"Flexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite lustre and flexibility, in feathers of birds); and lastly, true elastic skin, extended in soft unison with the creature's growth,—blushing with its blood, fading with its fear; breathing with its breath, and guarding its life with sentinel beneficence ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... productions of the young Italian opera houses. On the other hand, when the Florentine coterie created dramatic recitative, it was to use it in a drama wholly serious and poetic in purpose. It was not till some years later that recitative acquired sufficient flexibility to fit itself into the plan of the rapidly growing opera buffa. Yet even in this lyric species we discern something of the large influence of the humorous madrigal play, for in time the comic opera and the ballet spectacle both found homes after ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... command, exultation, denunciation, defiance, etc., and in using this force the lungs must be inflated to their utmost capacity. In giving the accompanying examples the student must exert every energy of the body and mind, and by earnest practice he will increase the power and flexibility of his voice to a surprising extent, and also acquire a distinctness of tone and earnestness of manner, that will serve him ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... performed in an instant at his command; than by the expulsion of evil spirits out of the bodies of men? Certainly all the wonderful things done by him for the good of mankind, such as restoring sight to the blind, firmness and flexibility to relaxed or contracted nerves, calling the dead to life, changing the properties of the elements, and others of the same kind, are testimonies of the omnipotence of the creator of the world, and demonstrate the presence of God; who alone commands all nature, and at his pleasure ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... aught we knew, might prove to be a revelation of a power as wonderful as any with which, as yet, we had ever been brought into acquaintance. Just before we opened the slates it was noticed that at one corner, owing to the flexibility of the wooden frames, it was quite possible to stretch the slates far enough apart to permit the insertion of the blade of a knife, and an examination of the edges at this point revealed only too plainly discolored abrasions. When the slates were finally ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... physical impulses, inexplicable pains and diseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing with disharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together, but we are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential, insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule we make, unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for suppression and restraint. And on the mental side we are further perplexed ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... English within this time and a considerable number in Italian, our operatic institutions being quick, as a rule, to put it upon the stage whenever they have at command a soprano leggiero with a voice of sufficient range and flexibility to meet the demands of the extraordinary music which Mozart wrote for the Queen of Night to oblige his voluble-throated sister-in-law, Mme. Hofer, who was the original representative of that character. The same operatic conditions having prevailed in New York ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... volcanic dust and ashes, there is sometimes thrown from the crater of a volcano a substance resembling spun- glass or asbestos. It possesses the flexibility and lustre of silk. The volcano of Salazes, in the Island of Bourbon, is remarkable for this substance, and it has there been seen to form a cloud covering the entire surface of the mountain. But it has also been found ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... translucency, and exhibiting more the external character of pieces of sculptured marble, than of animated matter. They were immediately plunged into the cold bath, where they were continued more than two hours, before their flexibility could be restored. The abstraction of heat had been so great, that the water, in contact with the fingers, congealed upon them, even half an hour after they had been immersed. During the cold application, the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... prudery, constraint, precision, formality; tension. Antonyms: pliability, limpness, flexibility, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... except that it is larger, and instead of being provided on the discharge side with a concave plate, is surmounted by a roller, held by springs. This serves to cut off the excessive flow of material, but provides sufficient flexibility to allow the rough coarse material to be fed through the machine without its catching. The feeder for crushed stone is a similar construction on larger lines, to handle material up to 3-in. size. These several feeders can be set to give any desired mixture. On any material ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... for the development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility, and, in the end, a firmer and more ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... life, the spontaneous flexibility of a community. A community that thinks freely and fully throughout its population is capable of a thousand things that are impossible in an unthinking mass of people. The latter, collectively considered, is a large rigid thing, a ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... beyond its strict utilitarian bounds. This it refrains from doing. And thus everything it contains it rigorously subjects to the test of serviceability. It helps you to bring more and more words into workaday harness—to gain such mastery over them that you can speak and write them with fluency, flexibility, precision, and power. It enables you, in your use of words, to attain the readiness and efficiency expected of ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... these are affected by the pageant of things, and affect it in turn. And in no case can we express in words the total impression made upon us, but only that amount of it for which we possess a language of sufficient range and power and flexibility. For an impression has permanence and value— indeed one may go further and say has reality—only in so far as it is fixed and recorded in language, whether in the language of words or that ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor; both use a language of great flexibility;[11] for which reason we find that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea wer feather-white an' skatting ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... human skulls. Several tufts of black and blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact. The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the deep luster of her blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, the exquisite harmony of her form were not her only, nor indeed her principal attractions; she owed her rare and personal charm to a sort of strange grace mingled with flexibility and strength, that lent enchantment to her every motion. She had in the play of her countenance, in her step, in her gestures, the sovereign ease of a woman who does not feel a single weak point in her beauty, and who moves, grows, and blossoms with all the freedom of a child in his cradle or a ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... been asserted that it has corrected the judgment, purified the taste and formed the language of French writers, and that to it we owe the most striking characteristics of French literature, its purity, delicacy and flexibility. Thus Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on the Literary Influence of Academies, has pronounced a glowing panegyric on the French Academy as a high court of letters, and a rallying-point for educated opinion, as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Daudet, in spite of his abounding sympathy, which is one reason of his great attractiveness, cannot fairly be said to be a great character creator, he had sufficient flexibility and force of genius to set in action interesting personages. Part of the early success of The Nabob was due to this fact, although the brilliant description of the Second Empire and the introduction of exotic elements, the Tunisian and Corsican episodes and characters, counted, probably, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... hand, if I, through these paths of self-knowledge, and lowly estimate of self, and penitent confession of sin, and flexibility of will to God, and yearning, as for my highest food and good, after a righteousness which I feel I do not possess, have come into the position in which my poverty is, by His gift, made rich, and the tears are wiped away from off my face by His gracious hand, and a full possession ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... will clearly indicate its adaptability, by reason of its flexibility, for any fuel and any design of stoker. The boiler lends itself readily to installation with an extension or Dutch oven furnace if this be demanded by the fuel to be used, and in general it may be stated that a satisfactory furnace arrangement may be made in connection with a Babcock & Wilcox ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... she began, "La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine." She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... him the opinion of Europe was final. Hence the Monitor and Churchill were well suited to each other. Moreover, Churchill enjoyed the society of the great—that is, of those who seemed to him to be the great—and he had an admirable flexibility of temperament; while easily able and willing to be very nasty to those whom he thought of an inferior grade, he was equally able and willing to be extremely deferential to those whose grade he considered superior. He was also intolerant in opinion, thinking ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... compensation for the abandonment of rime. It was stiff, monotonous, and cold. Marlowe began to vary the position of the pauses within the line, and to do away with the pause at the end of some lines by {32} placing the breaks in thought elsewhere. Thus he gave to his verse ease, flexibility, and movement, and he put into it the warmth and vividness of his own personality. Upon such verse as this Shakespeare could hardly improve. But this by no means sums up his debt to Marlowe. His characterization of Richard III, for instance, was distinctly ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... that governs and shapes the will, giving it that flexibility and at the same time that constancy so prevalent among the greater part of women, leading them, with unflinching stubbornness of determination to the accomplishment of the end proposed. All difficulties vanish that stand between them and the object of their heart. This disposition ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... case on prudence and expediency, to appeal to the widest and highest sympathies; partly, and more than all, in opening his thoughts to the many conditions, possibilities and "varieties of untried being," in human character and situation, and so giving an incomparable flexibility to his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... written and the canon completed many hundreds of years ago, it is still one of the freshest and newest of books and its moral precepts and admonitions are far in advance of the world's practice. It has an adaptability to all sorts and conditions of men and a flexibility in meeting the most radical changes of thought, which is possessed by no other volume. It has been attacked and denounced and seemingly demolished only in the end to lead its critics captive and to come forth from ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... Her gaze—half-shrinking—was fixed on the face so near to her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... world, instead of stability, we have the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solid brittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can be divided into conductors—men who connect powers—and non-conductors—men who do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility, adaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class of people, in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers, inventors—those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, and who hit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... seemed to me then, and still seems, the farthest reach of the author's great talent. It is couched, like so much of his work, in the autobiographic form, which next to the dramatic form is the most natural, and which lends itself with such flexibility to the purpose of the author. In 'Barry Lyndon' there is imagined to the life a scoundrel of such rare quality that he never supposes for a moment but he is the finest sort of a gentleman; and so, in fact, he was, as most gentlemen went in his day. Of course, the picture is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... running his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown illegible. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was enraptured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with its weight. He drew out his handkerchief, which little Marygold had hemmed for him. That was likewise gold, with the dear child's neat and pretty stitches running all along the border, in ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... more from Liszt, and there is comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation is, throughout, the work of a music-wright of brilliant executive capacity. In fundamental logic, in cohesion, flexibility, and symmetry of organism, it is a brilliantly successful accomplishment. As in all of MacDowell's writing, its allegiance is to the basic principles of structure and design, rather than to ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... that has made theorizing on the methods of translation more than a mere academic exercise. Forced to adjust itself to the facts of actual production, theory has had to follow new paths as literature has followed new paths, and in the process it has acquired fresh vigor and flexibility. Even as we leave the period of Pope, we can see the dull inadequacy of a worn-out collection of rules giving way before the honest, individual approach of Cowper. "Many a fair precept in poetry," says Dryden apropos of Roscommon's rules for translation, "is like a seeming ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... no nerves, no circulation and apparently no life in a full grown feather, yet it does not decompose; indeed, it is one of the hardest things in the world to destroy by any process of decomposition. It retains its resiliency and all its flexibility for years—all that is necessary is to keep it dry. It is finished all along the rib (or quill) with a hard, glossy enamel on the outside and this enamel keeps its polish as ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... loved them for nothing else you would love army people for their hospitality. But in the higher sense of that beautiful word they are the least hospitable of people. Their latch string of the spirit is not out. Their minds are tight—fixed. They have not that openness of spirit and flexibility of mind that make for ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... asked Byron of Lady Blessington ('Conversations', p. 176); "he was the most wonderful person I ever saw. In him was combined an imagination the most brilliant and profound, with a flexibility and wit that would have justified the observation applied to——, that his heart ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... did as well as you would do, my dear," said I. "There are plenty of young women in our Boston high schools who are going through higher fields of mathematics than are required by the architect, and the schools for design show the flexibility and fertility of the female pencil. The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than many other openings which have ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hammock. .. A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... every point. In some genera, as in Calymene, the tail consisted of jointed segments till its termination; in others, as in Illaenus, there was a great caudal shield, that in size and form corresponded to the shield which covered the head; the segments of Calymene, from the flexibility of their joints, fitted close to the cerebral rim; while the same effect was produced in the inflexible shields, caudal and cephalic, of Illaenus, by their exact correspondence, and the flexibility of the connecting rings, which enabled ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... convenience—a great advantage when fasting because you can save your energy for internal healing. But colonics are more appropriate for some. There are fasters who are unable to give themselves an enema either because their arms are too short and their body is too long and they lack flexibility, or because of a physical handicap or they can't confront their colon, so they let someone else do it. Some don't have the motivation to give themselves a little discomfort but are comfortable with someone else doing it to them. Some ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... lift all Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non- human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was permissible. Mr. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... long list of arguments to prove that exclusion of the Negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the Navy as a whole." It concluded that no change in policy was necessary since "within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain races, the enlisted personnel of the Naval Establishment is representative ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... limbs lost their flexibility, and some of his wiring started to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Robert Sheckley
... them into such studies. He brought to bear upon his task the power of sublime and graceful verse, and it has been said that but for him "we could never have formed an adequate idea of the strength of the Latin language. We might have dwelt with pleasure upon the softness, flexibility, richness, and musical tone of that vehicle of thought which could represent with full effect the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, [Footnote: Albius Tibullus was a poet of singular gentleness and amiability, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Amazing! the flexibility of the royal elbow, and the rigidity of the royal spine! More especially as we had been impressed with a notion of their debility. But, sometimes these seemingly enervated young blades approve themselves ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and made the expression of untameability perhaps a shade too strong. The voice of this charming child, whom her father, delighting in her wit, was wont to call his "little proverb of Solomon," had acquired a precious flexibility of organ through the practice of three languages. This advantage was still further enhanced by a natural bell-like tone both sweet and fresh, which touched the heart as delightfully as it did the ear. If the mother could no longer see the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigor; profound dissimulation, under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of coloring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility. Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... compensated, by the facility and quickness in turning the head, possessed by them in virtue of their more erect stature, and the freedom of the atlanto-axial articulation? (in birds the same end is gained by the length and flexibility of the neck.) The importance, in case of danger, of bringing the eyes to help the ears would call for a quick turn of the head whenever a new sound was heard, and so would tend to make superfluous any special means of moving the ears, except in the case of quadrupeds and the like, that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... tell you that they longe a colt to supple him. That is ridiculous nonsense. A colt unbroken will bend himself with most extraordinary flexibility. Look at a lot of two-years before starting for a run; observe the agility of their antics: or watch a colt scratching his head with his hind foot, and you will never believe that such animals can require suppling. But it is an easy way of teaching a horse ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... all distinct, clear, and neat; proceeding from a strength so suppled, as to give their joints all the requisite flexibility and ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... not permit of the existence of too many species or sub-species. But it is clear that there are types, call them genera, species, or what you will, that have, by virtue of some inherent fitness and flexibility of adaptation, survived ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... concluded qualified to teach all that was to be learned from a scholar. He thought himself sufficiently exalted by being placed at the same table with his pupil, and had no other view than to perpetuate his felicity by the utmost flexibility of submission to all my mother's opinions and caprices. He frequently took away my book, lest I should mope with too much application, charged me never to write without turning up my ruffles, and generally ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... string fixed at both ends, and swaying loose in all the intermediate points. Thus at liberty, they must finally take that position, wherein every one will be equally pressed; for if any one was more pressed than the neighboring point, it would give way, from the flexibility of the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a mixture of awkwardness, fatuity and stiffness the most curious and the most exhilarating.... In his general aspect," adds this merciless critic, "he recalls the circus-rider, minus the latter's flexibility: skin-tight garments, simpering mouth, smile of a dancing-girl, attempt to be impertinent and irresistible which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were, perhaps, expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a soft ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... imagination, not quite continuous enough, occasionally fails to fuse and shape disparate materials. It is likely to fall short when he essays fancy or mystery, as in A Life for a Life; or when he has a whimsy for amusing melodrama, as in His Great Adventure. The flexibility which reveals itself in humor or in the lighter irony is not one of his principal endowments. Restrained and direct as he always is so far as language goes, he cannot always keep his action absolutely in hand: this or that person or incident now and then breaks out of the pattern; the skeleton ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the ladies' line. She belonged to the taller division of middle height. Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. Her dark eyes—arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... and gifted minds which have startled us by the versatility of their powers, whence do they derive the high character of their genius? Their durable claims are substantiated by what is inherent in themselves—what is individual—and not by that flexibility which may include so much which others can equal. We rate them by their positive originality, not by their variety of powers. When we think of YOUNG, it is only of his "Night Thoughts," not of his tragedies, nor his poems, nor even of his satires, which others have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... be a queer one," the landlord replied, as he illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age—that human fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... these films, and of several other bodies, as we can these of Cork; there seems no probable reason to the contrary, but that we might as readily render the true reason of all their Phaenomena; as namely, what were the cause of the springingess, and toughness of some, both as to their flexibility and restitution. What, of the friability or brittleness of some others, and the like; but till such time as our Microscope, or some other means, enable us to discover the true Schematism and Texture of all ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... general had in view a particular enemy, superior in numbers but weak in gunnery, slow in maneuver, and likely to avoid decisive action. It aimed primarily at rapidity of movement, but combined also the merits of concentration, simplicity, flexibility, and surprise. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... arrant hypocrite. The man whose soul would loathe such a life should leave Rome and seek his fortune elsewhere. I do not know whether I am praising or excusing myself, but of all those qualities I possessed but one—namely, flexibility; for the rest, I was only an interesting, heedless young fellow, a pretty good blood horse, but not broken, or rather badly broken; and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Buttm. Lexil. p. 66. I. e. "a belt which he could easily move, and which, from its suppleness and flexibility, yielded to ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... character in Essex, and was not missed for many a day from Braintree fair; and in the decline of life spent his days like an amateur. But Cheetre, for such was his real name, was haunted amidst his glory by a rival. Will Wimbars had a voice of as much flexibility as Dick. Dick was the most popular, for he sang every thing he could, but Will had a select list he never departed from. The former was sought as a companion; the latter pleased best in the public exercise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... any rate, he seemed to see that she might do what she liked with her face. It was an elastic substance, an element of gutta-percha, like the flexibility of the gymnast, the lady at the music-hall who is shot from the mouth of a cannon. He winced a little at this coarser view of the actress; he had somehow always looked more poetically at that priestess of art. Yet what ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... democratic view of life is conceived, not for emergencies and dangers, but for tranquillity and harmony. And so where masses of people must cooperate in an uncertain and eruptive environment, it is usually necessary to secure unity and flexibility without real consent. The symbol does that. It obscures personal intention, neutralizes discrimination, and obfuscates individual purpose. It immobilizes personality, yet at the same time it enormously sharpens the intention of the group and welds that group, as nothing else ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... and—what was not to be despised in an apparatus flying at great heights—incombustible. The different parts of the engines and the screws were made of gelatinized fiber, which combined in sufficient degree flexibility with resistance. This material could be used in every form. It was insoluble in most gases and liquids, acids or essences, to say nothing of its insulating properties, and it proved most valuable in the electric ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... coal-carriers would prove convenient, not only because it would facilitate taking in stores and coaling, if all the squadron were assembled at one place, but also if part were at one place and part at another. Division into several vessels, instead of concentration in a few, would give great flexibility to the system of supply. A single very capacious cargo-carrier might have to go first to one place and supply the ships there, and then go to supply the remaining ships lying at another anchorage. This would cause loss of time. The same amount of cargo ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... shoulder. Could he sing, she wondered, as he began to take up the words of the song? Then her dream-filled eyes widened as she listened to his voice breathing life into the beautiful words. He sang with the ease and flexibility of an artist, his powerful baritone blending ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... behind the duchess, with the perfect sang-froid of a husband accustomed to such manoeuvres. What marvellously skilful workman, what incomparable maker of toys was able to endow the human countenance with its flexibility, its wonderful elasticity? Nothing could be prettier than that great nobleman's face, surprised with his adultery on his lips, the cheeks inflamed by the vision of promised delights, and suddenly assuming a serene expression of conjugal affection; nothing could be finer than the hypocritical humility ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... surgery is, I think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know-but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that remain ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... office, made him early a diplomatist. A mind equally powerful and supple, he lent himself equally to all—as fitted for action as for thought, he passed from one to the other with facility, according to the phases of his destiny. There was in him the flexibility of the Greek mind in the stirring periods of the democracy in Athens. His deep study early directed his mind to history, that poem of men of action. Plutarch nourished him with his manly diet. He moulded on the antique figures drawn from ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Shakespeare's own fondness for this kind of play, like the fondness of the theatrical audience for it, diminished with time. But the main reason is surely that this tendency, as we see it in Hamlet, betokens a nimbleness and flexibility of mind which is characteristic of him and not of the later less many-sided heroes. Macbeth, for instance, has an imagination quite as sensitive as Hamlet's to certain impressions, but he has none of Hamlet's delight in freaks and twists of thought, or of his tendency to perceive and play with resemblances ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... The throat was exquisitely round. The bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the grace which a fitting dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the non-flexibility of her figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a type of Mary's celestial purity, searching ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... under any circumstances (for from his earliest childhood he liked to carry his theories to their legitimate conclusion), would be physically impossible for one who was really sleeping; forgetful, oh! unhappy one, of the flexibility of his own body on being carried up stairs, and, more unhappy still, ignorant of the art of waking. He therefore clenched his fingers harder and harder as he felt my mother trying to unfold them, while his head hung listless, and his eyes ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... sufficient to touch the Soul, but the most they can do is to raise our Admiration of the Singer for the happy Flexibility of his Voice; it is, however, of very great Moment, that the Master instruct the Scholar in them, that he may be Master of them with an easy Velocity and true Intonation; for when they are well executed in their proper Place, they deserve Applause, and make a Singer more universal; that is to ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... technique of helping people in and through their social relationships, a new way of dealing with this ancient and perplexing human failing was developed. This third way involved a more careful analysis of relationships and motives, a greater variety in approach, an increased flexibility in treatment, a new faith, perhaps, in the re-creative powers latent in human nature. But it is unnecessary to enlarge upon a point of view which these pages admirably illustrate. Desertion laws continue ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... Mary's promises! They were as fixed and as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and there was a record of their fulfilment indelibly written in the memories of two hundred small personages—personages in whom adult caprice and flexibility of conduct had bred a tendency ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of suspense, Barnes experienced a peculiar, almost electric shock. Some one had seized the tip of the rod; it stiffened suddenly, the vibrations due to its flexibility ceasing. He felt a gentle tugging and wrenching; down the slender rod ran a delicate shiver that seemed almost magnetic as it was communicated to his hand. He knew what was happening. Some one was untying the bit of paper he had fastened to the rod, and with fingers that shook and ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... driven the border States into the Confederacy, every Southern man back to his kinsmen, and divided the North itself into civil conflict. I have sought to guide and control public opinion into the ways on which depended our life. This rational flexibility of policy you and your fellow radicals have been pleased to call ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... the Irish opposition, and the flexibility of some members of the Government combining, the Irish Parliament voted the regency to the Prince without any limitation whatever. This naturally directed the attention of ministers to the hazard of a collision ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... commenced his public life with a sullied reputation, and with numerous enemies created by his unbearable insolence, but with a flexibility of character which enabled him to adapt himself to whatever habits circumstances required. He inspired no confidence, and his extravagant mode of life was sure to end in ruin, unless he reimbursed himself out of the public funds; and yet he fascinated the people who mistrusted and hated him. The ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the lie and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty" against all the damning evidence ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... sentiment, and lines of activity from one another and from himself. When treating congenial themes he errs by overestimate rather than by depreciation: among the qualities of his early work, which afterwards suffered some eclipse in the growth of other powers, is its flexibility. It was natural for Carlyle, his successor in genius in the Scotch lowlands, to give an account of Robert Burns which throws all previous criticism of the poet into the shade. Similarly he has strong affinities to Johnson, Luther, Knox, Cromwell, to all his so-called heroes: but he ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... the size of my companion, and thickly covered with hair, with bushy tails, which they kept carefully erect so as not to touch the ground; creatures much resembling monkeys in movement, size, and length, and flexibility of limb, but in other respects more like gigantic squirrels. They held the stalks of the fruit they plucked in their mouths, filling with them large bags left at intervals, and from the manner in which ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... tacit reproach conveyed in the words, Aspasia touched her lyre, and, with mournful tenderness, sung Danae's Hymn to her Sleeping Infant. Then, suddenly changing to a gayer measure, she sang, with remarkable sweetness and flexibility of voice: ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... it is faultless, nor that it has not various defects, nor that there are not sundry lacunae which want filling up; but that, if we consider the conditions under which the department works, we shall see that certain defects are inseparable from those conditions. People talk of the want of flexibility of the Department, of its being bound by strict rules. Now, will any man of common sense who has had anything to do with the administration of public funds or knows the humour of the House of Commons on these matters—will any man who is in the smallest degree acquainted ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... its capabilities(?) finds a wide field when he comes to those passages in the original which are written in rhyming prose" (p. 181). "Captain Burton of course could not neglect such an opportunity for display of linguistic flexibility on the model of 'Peter Parley picked a peck of pickled peppers"' (p. 182, where the Saj'a or prose rhyme is most ignorantly confounded with our peculiarly English alliteration). But this is wilfully to misstate the matter. Let me repeat my conviction (Terminal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... colleges save Engineering we specifically require but 4 units—3 in English and 1 in mathematics. From the others free election among groups is allowed. The movement here and elsewhere seems to be in the direction of requiring the completion of a full four-year high school course, with increasing flexibility as to specific subjects. And that ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... memorable in the history of the world.... The wrecks and fragments of these subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world.' Then, after some words on their sculpture, he adds: 'their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so disproportionate a rank, in the comparison' (with ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... side of the Western continent, it will not thrive beyond the thirty-third degree of north latitude and the thirty-fifth parallel south. On the Pacific side it will perfect its growth some five degrees further north or south. From the flexibility of this plant, it is highly probable that it is gradually becoming more hardy, and will eventually endure an exposure and yield a profitable return much further north, along the borders of the Mississippi and some ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... transition economies. Inflation has declined substantially, from 14% in 1998 to 4.7% in 2003; unemployment has persisted around the 6% level. Germany is by far Hungary's largest economic partner. Short-term issues include the reduction of the public sector deficit and further increasing the flexibility of the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... who deserve to be placed beside Reynolds, came from Ireland to seek their fortunes in London. Edmund Burke, incomparably the greatest writer upon political philosophy in English literature, the master of a style unrivalled for richness, flexibility, and vigour, was radically opposed to Johnson on party questions, though his language upon the French Revolution, after Johnson's death, would have satisfied even the strongest prejudices of his old friend. But he had qualities which commended him even to the man who called ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... There is need of that sort of yielding of self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up and I shall not have made it," and ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... afterwards with the Pollio of Virgil. It may appear trifling to remark, that he has made the letter o, in the word virgo, long and short in the same line: "Virgo, virgo parit." But the translation has great merit, and some admirable lines. In the odes there is a sweet flexibility, particularly—to his worthy friend Dr. Lawrence; on himself at the theatre, March 8, 1771; the ode in the isle of Skie; and that to Mrs. Thrale, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... understood because the whole foundation of singing is breathing and control of all the functions which compose the musical instrument. A singer's reliance depends upon the breath, as on the stability to economize the air during its emission from the lungs. Steadiness, strength, flexibility and sustaining power of the voice depend upon this knowledge and intelligent use of it. I hold the art of singing in such reverence that I feel I am walking upon sacred ground when I am employed in the teaching of ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... which vibrated the blows of the trip hammer at the Forge. The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A flexibility that seemed entirely without bones. His eyes were jet slits, his lips shaven and mobile; a wig was repulsively saturated with scented grease. Yet it was not in actual details that he oppressed Howat; but by the vague suggestion of debasing commendations, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to reflect upon such happy incidents in the history of a profession that probably offers more difficulties to the beginner than any other. Yet the very obstacles to success in it are apt to develop an intellectual agility and a flexibility of morals which, in the long run, may well lead not only to fortune, but to fame—of one sort or another. I recall an incident in my own career, upon my ingenuity in which, for a time, I looked back with considerable professional pride, until I found it a common practice ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the capsules of organs; or they may be aggregated into bundles and form rope-like bands, as in the ligaments of joints and the tendons of muscles. On boiling, this tissue yields gelatine. In general, where white fibrous tissue abounds, structures are held together, and there is flexibility, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... four beams held straight and true, without any play in either direction, with only a slight flexibility resulting from the cartilages within the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... and special standards of achievement. The railroads and factories could not be financed and operated without the assistance of well-paid and well-trained men, who could do one or two things remarkably well, and who did not pretend to do much of anything else. These men had to retain great flexibility and an easy adaptability of intelligence, because American industry and commerce remained very quick in its movements. The machinery which they handled was less permanent, and was intended to be less permanent than the machinery which ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... exclusions on the other. The bolts and the bars and the chains of all other nations will remain undisturbed. It is, indeed, possible, that our industry and commerce would accommodate themselves to this unequal and unjust state of things; for, such is the flexibility of our nature, that it bends itself to all circumstances. The wretched prisoner incarcerated in a jail, after a long time, becomes reconciled to his solitude, and regularly notches down the passing days of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... he uttered glibly, and, despite the extraordinary pronunciation, she understood it. She took his long hand, the fingers amazed her. He bent them back until they touched his wrist, and was proud of their flexibility. He walked to the dining-table and tossed its cover-cloth on a chair. Upon his two thumbs he went around it like an acrobat. "Shall I hold you out with one arm?" he softly asked. Lora was vastly amused; this was indeed a courtship out of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... same remark will apply to another peculiarly human character, the wonderful power, range, flexibility, and sweetness, of the musical sounds producible by the human larynx, especially in the female sex. The habits of savages give no indication of how this faculty could have been developed by natural selection; because it is never required or used by them. The singing ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... I have placed this man too high. Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gayety, pathos, sublimity, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... wrongful conclusions, the legislature must intervene with a statute rectifying the wrong. The Romans, who were gifted with a higher legal genius than we, managed better. The praetor, by his edict, suppressed inconvenient precedents, and hence the Romans maintained flexibility in their municipal law without falling into confusion. We have nothing ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... fatal to Islamism, had Islamism produced a high civilization.] from century to century, from the simplicity of shepherds to the utmost refinement of philosophers, carries with it a necessity, corresponding to such infinite flexibility ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Gladstone described the Constitution as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." He knew, as should we, that the Constitution's words, its phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and sections still possess a miraculous quality—a mingled flexibility and strength which permits its adaptation to the needs of the hour without sacrifice of its essential character as ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... older time, and that vaguely recall scenes in the Bible. Nature has traced out a line over our mountain ranges; the whole appearance of the country is different on either side of it. You will find strength of character up above, flexibility and quickness below; they have larger ways of regarding things among the hills, while the bent of the lowlands is always towards the material interests of existence. I have never seen a difference so strongly marked, unless it has been in the Val d'Ajou, where the northern side ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... entered the Room, as a Priscilla Tomboy passed them at full speed with a skipping-rope, for whose accommodation every one made way; and who, having skipped round the room to shew her fine formed ancle and flexibility of limbs, left it for a moment, and returned with a large doll, which she appeared as pleased with as a child of eight or ten years of age. A Jemmy Jumps assured Tom, that his garments were altogether unsuitable to the nation in which he was residing, and recommended that ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Paul's flexibility of mind and power of adapting himself to every circumstance were never more strikingly shown than in that great address to the quick-witted Athenians. It falls into three parts: the conciliatory prelude (vers. 22, 23); the declaration of the Unknown ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and government buys needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy considerably greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, lay off surplus workers, and develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to entry in their rivals' ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... himself, has ever found the art of making a diction equally suitable to women and children, to old and young, to divinities and heroes? Now Menander has found this happy secret, in the equality and flexibility of his diction, which, though always the same, is, nevertheless, different upon different occasions; like a current of clear water, (to keep closely to the thoughts of Plutarch,) which running through banks ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... flexibility of temper in him has been used to convict the humanist of sin. Believing as he does, that truth lies in rebus, and is at every moment our own line of most propitious reaction, he stands forever debarred, as I have heard a learned colleague say, from trying to convert opponents, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... strongest and most reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... finished, the crowd gave a roar of delight, and clapped their hands, and stamped their feet, and shouted. She had no unusual beauty. Her voice was untrained though possessed of strength and flexibility. It wasn't what she had sung, surely. You heard the song in a hundred cafes. Every street boy whistled it. It wasn't that expressive pair of shoulders, exactly. It wasn't a certain soothing tonal quality that made you forget all the things you'd been ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... aimed at this flexibility. I think a mother, especially, ought to learn to enter into the gayer moods of her children at the very moment when her own heart is sad. And it may be as religious an act for her to romp with them at the time as to ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... interregnum came George Macdonald, unconsciously paving the way for the mob of northern gentlemen who now write with ease. He brought to his task an unusual fervour, a more than common scholarship, a more than common richness, purity, and flexibility in style, a truly poetic endowment of imagination, and a truly human endowment of sympathy, intuition, and insight. It would be absurd to say that he failed, but it is certain that he scarcely received a tithe either of the praise or the pudding which ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... arms of Therese. At this hour, he was in dread lest he should omit to be prudent. He no longer dared go of an evening to the shop in the Arcade of the Pont Neuf lest he should commit some folly. He no longer belonged to himself. His ladylove, with her feline suppleness, her nervous flexibility, had glided, little by little, into each fibre of his body. This woman was as necessary to his life ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... just as it is an evil for a rational creature to submit, by love, to a lower creature, so too is it an evil for it, if it submit not to God, but presumptuously revolt against Him or contemn Him. Now this evil is possible to a rational creature considered as to its nature on account of the natural flexibility of the free-will; whereas in the blessed, it becomes impossible, by reason of the perfection of glory. Therefore the avoidance of this evil that consists in non-subjection to God, and is possible to nature, but ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was not directly connected to the propellers. There was a clutch arrangement, so that the motor could be started, with the propellers out of gear, and they could be "thrown in," just as an automobile is started. This gave greater flexibility, and also allowed for the reversing of the propellers ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... character with which we are unacquainted, and of a physiognomy wholly p 27 unknown to us; and it is then, amid the colossal and majestic forms of an exotic flora, that we feel how wonderfully the flexibility of our nature fits us to receive new impressions, linked together by a certain secret analogy. We so readily perceive the affinity existing among all the forms of organic life, that although the sight of a vegetation similar to that of our native country might at first be most ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... cotton mantle. Later the mantles were mercerized by immersion in ammonia-water and this process yielded a stronger material. The latest development is the use of an artificial silk as the base fabric, which results in a mantle superior to previous mantles in strength, flexibility, permanence of form, and permanence of luminous property. This artificial silk mantle will permit of handling even after it has been in use for several hundred hours. This great advance appears to ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... The uses of the perspirable matter are to keep the skin soft and pliant, for the purposes of its easier flexibility during the activity of our limbs in locomotion, and for the preservation of the accuracy of the sense of touch, which is diffused under the whole surface of it to guard us against the injuries of external bodies; in the same manner as the secretion of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... no reason to worry about a little stiffness during the first lessons. It is almost entirely nervousness, and will disappear as soon as you are quite comfortable and easy, but the beautiful flexibility of the good horsewoman comes only to her whose muscles are perfectly trained, and it is surprising how few muscles there are to which one may not give employment in an hour's practice in the ring. If you like, you may, ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... the fatigue of the night was over—dew-drenched garments—the serf lying at his ease at last: the artists, then so numerous at the place, caught what they could, something, at least, of the richness, the flexibility of the visible aspects of life, from all this. With them the life of seeming idleness, to which Denys was conducting the youth of Auxerre so pleasantly, counted but as the cultivation, for their due service to man, of delightful natural things. And the powers of nature concurred. It seemed ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... necromantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has. They both ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 1815 and 1821, the great essayists, M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre (those two eagles of thought)—all the lighter French literature, in short, that appeared during that sudden outburst of first vigorous growth might bring delight into her solitary life, but not flexibility of mind or body. She stood strong and straight like some forest tree, lightning-blasted but still erect. Her dignity became a stilted manner, her social supremacy led her into affectation and sentimental over-refinements; she queened it with her foibles, after the usual fashion of those who ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... is neglected the swelling may become hard and indurated, or an abscess may form. This condition renders it difficult for the animal to get food into its mouth, on account of the lips having lost their natural flexibility. In such cases an ox will use his tongue more in the prehension of food to make up for the incapacity of the lips. In cases of snake bite the swelling is soft or puffy and its limits are not ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... galleries and down the staircase, followed by the stout assistant who vainly tried to light his passage; he fled with the haste of a robber caught in the act. Blinded by a kind of delirium, he did not even notice the unexpected flexibility of the piece of shagreen, which coiled itself up, pliant as a glove in his excited fingers, till it would go into the pocket of his coat, where he mechanically thrust it. As he rushed out of the door ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... 400 years, our language has been increased by continual transfusions from the French. To these have been added, from time to time, similar accessions from other languages, both ancient and modern. Thus a copiousness and a flexibility, which in the instance of the Greek seem to have arisen out of that subtilty of intellect which gave birth to endless subdivision and distinction, have been in some measure compensated in our own by the influxes which ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... coughs, sneezes or is under strain, the bowels leave their natural position, working out and in through the rupture opening (due to flexibility and stretching of straps), and the bowels when out are repeatedly pressed between the ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... inches high, but his limbs were of Herculean mould. His hands, especially, were so enormously thick and broad as hardly to retain a human shape. His arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. His head was equally deformed, being of immense size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of most negroes), and entirely bald. To conceal this latter deficiency, which did not proceed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the contrary, was an original genius, though frequently imitative of Moliere. He possessed the comic spirit, gaiety, animation, the sense of drollery, and a prodigious capacity for humorous verse of great flexibility and incredible ease, highly superior in point of form to that of Boileau and even of Moliere, for he suggests a Scarron perfected by Moliere himself and by the Italian poets. Still alive and probably imperishable are such works ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... reasoning, Julian had arrived at the same conclusion; in which, therefore, he heartily acquiesced. During the seaman's prosing, he was reflecting within himself, how much of the singular flexibility of her limbs and movements the unfortunate girl must have derived from the discipline and instructions of Adrian Brackel; and also how far the germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have been sown during her wandering and adventurous childhood. Aristocratic, also, as his ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... managed both court and King, possessed vast patronage, perhaps more general court popularity than any Queen of the age; led a pleasant life, enjoying the sweets without the responsibilities of royalty; and by judicious liberality of purse, and equally dexterous flexibility of opinion, contrived to carry some degree of public respect with her, while she lived, and be followed by some degree of public regret ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... characteristic. Their sense of form—including a perception of beauty, and of harmony and proportion—made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... our comforts and luxuries, they are themselves warped and crippled by what they do. The habit of looking at a single order of facts, coldly and always from the same point of view, takes from the mind flexibility, weakens the imagination, and puts fetters on the soul; and hence though it is important that there be specialists, the kind of education by which they are formed, while it is suited to make a geologist, a chemist, a mathematician, or a botanist, is ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... be said about style. Stevenson said that he arrived at flexibility of style by frank and unashamed imitation of other writers; he played, as he said, "the sedulous ape" to great authors. This system has its merits, but it also has its dangers. A sensitive literary temperament is apt to catch, to repeat, to perpetuate the charming mannerisms of great writers. ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have never through the long centuries laid aside the pleasant duty of self-adornment. They dare not if they would,—too much is at stake; and they experience the just delight which comes from cooperation with a natural law. The flexibility of their dress gives them every opportunity to modify, to enhance, to reveal, and to conceal. It is in the highest degree interpretative, and through it they express their aspirations and ideals, their thirst for combat and ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... successful in stimulating rather than stifling creative thought, flexibility is a characteristic of any form capable of application in such dissimilar circumstances as may be presented by the varying scope of military problems. The Estimate Form is such a flexible guide. If a commander, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... must have nearly torn his body in two halves, severing the spinal column completely. Yet such a wound as that had been healed by natural process, the bone knit together again with many times the strength it had before—minus, of course, its flexibility—and I can testify from the experience of securing him that he could not possibly have been more vigorous than ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails in this character from a want of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines; it has the yielding flexibility of a "wave o' th' sea." Mr. Kemble plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and refined susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... attached to the sledge as a back, which in the winter are removed to enable them when stopping to turn the sledge up, so as to prevent the dogs running away with it. The whole is secured by lashings of thong, giving it a degree of strength combined with flexibility which perhaps no other mode of fastening ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... good deal a matter of heart-beats, and the circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are less supple; the arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the flexibility, the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the gristle had but just become hardened into bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths of the vocabulary, as a snake winds through the grass, in sinuous, complex, and unexpected ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... small magnitude. In the masculine garb angles are tolerable-angles of whatever acuteness. The masculine character and life are rigid and angular, and the apparel should, or at least may, proclaim the man. But with the soft, rounded nature of woman, her bending flexibility of temper, angles are absolutely incompatible. In her outward seeming all should be easy and flowing-every fold a nest of graces, and ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile |
