dark void, lighting up with their effulgent rays each little portion of the dungeon, as she glanced them from one part to another, she perceived that the many reptiles ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... height, slight and trim of figure, clear complexion and piercing gray eyes of peculiar brilliancy, softened by a merry twinkle betokening latent mischief, young Perkins was a youth fair and interesting to look upon. He walked with quick, elastic step, carried his head a little on one side, and had a habit, when anything struck his fancy pleasantly, of shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his hands together in a vigorous way, that seemed to declare in unmistakable terms that ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... When slipped off, it is found to be made of two transverse layers of fibre—a bit of veritable natural lace, similar to, though far less delicate than, the famous lace-bark of the Lagetta-tree, peculiar, I believe, to one district in the Jamaica mountains. And as it is elastic and easily stretched, what hinders the brown child from pulling it out till it makes an admirable fool's cap, some two feet high, and exactly the colour of his own skin, and dancing about therein, the fat oily little Cupidon, without a particle of clothing beside? And what wonder if we grown-up ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... inevitable revolution. His over-sanguine expectations of successfully rivalling the glory of Frederick and Catherine, and the ill success of his war against the Turks, all tended to break down his enthusiastic spirit, which only wanted the elastic resistance of fortitude to have made him a great character. He for some time sunk into a profound melancholy; and expired on the 20th of January, 1791, accusing his Belgian subjects of having ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... "Elastic Clause."] Congress is also empowered "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... prohibition of "molesting," "obstructing," "threatening," "persistently following," "watching or besetting" any workmen who had not voluntarily joined the trade union. As these terms were still undefined, the law might be, and it was, still sufficiently elastic to allow magistrates or judges who disapproved of trade unionism to punish men for the most ordinary forms of persuasion or pressure used in industrial conflicts. An agitation was immediately begun for the repeal or modification of this later law. This was accomplished finally ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... the posterior than on the anterior surface, and, in different portions of the surface of each, the convexity varies from their oval character. It is imbedded in the anterior part of the vitreous humor, from which it is separated by a thin membrane, and is invested by a transparent elastic membrane, called the capsule of the lens. The lens consists of concentric layers, disposed like the coats of an onion. The external layer is soft, and each successive one increases in firmness until the central layer forms a hardened nucleus. These layers are best demonstrated by boiling, ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... he did not note the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... shelter with the fresh elasticity of outdoor air. I am not going to give here a treatise on ventilation, but merely to say, in general terms, that the first object of a house builder or contriver should be to make a healthy house; and the first requisite of a healthy house is a pure, sweet, elastic air. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... azimuth is given in like manner by rotating the rod h'e', the lantern-wheel at the end of which turns a crown-wheel on whose axle is a pinion-wheel working in the teeth of the circle c. The casings at e and e', in which the rods he and h'e' respectively work, are so fastened by elastic cords that an upward pressure on the handle h, or a downward pressure on the handle h', at once releases the endless screw or the crown-wheel respectively, so that the telescope can be swept at once through any ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... still looking moodily out of the window, when there came a sharp clang at the bell. Often it had rung, and with every ring his hopes had sprung up, only to dwindle away again, and change to leaden disappointment, as he faced some beggar or touting tradesman. But the doctor's spirit was young and elastic, and again, in spite of all experience, it responded to that exhilarating summons. He sprang to his feet, cast his eyes over the table, thrust out his medical books a little more prominently, and hurried to the door. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... proclaimed them to belong to the exalted rank of midshipmen in the Royal Navy. But many might envy the free joyous laugh in which they indulged, seemingly on finding themselves on shore, and the light elastic tread with which they sprang up the long flight of steps before them, distancing, in a moment, several civilians and soldiers of various ranks, who, puffing and blowing, with handkerchiefs at their foreheads, were toiling upwards, while they arrived ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... was. M. Barbou, for one, made a still more decided effort to turn back, for, being a bachelor, he had no one to restrain him. Him I saw turned round as you would turn a roulette. He was thrown against my wife in his tempestuous course, and but that she was so light and elastic in her tread, gliding out straight and softly like one of the saints, I think he must have thrown her down. And at that moment, silent as we all were, his 'Pardon, Madame, mille pardons, Madame,' and his tone of horror at his own ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... in the middle of the pelvic cavity, between the bladder and the lower bowel. It is held in place by broad elastic bands which go to different sides of the pelvis; it is also in part supported by the structures below and above it. But so loosely is the uterus held that it is easily pushed about— as, for instance, by a full bladder or a packed bowel. And ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... two medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvelous fact that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... on he bethought himself that "one sleep" was an elastic term of distance, and in order to avoid the possibility of being carried over the falls he adopted the rule of landing at the head of each rapid, and walking down the shore to pick his channel, and to make ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... scales from the normal tail: with certain Orthopterous insects the large hind legs are reproduced of smaller size:[719] the white cicatrice which in the higher animals unites the edges of a deep wound is not formed of perfect skin, for elastic tissue is not produced till long afterwards.[720] "The activity of the nisus formativus," says Blumenbach, "is in an inverse ratio to the age of the organised body." To this may be added that its power is greater in animals ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... at the beginning of the period in point. The constitutions of our States have been repeatedly altered, and they are now very different in their details from the old colonial charters, liberal and elastic as these for the most part were. Yet American innovations are but child's play to those of Europe, which has not reached the position we held at the beginning, and has a great deal still to do. In France the people are not trained to local self-government, but they have an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... attested the fact that she had donned her best clothes for the occasion of her visit, and that Thorley fashions differed from those of the metropolis. She wore gloves with one button, moreover, and boots with elastic sides. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... slightly vulgar. He described one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious, and suddenly he noticed that he wore elastic-sided boots: it was grotesque and ridiculous; so he withdrew his mind and thought of the gothic beauty of the Chapel at King's. But he had spent some delightful days at Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew; and the conversation in his rooms ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... more famous and mightier than ever, and the democracy humbled beyond parallel and utterly powerless? Crassus prepared to embark his family and his gold and to seek an asylum somewhere in the east; and even so elastic and so energetic a nature as that of Caesar seemed on the point of giving up the game as lost. In this year (691) occurred his candidature for the place of -pontifex maximus-;(22) when he left his dwelling on the morning of the election, he declared ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... every day she stripped him and laid him in it, that he might ripen like a peach; and the boy rejoiced in it, and would resist being dressed again. She brought all her knowledge to bear on making his muscles strong and elastic and swiftly responsive—that his soul, she said, laughing, might sit in every fibre, be all in every part, and awake the moment of call. His hair was of the red gold, but his eyes grew darker as he grew, until they were as black as Vesper's. He was ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the epididymis, hard, rounded lumps are formed generally in the head or tail of the epididymis, rarely in the body. These increase in size and cause a swelling often of extraordinary dimensions, the surface of which appears hard, irregular, bumpy and in certain parts yielding and elastic. If the process is extended to the testicle, this also increases in size. Then both together form an oval swollen mass and can not ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... of Waller's fine enough to be admitted here; and even this, though unquestionably a beautiful poem, elastic in words and fresh in feeling, despite its wearied argument, is of the third-class. Greatness seems generally, in the arts, to be of two kinds, and the third rank is less than great. The wearied argument of The Rose is the almost squalid ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... since first the hallowed tree Was launched by the lone mariner on some primeval sea, No stouter stuff than the heart of oak, or tough elastic pine, Had floated beyond the shallow shoal ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... manly self-hood! To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown, To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, To confront with your personality all the other ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... religion involves, first, a belief in superhuman beings who rule the world, and, second, an attempt to win their favour, it clearly assumes that the course of nature is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow. Now this implied elasticity or variability of nature is directly opposed to the principles of magic as well as ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... so that, the vessels that should have moistened them not having much communication with the grand source of passions, the fine volatile fluid had evaporated, and they became mere dry fibres, which might be pulled by any misfortune that threatened himself, but were not sufficiently elastic to be moved by the miseries of others. His joints were inserted compactly, and with celerity they had performed all the animal functions, without any of the grace which results from the imagination mixing with ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the city at an early hour, everything wore a cheerful aspect, every step seemed elastic and every heart buoyant with hope. There was a continual hum of busy men and women, as we were passing near a market. Such a rolling of carts and carriages—so many cheerful children, some crying "Raddishes"—"raddishes"—others "Strawberries"—"strawberries"—others with ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... prospect of the other girls, coming—and Tom and his friends, too—and the fun in store for them all at Snow Camp, soon made Ruth Fielding forget small troubles. Besides, the muscles of youth are elastic and the weariness soon went out of her bones. Before the party arrived from Scarboro she had opportunity of going all about the great log lodge, and getting acquainted with all it held and all that ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... in the glass and assumed immediately the two lines between her eyebrows which were the outward and visible token of what she had suffered. Then she found her slippers, a pair of stockings to match and two round bits of pink silk elastic of private and feminine use, and sat down on the floor to put ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wandering eyes and her tremulous lips offering themselves to him; in his grasp he felt her cold hands; her breath floated about him. Against his bosom were pressed hidden curves of firm elastic plumpness, the existence of which he had ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is elastic—some judges stretch it more than others. A search-warrant and a writ of attachment probably did the business in this case. What I can't understand is why Judge Lindman issued the writ at all—if he did so. You are the defendant, and you certainly ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... letter carefully, and drew from it two conclusions and a perplexity. He concluded that Bertie Lisle's elastic spirits had quickly recovered the shock of his father's failure and flight, and that he had not the faintest idea that any property of his—Percival's—had gone down in the wreck. So much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... not be immediately reached, but as a step in that direction and as a means of securing a more elastic currency and obviating other objections to the present arrangement of bank circulation the Secretary of the Treasury presents in his report a scheme modifying present banking laws and providing for the issue of circulating notes by State banks free ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... have not all the faults of the men. But they are full of vanity, and very libertine; money will always buy their caresses. They are not without personal charms; good shapes, polished and elastic skins. They live in open concubinage with the whites; but to this they are incited more by money than any attachment. After all we love those best, and are most happy in the intercourse of those, with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... in glass. You must not imagine that glass is a rigid thing; it is very elastic, and the wedge-like pressure of the wheel pushes it out just as the keel of a boat pushes the water aside in ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... to like to pass my hand over it. It was silk, spun silk. Before he was two he could talk—whole sentences. He had the subtlest ear. He loved long words.... And then," he said with tears in his voice, "all this beautiful fine structure, this brain, this fresh life as nimble as water—as elastic as a steel ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... was seated in a palatial drawing-room car bounding up and down quite a good deal on the elastic ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... anywhere else a similar phenomenon, amid the decompositions of granitic soils. If the balls rested on a rock of a different nature, as in the blocks of Jura, we might suppose that they had been rounded by the action of water, or thrown out by the force of an elastic fluid; but their position on the summit of a hill alike granitic, makes it more probable that they owe their origin to the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom and such keen discriminative sense of what ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... tried to counteract her influence by bungling efforts to make the lovers' path smooth. Catherine was a sort of cushion against which all the billiard balls of the game knocked themselves in succession, leaving her cool and elastic temper undisturbed. Three more days passed without throwing much new light on the disputed question whether the engagement could last, except that Esther seemed clearly more anxious and restless. Mr. Hazard was with her several ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... the interesting thing about these historic figures is that they got up with such elastic promptness, the one to study and the other to play the lute. The Bishop seems a shade the more eager; but there are details that Mrs. Carter would naturally have refrained from mentioning to Dr. Johnson, even at the brimming moment ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... really," responded Jack, thoughtfully, thrusting a hand down into his own trousers pocket. Young Benson brought up into the light a very comfortable looking handful of banknotes, rolled and surrounded by a broad elastic band. "Let's measure the two, Professor, and see ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... was played with a firm, elastic touch, the opening chords struck, and a great shining voice, masterful, like a golden trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb; Miss Honey, instinctively humming the prelude, got up from her foot-stool and followed the music, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... urge themselves over the ground with ease and rapidity. There was little or no straggling, and being strong, lusty young fellows, and lightly equipped—they carried only needle-guns, ammunition, a very small knapsack, a water-bottle, and a haversack —they strode by with an elastic step, covering at ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... people are satisfied to frame an answer to suit their own case, and so it happens that we have a multiplicity of definitions for the word, many of which are devoid of scientific solidity, and others have not even the merit of intelligibility. A recent definition, extremely elastic, was propounded by a popular preacher in a lecture delivered before the Glasgow Young Men's Christian Association and reported in the newspapers,—"Superstition is Scepticism," which may be legitimately paraphrased "Superstition is not believing what I ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... point concerns the elastic theory as applied to a reinforced concrete arch. This theory treats a reinforced concrete arch as a spring. In order to justify its use, the arch or spring is considered as having fixed ends. The results obtained ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... than as it moved weights by those powers. Our design, not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this—from the phenomena of motions to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... this otherwise superfluous body of troops, the Emperor of Austria would probably never have accepted the terms of peace. "If you desire peace, {293} prepare for war," may be an excellent maxim, but its value lies a good deal in its practical application. It is a remarkably elastic maxim, and in times nearer to our own than those of Walpole has been made to expand into a justification of the most extravagant and unnecessary military armaments and of schemes of fortification which afterwards were abandoned before ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans, and annually produced articles in this country alone ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... audibly and intelligibly returned as the first; and there is no doubt, could trial have been made, but that at midnight, when the air is very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, one or two syllables more might have been obtained; but the distance rendered so late an experiment ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... and the year. He then pulled out a drawer on the left-hand side of his knee-hole table, selected a packet labelled "Complimentary, P. B."—his clerk's initials—slipped the new verses under the elastic band containing similar contributions of twenty years, replaced the packet, and shut the drawer. The little greyhound, displaced by these operations, sprang again to his knees, and he fell to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be so free nor taking heed or count of the reckless adventure before me. The Martian weather for the moment was lovely and the many-coloured grass lush and soft under foot. Mile after mile I went, heeding the distance lightly, the air was so elastic. Now pressing forward as the main interest of my errand took the upper hand, and remembrance of poor Heru like a crushed white flower in the red grip of those cruel ravishers came upon me, and then pausing to sigh with pleasure or stand agape—forgetful ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... come to the front and supply my almost starving troops with rations. The order in question was one of those issued, doubtless with a good intent, to secure generally the safety of our trains, but General Gilbert was not elastic, and on the march he had construed the order so illiberally that it was next to impossible to supply the men with food, and they were particularly short in this respect on the eve of the battle. I had ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... up. Carl, who could not understand what Ivar said, saw that the two boys were displeased. They did not mind hard work, but they hated experiments and could never see the use of taking pains. Even Lou, who was more elastic than his older brother, disliked to do anything different from their neighbors. He felt that it made them conspicuous and gave people a chance to ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... deal of white, while it seemed as if all the blood in his body had rushed to his heart, so horrible were his thoughts. But he could see no sign of rattlesnakes, and the heavy throbbing in his breast calmed down, to give place to a sensation of pleasure, as he breathed in the fresh elastic air and let his eyes rest upon a great blue mountain which towered up above a clump of a dozen or so on one side and as many more spreading away in a row, their tops looking like the teeth of a gigantic saw. In fact, it was ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... shapes to the individual,—power, as he will tell you, not to "mind" things that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer, good temper—in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral tone. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... tail are very different from those on the body: they are short, hollow, thin like a goose-quill, with their ends transversely truncated, so that they are open; they are supported on long, thin, elastic foot-stalks. Now, when the tail is rapidly shaken, these hollow quills strike against each other and produce, as I heard in the presence of Mr. Bartlett, a peculiar continuous sound. We can, I think, understand ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... assistant engineer's bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a bachelor's establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a square of cool Calcutta matting over each, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... still more forcibly illustrates the position, that in forming physical theories we draw for our materials upon the world of fact. Before he began to deal with light, he was intimately acquainted with the laws of elastic collision, which all of you have seen more or less perfectly illustrated on a billiard-table. As regards the collision of sensible elastic masses, Newton knew the angle of incidence to be equal to the angle of reflection, and he also knew that experiment, as shown in our ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... humiliation, and a new sense of culpability, had returned upon her under a newly-fed strength of the old fumes. She did not in the least present the ideal of the tearful, tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some had judged much too forward and instructed in the world's ways!—with her erect head and elastic footstep she was walking among illusions; and yet, too, there was an under-consciousness of her that she ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... as a "muggins" that he tried to look out of countenance and failed; of a "comical little muggins of a daisy" that some one had named after him; and one day he had rejoiced my heart by dubbing me "You muggins, you"; and behold! here he was now applying the elastic term to our many-sided (I did not say "strenuous") ex-President! Later I heard him apply it to a Yosemite waterfall, and by then should not have been surprised to hear him speak of a mighty glacier, or a giant sequoia, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... These qualities depend upon the nature of its skeleton, which is composed of more bones than later in life, when several have fused together to form one to give the mature body a more rigid frame. Furthermore, the individual bones are not so firm, consisting of an elastic material called cartilage, so that some movements which in an adult would cause such serious injuries as fractures and dislocations are perfectly harmless to a ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... were saddled and the sumpters laden once more. Lanciotto held his stirrup, and Zaccaria did like service for Fanfulla, and presently they were cantering out of that fragrant grove on to the elastic sward of broad, green pasture-lands. They crossed the stream at a spot where the widened sheet of water scarce went higher than their horses' hocks; then veering to the east they rode away from the hills for a half-league or so until they gained a road. Here they turned northward again, and pushed ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... in the air. It was not the heat alone, but the stirring of the year's tremendous energy everywhere, even under pavements. The warmth of creation was kindly in old bones and old walls, and an imperious quickening in the elastic veins of youth. Vina (half-way up a step-ladder) turned about and sat down on one of the steps. Cairns had asked her what plans she ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... and as the game didn't begin until two, we had a perfectly lovely time watching the people gather. Cousin Tracy said there were about forty thousand. The cheering section was just a solid mass of college men, with a band at the bottom, and the most elastic lot of cheer leaders in white sweaters you ever saw. This is ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... applaud the accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when he states his facts that you admire the flights of his imagination." After many efforts to express this thought more concisely, and to reduce the language of it to that condensed and elastic state, in which alone it gives force to the projectiles of wit, he kept the passage by him patiently some years,—till at length he found an opportunity of turning it to account, in a reply, I believe, to Mr. Dundas, in the House of Commons, when, with ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... quarter. In fact, the distance of my former residence from the Bibliotheque du Roi—coupled with the oppressive heat of the weather—rendered my morning excursions thither rather uncomfortable; and instead of going to work with elastic spirits, and an untired frame, both Mr. Lewis and myself felt jaded and oppressed upon our arrival. We are now, on the contrary, scarcely fifty yards from the grand door of entrance into the library. But this is only tantalizing you. To the LIBRARY, therefore, at once let us go. The exterior ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... together, in a double "weave," by machinery, that a sort of wire cloth is produced. It differs from any other material hitherto made, in that it has great strength and elasticity. There is, in fact, no other device, except the air or water bed, which can compare with it in its elastic properties. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... giant of enormous strength and insatiable appetite. He was bandy-legged, had an elastic stomach, and four rows of teeth. He was a paladin of Charlemagne, and one of the four sent in search of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... thick hemp rope stretched and absorbed the strain; the wire was less elastic. They were approaching Carmel Point, and Holyhead was not far, but they must front the gale when they got round the corner. In the meantime, the engines were running smoothly, and Lister smoked and waited while the sea got worse. Flashing lights ahead and the violent ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... the wind seeming really to push them back. Now and then, when it came with its most furious gusts, the lads regularly leaned forward against it as if it were some strange elastic solid; and then, as they nearly reached the edge, it lulled all at once, and right at the verge all ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... the hot rays of the afternoon sun just touching her naked feet, was a girl. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, naked, except for a kilt of gaily-striped material reaching from her waist to her knees. Her long black hair was drawn back from the forehead, and tied behind with a loop of the elastic vine. A scarlet blossom was stuck behind her right ear, after the fashion of a clerk's pen. Her face was beautiful, powdered with tiny freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. She half sat, half lay on her left side; ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... living things, yielding fruits of increase. I don't mean that you should be at the mercy of a persuasive speaker, or of the last book you have read—but, on the other hand, to meet an interesting man or to read a suggestive book ought to modify your views a little. You ought to be elastic. The only thing that is never quite the same is opinion; and to be holding a ten years' old opinion simply means that you are stranded. There's nothing worse than to ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... these high table-lands is very pure and elastic; and I could not help wishing for some good fairy to remove my little cottage into one of the fair enclosures we passed continually by the roadside, and place it beneath the shade of some of the beautiful trees ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... tone, that smote the air with soft or loud resonance as the faint wind wafted the sounds toward them,—and then they began to climb the little hill, Sah-luma walking somewhat in advance, with a tread as light and elastic as that ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Tilly had managed to slip a piece of cloth soaked in water into the hand of Mr. Stephens, and Miss Adams had moistened her lips with it. Even the few drops had given her renewed strength, and, now that the first crushing shock was over, her wiry, elastic, Yankee ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... recognizes and resents it, or fails to see it, would laugh at its possibility, and pity the sentimentalist who imagined it. And there are dear, blooming, merry-hearted, clear-eyed young women who are as gay and as elastic as bird on bough ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... was big in flood: it was exactly such a river Conon as I had lost sight of in the winter of 1821, and eddied past dark and heavy, sweeping over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How vividly the past rose up before me!—boyish day-dreams, forgotten for twenty years—the fossils of an early formation ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... from her pocket a beautiful pair of elastic glass slippers, which she caused Cinderella to put on; and when she had thus completed her work, and Cinderella stood before her, arrayed in her beautiful clothes, the fairy was much pleased, and desired her to get into the carriage with all expedition, as the ball ...
— Little Cinderella • Anonymous |
