"Flaccid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worse has seldom discredited the name of any man with a spark of genius in him. Dryden's delectable tragedy of "Amboyna," Lee's remarkable tragicomedy of "Gloriana," Pope's elegant comedy of "Three Hours after Marriage," are scarcely more unworthy of their authors, more futile or more flaccid or more audacious in their headlong and unabashed incompetence. Charity would suggest that it must have been written against time in a debtor's prison, under the influence of such liquor as Catherina Bountinall or Doll Tearsheet ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... came in different keys, their flaccid bodies stiffened into upright eagerness— Gold ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... not show any emotion; her face was like a stone, while her father's expressed the anguish of his sympathy. He looked as if he had not slept for a week; his fat eyelids drooped over his glassy eyes, and his cheeks and throat hung flaccid. He started as the apothecary's cat stole smoothly up and rubbed itself against his leg; and it was to him that the man said, "You want to take a table-spoonful of that, as long as you're awake. I guess it won't take a great many to fetch you." "All right," said Lapham, and paid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stone, the poet whose greatest work has perished in the flames, have not a more desolate air. The blood left her countenance, and it became as of marble; her arms fell by her side, as if their muscles had become flaccid; and she leant against a pillar, for her limbs refused to support her. As for me, with a livid face bathed as if in the dews of death, I bent my tottering steps towards the church door. The air seemed to stifle me, the vaulted roof settled on my shoulders, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself, that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong, dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of two evils between which it has ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Ndengi, the woven fibres and grass-cloths of their ancestry; amongst the hunters, however, a Tanga, or grass-kilt, may still be seen. The exposure of the upper person shows the size and tumidity of the areola, even in young girls; being unsupported, the mammae soon become flaccid. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Roman Empire, in its feeble and flaccid old age, seemed to have lost all capacity for making war. Theodoric the Amal performed his share of the compact; but when with his weary army, encumbered with many women and children, he emerged from the passes of the Balkans he found ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... 17. Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's hanging; Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest's swift Bane 2480 When its shafts smite—while yet its bow is twanging— Have each their mark and sign—some ghastly stain; And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain Thou loathed slave! I saw all shapes of death ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... went out to the park early in the day were driven for refuge from the blazing sun to the trees and bushes, where prostrated by the heat they lay limp and flaccid upon the grass. Miss Hazel Sleighter, who for some reason which she could not explain to herself had joined the first contingent of picnickers, was cross, distinctly and obviously cross. The heat ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... could even have killed Collinson in his vague discomfiture, but he had a terrible consciousness that there was something behind him that he could not make way with. That was why this accomplished rascal felt his flaccid cheeks grow purple and his glib tongue trip ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... probable one, but it is not irrevocably certain. What we have endeavoured to demonstrate is simply the obvious fact—the fact which our once so rigid but, since November, 1918, uprooted and flaccid intellectualism has forgotten—that our salvation is not to be found in any kind of mechanical apparatus or institutions. Institutions do not mean evolution. If institutions run too far ahead of evolution ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... dusty with the night's driving, looking dilapidated and forlorn; the tired horses drooped their heads in the flaccid and empty canvas nose-bags. The extinguished lamps were black with the smoke from the last flare of their sputtering wicks. The coachman lay inside, snoring,—a mere heap of cloth and brass buttons surmounted by a shapeless fez. On the stone steps leading down to the church sat the kavass; his ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... periodical, often occurring before partaking of a meal but more often afterwards with slight indigestion, but vomitus being more or less watery and containing mucus and blood, usually decomposed and recurring frequently, together with constipation of the bowels, the skin being sallow, yellowish, dry and flaccid, and losing weight and strength, he should suspect cancer of the stomach and where possible advise an immediate surgical operation for the removal of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... happens, however, occasionally, as we are all aware, that the outward garments of a domestic deity will be a little scorched; and when this occurs, the man who is the interloper, will generally find a gentle consolation in his position, let its interest be ever so flaccid and unreal, and its troubles in running about, and the like, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... (noun), untruth, falsehood, falsity, fiction, fabrication, mendacity, canard, fib, story. Lie (verb), prevaricate, falsify, equivocate, quibble, shuffle, dodge, fence, fib. Likeness, resemblance, similitude, similarity, semblance, analogy. Limp, flaccid, flabby, flimsy. List, roll, catalogue, register, roster, schedule, inventory. Loud, resonant, clarion, stentorian, sonorous. Low, base, abject, servile, slavish, menial. Loyal, faithful, true, constant, staunch, unwavering, steadfast. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... he was of unusual bodily size and displayed mortal strength in its perfection, and so mighty were the proofs of his powers that the rest of the kings of the Danes were called after him by a common title, the SKIOLDUNG'S. Those who were wont to live an abandoned and flaccid life, and to sap their self-control by wantonness, this man vigilantly spurred to the practice of virtue in an active career. Thus the ripeness of Skiold's spirit outstripped the fulness of his strength, and he fought battles at which ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the eyes of this man, decrepit at the age of forty-seven; a faint color flushed his flaccid cold cheeks, his ill-furnished mouth was half open, and on his blackened lips a sort of foam gathered, thick, and as white as chalk. This fury in such a helpless wretch, whose life hung on a thread, and who in a duel would risk ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... in the wall. He made out the flaccid form of Farley, outstretched upon the stone floor in a drunken stupor. The man evidently had been on the verge of unconsciousness when he leered through the hole. The chance was slight that he would ever remember anything of what he had ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... irrespective of nationality, when this is no longer an area of competition between nations. This is possible only under some supreme international control. It requires no special knowledge nor wisdom to see that. A schoolboy can see it. Any one but a statesman absolutely flaccid with overstrain can see that. However difficult it may prove to work out in detail, such an international control must therefore be worked out. The manifest solution of the problem of the German colonies in Africa is neither to return them to her nor deprive her of them, but to give ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... as it was, was pale green and thin, lacking in warmth and vitality. The vegetation was flaccid and nearly colorless, more like a mushroom growth than anything else; and the inhabitants ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... verses now and then, But blunt and flaccid is my pen, No longer talked of by young men As rather clever: In the last quarter are my eyes, You see it by their form and size; Is it not time then to be wise? Or ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the embryo of the world-spanning mind of man. Man's nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have had an home in that little heart, whose swift pulsations hurried towards their close. His small hand's fine mechanism, now flaccid and unbent, would in the growth of sinew and muscle, have achieved works of beauty or of strength. His tender rosy feet would have trod in firm manhood the bowers and glades of earth— these reflections were now of little use: he lay, thought ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... SIZE AND HARDNESS OF THE ABDOMEN.—This is very characteristic of pregnancy. When a lady is not pregnant the abdomen is soft and flaccid; when she is pregnant, and after she has quickened, the abdomen; over the region of the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... hard to trade fine impulses with those who are intrinsically vulgar. Their treasury is empty of spiritual coin, and their storehouse contains no world-thoughts. We can send a caravan across the desert, a ship across the sea, but we cannot send a Thought into a flaccid or a pompous brain. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the animal is a hard grazer, a difficult and obstinate feeder—no skillful man will purchase it—such a creature must go to a novice, and even to him at a price so low as to tempt him to become a purchaser. On the other hand, the skin must not be thin, like paper, nor flaccid, nor loose in the hand, nor flabby. This is the opposite extreme, and is indicative of delicateness, bad, flabby flesh, and, possibly, of inaptitude to retain the fat. It must be elastic and velvety, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... out-of-doors did she fully realize the strangeness of the night. The heat of it was flaccid. The island seemed to swim in a fatigued and breathless atmosphere. The mist that hung about it was like ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... a Cornea, with a transparent humour, and with a uvea or retina, that the Figure of each of the small Hemispheres are very Spherical, exactly polish'd, and most vivid, lively and plump, when the Animal is living, as in greater Animals, and in like manner dull, flaccid, and irregular, or shrunk, when the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... slowly, and, as it were, to die: the movements then become slower and rarer, the pauses longer, by which it is made much more easy to perceive and unravel what the motions really are, and how they are performed. In the pause, as in death, the heart is soft, flaccid, exhausted, lying, as it were, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... confluent small-pox consists of numerous pustules, which appear on the third day of the fever, flow together, are irregularly circumscribed, flaccid, and little elevated; the fever continuing after the eruption is complete; convulsions do not precede this kind of small-pox, and are so far to be esteemed a ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... brilliant eyes, ruddy lips and clear oval face, was gradually fading and transforming into something quite different. The brilliant eyes became sleepy, and, from a habit of narrowing the lids over them, possibly to shut out the bright sun, receded more and more beyond the full and flaccid cheeks, and even contracted a Mongolian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... his flaccid lips a roll of thunder louder than any previous one came echoing from behind the Aventine Hill. Dea Flavia shuddered. Was it Jove's warning, or already Jove's curse, the curse of the gods on her for the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... withdrawing itself from his heart. It was all so wonderful; all so incredible. Long contact with misfortune had sapped the natural resiliency of his character. It had been subjected to so much pressure that it had become flaccid. The pressure removed, it would be some time before the heart could act upon the message of good tidings the brain had conveyed to it. For a long time he remained silent. And Drake respected his silence to the letter. Then Garrison ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... the woman in the doorway had relaxed her frozen immobility and was between Paul and me as we rubbed the thin, icy hands and forced brandy between the flaccid lips. We all three thought her dead or dying, and labored over her with the frightened thankfulness for one another's living presence which always marks that dreadful moment. But even as we fanned and rubbed, and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... members gained in parliamentary power, one section of the Liberal party after another giving them encouragement—in the first place because they were troublesome to a Tory Ministry, in the second because the flaccid thought of modern Liberalism made them welcome any organization, which would save them the trouble of facing the difficulties of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... on Maria Theresa's side, deluded by shadows from Vienna, and getting into Russian Partition-Treaties; anon tickled by Belleisle into the reverse posture; then again reversing. An idle, easy-tempered, yet greedy creature, who, what with religious apostasy in early manhood, what with flaccid ambitions since, and idle gapings after shadows, has lost helm in this world; and will make a very bad ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... finally attained to firmness and dignity; and Ministers closed the cycle of war with acts of magnanimity towards the French people which are studiously ignored by those who bid us shed tears over the martyrdom of St. Helena. Nevertheless, the splendour of the finale must not blind us to the flaccid eccentricities that made British statesmanship the laughing stock of Europe in 1801-3, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is questionable whether the renewal of war between England and Napoleon in 1803 was due more to his innate forcefulness or to the contempt which he felt for the Addington ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... flaccid state varies considerably in size, due not only to varying conditions of temperature but also to individual peculiarities. The organ may vary between 2-1/2 inches and 6 inches in length in the flaccid state and between 5 inches and 8 inches in the erected condition. The size of ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... when dropping to the ground: Entwine their withered arms 'gainst wind and weather, And shake their leafless heads and drop together: So two cold limbs, touch'd by Galvani's wire, Move with new life, and feel awaken'd fire; Quivering awhile, their flaccid forms remain, Then turn to cold torpidity again. "But ever frowns your Hymen? man and maid, Are all repenting, suffering, or betray'd?" Forbid it, Love! we have our couples here Who hail the day in each revolving year: These are with us, as in the world around; ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... fluid which now fills them. This difference is sufficient to cause the body to sink, as a general rule; but is insufficient in the cases of individuals with small bones and an abnormal quantity of flaccid or fatty matter. Such individuals ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that the contemplation of it did not freeze the blood in his veins. Yes. He put it clearly before him. He had given his word to Peggy that he would go and expose himself to Death. Death. What did it mean? He had been brought up in orthodox Church of England Christianity. His flaccid mind had never questioned the truth of its dogmas. He believed, in a general sort of way, that good people went to Heaven and bad people went to Hell. His conscience was clear. He had never done any harm to anybody. As far as he knew, he had broken none of the Ten Commandments. In a technical sense ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... flexible or flaccid, from Khansbending inwards, i.e. the mouth of a water-skin before drinking. Like Mukhannas, it is also used for an effeminate man, a passive sodomite and even for a eunuch. Easterns still believe in what ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... march the fanatical Papistries, and Kaiser Karl, clear out of it, home to Spain and San Justo a little earlier; to wave the coming Jesuitries away, as with a flaming sword; to forbid beforehand the doleful Thirty-Years War, and the still dolefuler spiritual atrophy (the flaccid Pedantry, ever rummaging and rearranging among learned marine-stores, which thinks itself Wisdom and Insight; the vague maunderings, flutings; indolent, impotent daydreaming and tobacco-smoking, of poor Modern Germany) which has followed therefrom,—ACH GOTT, he might ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... on in the same way and with like success. In the first operation we cut away the loose flaccid integuments only; whereas, in the second, we snipped small longitudinal fibres from the cartilage itself, and the operation consequently was more perfect, if possible, than in ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... telephone wire took up a strand of it and held it loosely in his hands, ready to pay it out. Under me I felt the basket heave gently. Looking up I saw that the balloon was no longer a crooked sausage. She had become a big, soft, yellow summer squash, with an attenuated neck. The flaccid abdomen flinched in and puffed out, and the snout wabbled to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... silver-framed portrait and placed it in the flaccid hand. The fingers closed over it. The filmiest wraith of a smile played about the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... appeared on the stairs leading from the basement, and removed for her passage a bar of stained wood lettered in gilt: 'Closed,' and she halted at George's table. She spoke no word. She just stood over him, unsmiling, placid, flaccid, immensely indifferent. She was pale, a poor sort of a girl, without vigour. But she had a decent, honest face. She was not aware that she ought to be bright, welcoming, provocative, for a penny farthing an hour. She had never heard of Hebe. George thought of the long, desolating day that lay ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... tremble, anticipating the rending thunder-crash which never came. And always was the air hot and dry, and the wind, when it blew, was as a breath from the mouth of a volcano. The grass, withered and brown, fell away into dust; the leaves hung limp and flaccid on the trees; the cultivation areas of the selections were parched and dismal; and to add to the tribulation of the selectors, swarms of grasshoppers were abroad, swooping down in clouds, made up of myriads, upon everything ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... handles the fork and the shovel, while I examine the clods dug up. Victory! A magnificent result, finer than any that my fondest ambition would have dared to contemplate! Here is a vast array of Cetonia-larvae, all flaccid, motionless, lying on their backs, with a Scolia's egg sticking to the centre of their abdomen; here are young Scolia-larvae dipping their heads into the entrails of their victims; here are others farther advanced, munching their last mouthfuls of a prey which is drained dry ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... recognised at once. It seemed to be the same familiarly shabby black coat which he wore, the same many-stained waistcoat, the identical silk hat, ruffled and rain-spotted. The same pads of flesh hung flaccid from his jaws; the red, cracked knuckles of his hands, well remembered, were enormous still. Only the furrows on the face seemed to be ploughed deeper and wider, and a few more stiff hairs curled over the general bushiness of the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Roses all their glory yield To crown the Votary of Love and Joy, Misfortune's Victim hails, with many a sigh, Thee, scarlet POPPY of the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.— So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with dust and rain; But brain-sick visions cheat ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... at her temples and the tip of her nose. Whatever women may achieve with their cosmetics, they can do nothing against those incorruptible witnesses to their experiences. There each year of life has left its stigmata. When a woman's temples are flaccid, seamed, withered in a particular way; when at the tip of her nose you see those minute specks, which look like the imperceptible black smuts which are shed in London by the chimneys in which coal is burnt.... Your servant, sir! That woman is more than thirty. She may ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... flannel shirt, and weather-beaten black slouch hat. The inevitable revolver hung at his thigh. His pursed lips spurted a jet of tobacco juice as he keenly surveyed me with small, shrewd, china-blue eyes squinting from a broad flaccid countenance. But the countenance was unemotional while he offered a thick hand which proved singularly soft and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... been a most successful policy; but the danger is before us. My own feeling would decidedly be that all would be spoiled by a single execution. The great hope after all lies in the knotless, rather flaccid character of the people. These are no Maoris. All the powers that Cedarcrantz let go by disuse the new C. J. is stealthily and boldly taking back again; perhaps some others also. He has shamed the chiefs in Mulinuu into a law against taking heads, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coughed deprecatingly and deposited his plump body on the extreme edge of a chair. It was easy to see that he was much depressed—his usually rosy cheeks hung flaccid, his mustachios drooped limply, his little black eyes were suffused and needed frequent wiping—a service performed by a hand that ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... against Marcolina again. He loaded her with obscene epithets. "Do you imagine," he hissed between his teeth, "that your pleasure will last? You will become fat and wrinkled and old just like the other women who were young when you were young. You will be an old woman with flaccid breasts; your hair will be dry and grizzled; you will be toothless, you will have a bad smell. Last of all you will die. Perhaps you will die while you are still quite young. You will become a mass ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... her face burning like sunset, and, seeing nobody, stooped to pick up the flaccid lumps. Jim, with a pale face, departed as invisibly as he had come. He had proved the bandsman's tale to be true. On his way back he formed a resolution. It was to beard the lion in his den—to call on ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... pulp. We search long and diligently, and our efforts are blessed with an unwonted success. By the time that the sun has attained height enough in the heavens to make his power tyrannically felt, our baskets are filled. Tou Tou has to throw away her wild-roses, limp and flaccid, into the dust of the lane. We walk home, singing, and making poor jokes, as is our wont. As we draw near the house with joyful foretastes of breakfast in our minds, with redly-flushed cheeks and merry eyes, I see Sir Roger leaning ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... an inch to an inch and a quarter broad, reddish-brown, often densely cespitose, somewhat fleshy, convex, then plane, flaccid, smooth, often watery, margin thin, in old ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... that horrible voice that had somehow established itself in my throat, "surely this thing is a dream!" Almost as quickly as if I did it involuntarily, I thrust my fingers into my mouth. My teeth had gone. My finger-tips ran on the flaccid surface of an even row of shrivelled gums. I was ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... She sat, flaccid, her hands loose on her lap. She felt incapable of movement, but Charles was speaking to her, telling her to get out and run home quickly. She looked at him. She was holding his friendly hand. What would she have done without him? She saw herself in the train, speeding through ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... brain, at first, came no thought at all merely a dumb sense of unreasoning terror under which his muscles went flaccid, and out of control, so that his body shrank limp and heavy ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... his bland and graceful learning among the intimates of his set, Dysart had been slowly but steadily going to pieces. At such moments as this it showed on the surface. It showed now in his loose jaw and flaccid cheeks; in the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of memory, his accumulated weight of interested prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life and motion; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thing brought to it by tradition or custom—it does not project itself beyond this into the world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a prejudice. The land of pure reason is to his apprehension like Van ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Wing, Thompson and William C. Porter of Chicago and Truesdale, First Vice-President of the C. & S.C. and, this was the way Harvey thought of him, father of the Miss Katherine Porter whose name was at the bottom of the note in the blue envelope. Thompson, a fat, flaccid man with a colorless beard, was laboriously holding the door open for Mr. Porter, then he preceded little Mr. Wing. The fourth man ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... peculiarity noted in comminuted fractures of the long bones was the degree of local shock; the limbs were often quite powerless, the muscles flaccid, and common sensation lowered. This was of importance in two ways; firstly, shortening of the limb was often absent as a sign, and, secondly, pain was sometimes not at all pronounced even when the patient was moved. The primary absence of shortening, ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... naturalness which is particularly noticeable in him, he is much dissatisfied with Oxford—thinks it (as we all do) terribly fallen off since his days. Perhaps the infusion of Dissenters' sons (it is just at the time of the first Commission in 1854) may brace its flaccid sinews, though the middle-class, he confesses, is abominably disagreeable. He sees a good deal of this poor middle-class in his inspecting tours, and decides elsewhere about the same time that "of all dull, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... prior to respiration are negative and positive. A negative opinion may be formed when evidence is found of the child having undergone intra-uterine maceration. In this case the body will be flaccid and flattened; the ilia prominent; the head soft and yielding; the cuticle more or less detached, and raised into large bullae; the skin of a red or brownish-red colour; the cavities filled with abundant bloody serum; the umbilical cord straight ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... with semiparalysis. A Cetonia-grub, pricked away from the centre on a level with the fore-legs, has her right side flaccid, spread out, incapable of contracting, while the left side swells, wrinkles and contracts. Since the left half no longer receives the symmetrical cooperation of the right half, the grub, instead of curling into the normal volute, closes its spiral on one side and leaves it wide open ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... pressure of a gross atmosphere. I have found dullness to quicken into sentiment in a thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils in a receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon rising ground, as the flaccid sides of a football would have swelled out ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... is an organic whole—a book with a backbone—and stands out boldly among the nerveless, flaccid, invertebrate things that enjoy an expensive but ephemeral existence in the circulating ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... not bother him any more just now," Saxham interposed, noting the droop of the piteous, flaccid mouth, and feeling the flutter of the uneven pulse. The Mayor's wife broke into helpless sobbing. The Mother-Superior drew her swiftly out of the sick child's hearing and sight. And a shadow fell upon the thin light coverlet, and a crisp, decided ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... recovered his senses, but seemed to be puzzled to recall the circumstances connected with his first view of the snake. After a mental effort he explained, while the cold sweat poured from his face, and his limbs were flaccid as an infant's, that the sound of a rattle had caused him to stop short—that a pleasant halo danced before his eyes, and sweet sounds met his ears—and that from that instant until the conclusion of the trance, "he was as happy as he ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... slipped from his clothes, an impossibly bold idea translating itself into rapid action. He stripped the glowing tunic from the man's flaccid body, and slipped his arms into the sleeves, pulling the cape in close ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... one of those rare hours in which the deep confessed the amazing numbers of its own living and swarming constellations. Not a fish could leap or dart, not a sinuous thing could turn, but it became an animate torch. Every quick movement was a gleam of green fire. No drifting, flaccid life could pulse so softly along but it betrayed itself in lambent outlines. Each throb of the water became a beam of light, and every ripple that widened over the strand—still whispering, "I have gone astray"—was edged ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... if models usually did such stunts. No, Hedger told her, but Molly Welch added to her earnings in that way. "I believe," he added, "she likes the excitement of it. She's got a good deal of spirit. That's why I like to paint her. So many models have flaccid bodies." ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... flat nose, prominent forehead, and long, long lashes; the mouth was half open, with thick lips which were turning blue, between which the widely spaced teeth gleamed white. His neck was slender, flaccid as a wilted stem, and seamed with tiny creases. The jointure of the arms at the shoulder looked feeble. The arms themselves were fragile, and covered with a down similar to the fine plumage which clothes the bodies of newly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... philosophy finds in the proletariat its material weapons, so the proletariat finds in philosophy its intellectual weapons, and as soon as the lightning of thought has penetrated into the flaccid popular soil, the elevation of Germans into men ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... air ballonets were contained in the envelope at bow and stern and the ascent and descent of the ship was regulated by the quantity of air pumped into these. A most curious device was the utilization of heavy cloth for the propeller blades. Limp and flaccid when at rest, heavy weights in the hem of the cloth caused these blades to stand out stiff and rigid as the result of the centrifugal force created by their rapid revolution. One great military advantage of the Parseval ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... they were desirous of emulating the lobster's ability to cast away a claw at will. Upon making such persons hold a pencil or penholder (I dared not let them handle a bow!) it was found that the wrist became stiff and unyielding. The wrist that was loose when all the muscles were flaccid became rigid when a few were exerted sufficiently to hold ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... Carlyle's; "general utility" was a favourite of "that old stager the devil."[145] Yet no critic of intellect ever used intellect more vigorously, and no preacher of the rights of the heart ever dealt less in flaccid sentiment. Browning was Paracelsus as well as Aprile, and sharply as he chose to dissever "Knowledge" and "Love," Love was for him never a foe of intellect, but a more gifted comrade who does the same work more effectively, who dives deeper, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... few playgoers who go to the theatre as often as the critics, I well know; but I am too well equipped for the strife to be deterred by it, or to bear malice towards the losing side. In trying to produce the sensuous effects of opera, the fashionable drama has become so flaccid in its sentimentality, and the intellect of its frequenters so atrophied by disuse, that the reintroduction of problem, with its remorseless logic and iron framework of fact, inevitably produces at first an overwhelming impression of coldness and inhuman rationalism. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... sense conspicuous, and, feeling the silence, turned to Tenney to see if his leadership could surmount this base assault. The assault was premeditated. The gay insolence of the man's manner told him that. Tenney stood there silent, flaccid, a hand on the casing of the door. Every vestige of religious excitement had left his face. His overthrow was complete, and Raven, judging how Martin must rejoice, was for the moment almost as sorry for Tenney as for his wife. The little disturbance ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... "joining the crew," trains for months beforehand, walking, running, rowing, until the flaccid muscles become as firm and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... back hair, by reason of her prominent position, so challenged inspection. Her face was not easily discernible, but the aforesaid cunning tress-weavings, the white ear and poll, and the curve of a cheek which was neither flaccid nor sallow, were signals that led to the expectation of good beauty in front. Such expectations are not infrequently disappointed as soon as the disclosure comes; and in the present case, when the lady, by a turn of the head, at length revealed herself, she ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... merchant looked away from the glowing Oriental web upon which they stood. The weeping stenographer sat with her damp little wad of lace-edged handkerchief in her hand and stared at him with her reddened eyes; the other held her flaccid purse, and looked at the speaker. Now and then she nudged violently the friend, who did not ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... great patriotic passions which are the mainsprings of history by the mere calculus of abstract concepts which satisfied Mill. Fitzjames, like Henry VIII., 'loved a man,' and the man of Mill's speculations seemed to be a colourless, flaccid creature, who required, before all things, to have some red ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... very rarely required, and has as yet been performed only for the removal of foreign bodies impacted in the oesophagus, and interfering with respiration and deglutition. To cut upon the flaccid empty oesophagus in the living body would be an extremely difficult and dangerous operation, from the manner in which it lies concealed behind the larynx, and in close contact with the great vessels. When it is distended by a foreign body, and specially if ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... midway between the shoulder and elbow, with the thumb and fingers of the opposite hand. When the arm is bent, the inside muscle will become hard and prominent, and its tendon at the elbow rigid, while the muscle on the opposite side will become flaccid. Extend the arm at the elbow, and the outside muscle will swell and become firm, while the inside muscle and its tendon at the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... upon the scene. The Estates had already been in communication with him, better hopes, for the time at least, being entertained from him than from the flaccid Rudolph. Moreover a kind of compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias and the Emperor after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies. The real king had fallen at the feet of the nominal one by proxy of his brother Maximilian. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... illness which desolated the land. The groups around the poor departed one were marked with such a thin and haggard expression as general destitution always is certain to leave behind it. The skin of those who, with better health and feeding, had been fair and glossy as ivory, was now wan and flaccid;—the long bones of others projected sharply, and as it were offensively to the feelings of the spectators—the over-lapping garments hung loosely about the wasted and feeble person, and there was in the eyes of all a dull and languid ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Gailey," she said, with a kind and even very cordial smile, and heartily shook the flaccid, rheumatic hand that was primly held out to her. And yet in spite of herself, perhaps unknown to herself, there was in her tone and her smile and her vigorous clasp something which meant, "Poor old thing!" pityingly, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... each other now, Lester pale and rather flaccid, Robert clear, wax-like, well-knit, and shrewd, and one could see the difference time had already made. Robert was the clean, decisive man, Lester the man of doubts. Robert was the spirit of business energy and integrity embodied, Lester the spirit of commercial self-sufficiency, looking ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... She was an elderly woman with flaccid yellow cheeks, watery eyes, and a more than ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... shameful in his flaccid idleness, in the aimlessness of his whole life now, devoid of all work, undirected towards any effort. But that was not his fault. He had worked with energy in business, with equal energy in play, worked for self's sake, for love's sake, and for country's ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... "in convents girls of intelligence are all too rare. The greater number of them are colourless persons, devoid of imagination or fire. To exiles like these, any country, any climate would seem good; to flaccid, crushed natures of this type, every belief would seem authoritative, every religion holy and divine. Fifteen hundred years ago these nuns would have made excellent vestal virgins, watchful and resigned. What they need ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... staring at an open page of a textbook, but not studying; not even reading; not even thinking. Nor was he lost in a reverie: his mind's eye was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve, flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished except by coloured people or by a boy in school on a spring day: he was doing ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... fortune's malice that Duerer, who alone or almost alone had conceived of the simplicity of true dignity and the beauty of choice proportions and propriety, should have been called upon by his only royal patron to superintend a production wherein the rank and flaccid taste of the time ran riot. The absurdity, barbarism, and grotesque quaintness of this monument to vanity cannot be laid exclusively at Maximilian's door; for the architecture, particularly of the fountains, in Altdorfer's or Manuel's designs, and in those of many others, reveals ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... on a flaccid condition of the bladder, the result of paralysis, overdistention, or severe ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. But the external agencies that originally wound up that mainspring never cease to operate; every fresh stimulus gives it another turn, until it snaps, or grows flaccid, or is unhinged. Moreover, from time to time, when circumstances change, these external agencies may encrust that primary organ with minor organs attached to it. Every impression, every adventure, leaves a trace or ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... of those who cared for her. She could not even resent this language of Reuben's, to which formerly she would have opposed her unyielding pride; his proximity infected her with nervousness, but at the same time made her flaccid before ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the bunk. He felt weak and shaky but resentment energized his flaccid muscles. He took ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... sloped upward, and there were signs that their quarry found the ground harder to cover. The second discard lay in open sight—again a leather bag which Nalik'ideyu sniffed and then began to lick eagerly, thrusting her nose into its flaccid interior. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton |
